Issue 170  28th November 2020

The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) settlement includes a £145 million cash increase in core resource funding from 2020-21 to 2021-22, delivering a 3.3 per cent average real terms increase per year since 2019-20. The department’s capital budget increases by £237 million in cash terms next year, taking core total DEL to £9.84 billion. Average real growth in core total DEL is 8.0 per cent per year from 2019-20 to 2021-22.

SR20 provides more than £4 billion capital funding over the next four years to make significant progress in delivering 18,000 additional prison places across England and Wales by the mid-2020s. This is the largest prison building programme in more than a century, and will provide a decent, secure and rehabilitative environment for offenders. This investment will utilise modern construction methods to build more sustainably and more efficiently.

The MoJ settlement also provides:

• an additional £337 million for the criminal justice system in England and Wales. This includes £275 million to manage the downstream demand impact of 20,000 additional police officers and reduce backlogs in the Crown Court caused by Covid-19. This settlement provides a total of £40 million to offer additional support to victims of crime, including victims of domestic abuse. It continues the £15 million provided at Budget 2020 to deliver the government’s commitment on victim support
• £119 million additional funding to support the ongoing response of the wider justice system to Covid-19. This includes £76 million to further increase family court and employment tribunal capacity to reduce backlogs and £43 million to ensure that courts and prisons remain Covid-safe continued funding to progress the probation reform programme, which will help to strengthen offender supervision and reduce reoffending
• £315 million capital funding to improve the condition of the existing prison estate and £105 million for improvements to the court estate.

Pre-recorded cross-examination now available throughout England and Wales... New technology which spares vulnerable victims and witnesses the trauma of attending court is now available in every Crown Court across England and Wales. Available immediately, it allows the likes of children or those who suffer from a debilitating condition to have their cross-examination video-recorded and played during the trial. The recording takes place as close to the time of the offence as possible in order to help memory recall and reduce the stress of giving evidence in a courtroom setting, which many find intimidating. More than 350 victims and witnesses have benefited from the technology since regional rollouts began earlier this year.

Harry Dunn's parents have lost their High Court battle against the Foreign Office over whether their son's alleged killer had diplomatic immunity. Mr Dunn, 19, died when his motorbike was in a crash with a car near RAF Croughton, Northamptonshire, in 2019. The suspect, 43-year-old Anne Sacoolas, later left for the United States citing diplomatic immunity... But Lord Justice Flaux and Mr Justice Saini concluded "that Mrs Sacoolas enjoyed immunity from UK criminal jurisdiction at the time of Harry's death".

The head of the judiciary has admonished six Tory parliamentarians for seeking to influence a judge overseeing a hearing this week on whether references written in support of the former MP Charlie Elphicke can be made public. The six wrote last week to senior judges, copying in the judge who will oversee the hearing on Wednesday, expressing concern that “matters of principle” should first be considered by senior members of the judiciary and by parliament.

But in a response from the office of the lord chief justice for England and Wales, they were told it was “improper” to seek to influence the decision of a judge who would ultimately rule on the basis of evidence and argument in court. “It is all the more regrettable when representatives of the legislature, writing as such on House of Commons notepaper, seek to influence a judge in a private letter and do so without regard for the separation of powers or the independence of the judiciary,” said the reply from Ben Yallop, the private secretary to the lord chief justice. “It is equally improper to suggest that senior judges should in some way intervene to influence the decision of another judge. The independence of the judges extends to being free from interference by judicial colleagues or superiors in their decision-making. Judges must be free to make their decision independently of pressure or influence from all, including legislators.”