Speeches by Farnsworth.

“Going back to the specialist prosecutor role, you said you are looking at whether there need to be more of them. Senior Crown prosecutors can be at the senior Crown prosecutor grade for years, even decades, without getting a specialist prosecutor role. You said that a lot of them go to the central casework division bec…”

“Is that to build up relationships with overseas contemporaries? What would the strategy be there? What would be the need to go over?”

“The Government have emphasised the importance of international co-operation to tackle irregular migration as a core plank of the strategy for dealing with that situation. As a result, the NCA is recruiting about 100 new officers to be deployed in-country. I hear what you say about the costs involved, but would you say …”

“As an international liaison prosecutor, my job was to facilitate international co-operation, working with the NCA and overseas authorities. Does the Home Secretary agree that that is the key to smashing the criminal people smuggling gangs, not gimmicks such as the Rwanda scheme?”

“I welcome the Minister’s announcement, not just as a former Crown prosecutor but because the towns in my constituency are sadly not immune from antisocial behaviour. We often see a small group of people repeatedly committing this offence in our towns. Does the Minister agree that respect orders will be a useful interve…”

“I want to take you back to the recruitment of salaried judges. I have a question that has two elements, in terms of increasing your pool of people. You talked about working with the magic circle firms to try to get more solicitors. Are you working with any other pools of people, such as law centres, high street practic…”

“Thank you; that is very reassuring. The second part of the question is about females. Are there any schemes that will expedite increasing the number of female judges? For example, with female bishops in the House of Lords, as I understand it—Andy will correct me if I am wrong—they were ringfencing the next appointment …”

“I will generalise in that case. My question was getting at the fact that there seem to be occasions when there were as many sitting days in comparative years, but there was a disparity in the number of cases disposed of. The question is about those differences and what is affecting the disposal of cases, notwithstandin…”

“There were 111,996 sitting days in 2023 and 21,026 cases were disposed of. That is what we have been told.”

“That’s fine. Those were the figures we were provided with.”

“Thank you. I want to talk about ineffective trials, what might increase rates of ineffective trials and what challenges you have in the courts at the moment. What is the cause of ineffective trials in the main, from your perspective?”

“Is the ineffective rate increasing?”

“You mentioned that if a case was listed for a Monday and it did not start until the Tuesday or the Wednesday, that is counted as ineffective.”

“They told us that at Snaresbrook, and that that might be confusing the figures in terms of the real picture.”

“As a Crown prosecutor, I would have said that if we got started on a Tuesday we were doing well. That would be a successful case for me and not an ineffective case. It is interesting that it would go down as an ineffective case. Thank you for that.”

“It is the chronology that takes a long time because the cases have been going on for so long. That causes additional work as well.”

“I have one last question in relation to Crown court efficiency and how it fits in with the increased magistrates court sentencing powers. There has been some suggestion that it will free up around 2,000 sitting days each year in the Crown court. Do you agree with that assessment?”

“Good and sufficient cause has always been something that the CPS have had to concentrate on in their activity. Some of the delay now is just not having the court sitting days and the court listing being so far into the future. Do you have any concerns about good and sufficient cause in relation to the backlogs?”

“I am Linsey Farnsworth. I was a Crown prosecutor for 21 years. I am a member of the FDA union, which is the union for the CPS. I am also a member of other unions, as declared on the website.”

“Our member who is not here asked me to ask you why sitting days are the unit.”