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  • 2 hours ago
Labour MP Stella Creasy has expressed concern about the government's controversial bill to abolish some jury trials, saying she does not believe magistrates' courts have capacity for cases that will no longer be heard by crown courts. "Magistrates' courts will struggle to absorb such a large increase in demand, so we may not see the faster justice that [Justice Secretary David Lammy] is promising under these proposals". Report by Brooksl. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
Transcript
00:00The concern that the Institute for Government report highlights is that magistrate courts
00:04will struggle to absorb such a large increase in demand.
00:09So we may not see the faster justice that he is promising under these proposals.
00:15Will he recognise, for those of us who cannot support this legislation as it currently stands,
00:20it is that concern to look at the data and look at whether actually juries are a red
00:24herring when it comes to the investment that we so sorely need because of the damage done
00:28by the previous Government.
00:30I am very grateful to my Honourable Friend and let me say to her that that is why we have
00:38uncapped sitting days for our magistrates and that is why I will set out further investment
00:44in our magistrates.
00:45I want to get the magistrate back to the sort of numbers they were when the Labour Party
00:48was last in government.
00:49It was 29,000 magistrates dropped to 21,000 under the last government.
00:55So she is right, we will have to invest, we will have to increase our magistrate.
00:59I would like to make sure that the army will set up a day and work on whether they
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