Speeches by Babarinde.

“Local leisure and sports facilities, such as the Sovereign centre where I learned to swim, deserve more long-term investment. I want Eastbourne to be able to invest its £20 million from the towns fund in such facilities, but it will not be unlocked by the Treasury until 2026. Will the Chancellor commit to accelerating …”

“I am Josh Babarinde, the MP for Eastbourne. I am a non-practising non-lawyer.”

“My questions are on domestic abuse. Domestic abuse consistently represents a third of all the crime that you handle. We can see from the data that the number of suspects of domestic abuse-related crimes referred by the police to the CPS fell from over 110,000 in 2017-18 to about 69,000 in 2022-23. Are you able to shed …”

“I have certainly spoken with campaigners and organisations in the sector that believe there is a gap and a loophole, and that a common assault conviction is not appropriate for a number of the folks who have it now. The SDS40 scheme is an example of that problem.”

“Yes.”

“I haven’t finished on mine yet, Chair. Director, you spoke about common assault as an offence that is often very closely associated with domestic abuse and domestic violence. Sitting in the very place you are a couple of weeks ago we had Lord Timpson and two officials to speak a little bit about this. I asked about the…”

“When you say that some cases come to you in a bad state, what does a bad state of a case look like?”

“What work are you doing to loop in and communicate with victims and survivors of domestic abuse in the pilots that you are doing? There is clearly an issue of confidence in our system, and that includes confidence in the Crown Prosecution Service’s ability to play its part in dispensing justice on their behalf. I am su…”

“It would be good to follow up with you another time on that.”

“If, hypothetically, a Royal Commission was set up to explore the issues, would you feel in your role that that could be a vehicle that could enable you to engage and feed in your insights?”

“I agree with taking a parallel approach. It sounds to me that if additional resources were to be made available to rebuild magistrates courts, like Eastbourne magistrates court, that would not be unwelcome from the perspective of the judiciary.”

“The people of Eastbourne will remain on the edge of their seats. I want to ask about the facilities in those buildings and what they are kitted out with. There are some serious challenges, especially when it comes to things like screens. Are they bright enough for juries to see? Are the acoustics in court good enough? …”

“Exactly. What do you think needs to be done to address what is clearly a failure in the technology to meet the needs of the justice system?”

“In your opening remarks you mentioned that upholding the rule of law requires investment. Throughout some of what you have shared with us, that is a theme that keeps coming back. One area in which there are campaigners who have campaigned for investment is when it comes to court transcripts, particularly for victims wh…”

“To what extent have you explored using artificial intelligence?”

“By begin, do you mean it is not being used at all in that respect?”

“What would you say are the blockers? We have spoken a lot about capacity being stuck. Without underestimating the scale of the job to be done, using artificial intelligence, or deploying it in some way, shape or form, feels like it could be a relatively quick win, compared to some of the alternatives.”

“To reassure victims, survivors and indeed others, can you give some essence of a deadline or a target by which—”

“That was going to be my next question. It sounds like the existence of some kind of vehicle that is a safe way for you to be able to input without publicly jeopardising your position might be—”

“I want to move to another branch of the reform agenda, which is around physical facilities. It is pretty well documented that there are some serious challenges. An umbrella one I would like to ask about is this. In light of the fact that we are going to see magistrates taking on more cases, do you feel that in order to…”