The mum of Stephen Lawrence has confronted the Justice Secretary about victims waiting years to get justice in the courts.
Baroness Lawrence told Shabana Mahmood “justice doesn’t happen” when victims drop out due to long waits and pressed her on support for those waiting for their trial.
The long-time campaigner, who sits on Parliament’s joint MPs and peers’ Human Rights committee, said: “At the end of the day, it’s victims waiting years. And sometimes they pull out and say: ‘Well, I can’t wait any longer.’ And that way, justice doesn’t happen.”
Baroness Lawrence, whose son Stephen was killed in a racist attack in 1993, asked what the government is doing “in order to support the victims while they’re waiting for their trial to come to court”.
Ms Mahmood said she would soon be bringing in victims legislation to boost support and improve victims’ experience.
But she said, while that is necessary and should help, the country still needs a “once in a generation court reform” as the system “ultimately is failing”. “Reform will take some time to bed in and to start having an impact on the ground,” she said.
“We want to make sure that in the meantime, we’re doing everything we can to support victims through what can often be a very difficult and traumatic process. The reality is you won’t get the sort of change, though, that victims are looking for, unless and until you do big reform of how the courts currently work. Because the fundamental question is about delay.”
She added: “My absolute priority for victims is to deliver Crown Court reform so that we can get cases moving, bring that backlog down and ultimately deliver swifter justice. On every trajectory at the moment, the backlog is going up because the sheer number of cases coming into the system is fast outstripping the ability to meet them.
“Even if we had all the money in the world and we could sit to absolute maximum capacity for the whole of the rest of this Parliament, you still wouldn’t get the backlog down, which is a pretty damning indictment of the mess we’ve inherited and the problems we’re trying to fix.”
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The crown court backlog reached a record high of 73,105 cases in September 2024. Research by the Victims’ Commissioner in March found nearly half (48%) of victims have had their Crown Court trial dates rescheduled, with most facing repeated delays before their trial takes place.
The study found that many victims of the most serious offences, including rape, murder, robbery and serious physical assaults. are facing years-long waits for justice. The report revealed how victims are struggling to cope with the lengthy delays, with many unable to work or resume their everyday lives.
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