Issue 216  23rd October 2021

Home Secretary Priti Patel has backed calls to change the law to give victims of domestic abuse more time to report a crime, the BBC has been told. There is currently a six-month time limit for a charge to be brought against someone for common assault.

But Ms Patel has agreed to extend the timeframe to up to two years. It comes after the BBC revealed 13,000 cases in England and Wales had been dropped in five years because the six month limit had been breached. The change is expected to come as part of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, which is currently making its way through Parliament. Campaigners have said the move would be very welcome, but they are waiting to see an official announcement.

Hundreds of barristers have quit the criminal courts since 2016 prompting fears in the justice system of a shortage of prosecution and defence counsel. Senior lawyers have told The Times that low legal aid rates, which means some defence barristers being paid below the minimum wage, and court delays because of Covid-19, have led to an exodus, particularly of young lawyers.

According to officials at the Criminal Bar Association, 22 per cent of junior criminal barristers have left since 2016 and specialist chambers in England and Wales have reduced their tenancies by about a third. Research by the association showed that the number of junior barristers specialising in crime had fallen by 11 per cent between 2016-17 and 2019-20 from 2,553 to 2,273.

The Treasury refused to bankroll the creation of an extra 33 Nightingale courtrooms despite the backlog of criminal trials soaring to record levels, it has been revealed. The Ministry of Justice drew up plans earlier this year to open up a new series of ad-hoc courts to help tackle the justice crisis, as victims, witnesses, and defendants faced lengthy delays with rape and sexual assault cases being “acutely affected”.

But despite the dire position, officials had to scale back their ambitions after being told by the Treasury that funding would not be provided for the new courtrooms. The internal government wrangling was revealed in a National Audit Office (NAO) report on the backlog in the criminal courts, which warned it could take several years to bring the situation back to pre-pandemic levels.

Plans to revise four sentencing guidelines for terrorism offences in England and Wales to reflect changes brought in by the Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Act 2021, were published for consultation today by the Sentencing Council. The consultation proposes changes to the guidelines below, to bring them in line with the new legislation:

• Preparation of terrorist acts (Terrorism Act 2006, section 5)
• Explosive substances (terrorism only) (Explosive Substances Act 1883, section 2 and section 3)
• Proscribed organisations – membership (Terrorism Act 2000, section 11)
• Proscribed organisations – support (Terrorism Act 2000, section 12)

The Council is seeking views on the draft guidelines from judges, magistrates and others with an interest in this area. The consultation applies to adult offenders and will run from 20 October 2021 to 11 January 2022.

An independent legal aid fee review panel, publicly funded training grants and developing robust mechanisms to measure legal need to inform the commissioning of services are just a few of the detailed recommendations made by a cross-party group of MPs following what is believed to be the biggest legal aid inquiry ever conducted. A year after holding the first of six evidence sessions with frontline practitioners, the Westminster Commission on Legal Aid has today published its findings and recommendations in a 95-page report. Recommendations are costed where possible. For instance, increasing fees in line with inflation would cost an estimated £171m more per annum in civil and family. Reversing a 8.75% cut made to criminal legal aid fees in 2014 would cost £60m per annum without any inflationary increase. The independent legal aid review panel would be similar in nature to the Review Body on Doctors’ and Dentists’ Remuneration...

The commission stops short of recommending wholesale structural reform, acknowledging that multiple and competing demands will be placed on the public purse to recover from the pandemic, but points out that the costs of its recommendations would be relatively small compared to other areas of public spending...

It will take nearly two decades for the government to reach its own target for turning around the collapse in rape prosecutions in England and Wales at the current pace of change, according to Guardian analysis. In June the government promised to halt a collapse in the number of rapists being brought to justice, and vowed to return the number of charges and prosecutions to 2016 levels before the end of this parliament. But new quarterly Crown Prosecution Service data shows that in the last 12 months just 41 extra suspects were charged compared with the year before. In 2015-16 the CPS charged 3,910 suspects with rape, but in the year ending June 2021, 1,972 charges were made.

Guardian analysis, based on the number of charges brought in the past 11 quarters modelled on to future quarters, shows it would take 18 years at the current pace to get back to that figure.