Issue 106  7th September 2019

The government is committed to tackling crime and keeping people safe. To support this, the Spending Round confirms for 2020-21:

• an extra £750 million for policing to begin delivery of the government’s commitment to recruit 20,000 additional officers by 2023 (up to 6,000 officers are to be in place by the end of 2020-21). In addition, the government is spending £45 million in 2019-20 to kick start recruitment, bringing in up to 2,000 additional officers this year. The Home Office (HO) will provide further detail in due course on how these officers will be allocated between the territorial police forces, counter-terrorism policing and serious and organised crime;
• increasing the budget for counter-terrorism policing in line with inflation, including continuing the additional £160 million announced at Budget 2018, which maintains current counter-terrorism capability and protects officer numbers;
• funding to begin delivery of the government’s £2.5 billion commitment to create an additional 10,000 prison places, which forms an important part of the government’s wider work to reduce crime; £100 million to increase security in prisons through the introduction of more airport-style security scanners, mobile phone detection and prevention technology, and anti-corruption and intelligence operations;
• £55 million for the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) and £80 million for the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to support the work of the 20,000 additional police officers and manage the increasing complexity of crime; and
• additional funding for crucial probation reforms that will help reduce reoffending and improve post-custody supervision.

The Metropolitan Police has lost a legal bid to seize unpublished notes made by journalists who interviewed Shamima Begum. Counterterror officers investigating the captured Isis bride applied for a judge to force media outlets to hand over their material after they refused voluntary requests.

But a judge at London’s Old Bailey rejected Scotland Yard’s application for an order compelling journalists to hand over unpublished notes and footage from interviews in Syria. The production order, under the Terrorism Act, required officers to prove the material is “sought for the purposes of a terrorist investigation”, is of “substantial value” and that seizure is in the public interest. The Times, BBC, Sky News and ITN instructed lawyers to resist the application when it was lodged last month.

Victims and defendants should automatically be given a transcript of the judge's sentencing remarks, the victims' commissioner has told the chief of HM Courts & Tribunals Service.

Dame Vera Baird QC, who was appointed in June, revealed today that she told HMCTS chief executive Susan Acland-Hood last month that she was concerned that victims and defendants were being given inadequate information about sentences handed down by the courts and what they meant in practice.

Publishing a note today of her 'useful meeting' with Acland-Hood, Baird said she was 'keen to advocate victims and defendants in the Crown courts automatically being given a transcript of the judge’s sentencing remark'. Baird 'acknowledged some of the practical difficulties to overcome but the clarity this might provide would assist everyone'.

The justice system is “not fit for purpose”, a judge has complained in a courtroom outburst at the lack of police, prosecutors and court staff. Judge Anthony Lowe, sitting at Shrewsbury crown court, made the comments after he was forced to adjourn until February a trial due to start this month.

He had been due to sit on the trial of a 20-year-old man for assault and possessing a weapon. Judge Lowe, 65, a recorder since 2005 and a circuit judge in the Midlands since last January, told the court: “This is a justice system that is just breaking at every point — from the number of police, the number of CPS [Crown Prosecution Service], the number of court staff, the number of courts, the number of delays. Everywhere you look, our justice system is beginning to be not fit for purpose. Slow justice is bad justice.”

A new system to simplify and speed up referrals of potential victims of modern slavery for government support has been rolled out by the Home Office.

The fully digitised system will simplify the process that first responders – including police officers, social workers or immigration officials – follow when referring victims of modern slavery to the National Referral Mechanism (NRM). Until now, first responders have used paper forms to refer victims for support through the NRM. Under the new system, rolled out last week this system will be digitised at the point of referral.