Speeches by Sackman.

“We take as our starting point the model set out in the IRCC review and the conclusion reached by Sir Brian Leveson, albeit with the caveat you have given, that in his view, the CCBD would achieve at least 20% time savings; he actually says that his personal view is that it would save substantially more time. I can brin…”

“As I have said this repeatedly to Parliament and this Committee—I will say it again—of course we will publish the modelling, as is usual practice. The reason we have not done that so far is quite simple: what we need to present to Parliament and the public is a clear, holistic view of how the reforms will work in the l…”

“It is the case that trials are taking significantly longer. I appreciate that the point was made about where you take the starting point. Sir Brian Leveson’s insight is that trials are taking twice as long as they were taking in 2000. Even if one were to take the IfG’s assessment of a 50% increase, that in itself is si…”

“Do you mean in terms of the determination of that?”

“No, I don’t. We anticipate a process whereby, at the PTPH, judges are looking at the case management decisions and therefore need to read into the case to understand its nature and gravity and the factual matrix they are dealing with—albeit they are not determining the verdict at that point—to make the sort of assessme…”

“No, I don’t think that we are moving away from an adversarial position. Under the new process, as Sir Brian and others have articulated, you will have a Crown court trial—because we are in the Crown court, after all—in the usual fashion, where the prosecution will present its case and the evidence will be tested by the…”

“No. I think perhaps politicians are guilty here; we recognise the significance of these reforms, because something significant is required to address the crisis that we are in, but their radicalism can be overstated. This is not a scrapping of all jury trials—far from it. We expect that at least three quarters of the t…”

“One of the fundamental things that we have been seeing for some time now is increased demand. The backlogs really began to run out of control from covid onwards, but they were already beginning to rise before then, due to the increased police numbers, as well as more proactive policing and more proactive charging decis…”

“There are a number of things. We have explored the evidence and the amount of disclosure, so it is the quantum or volume of evidence, as well as the nature of that evidence and its complexity. There will be some of what have been dubbed “inefficiencies”, which were referred to in the previous panel. I do not want the C…”

“Just to complete that point, that is not the only source of inefficiency. We heard from the previous panel that a major constraint and source of inefficiency is lost time and lost sitting days due to the lack of availability in the workforce. That is a major driver, which is why that has been an area of focus for the G…”

“As I said in an earlier answer, I do not say—and I do not need to say—that jury trials per se are the primary driver of delay. But within that structure, if you take equivalent cases that could be tried either way—that is the easiest comparator—so they could be addressed in the magistrates court before a district judge…”

“It does to some extent, and I will bring in Amy here.”

“Chris, you have been responsible for developing the modelling that parliamentarians will see. I wonder if it is worth you explaining that that is based on historical data from actual individual cases. Obviously people will want to unpack that when they see the modelling.”

“Sir Ashley is no longer here, but I have been very clear in how we have directed officials not to overclaim for the modelling. I do not want to overclaim for the modelling. We need the modelling, because it is what tells us whether this is going to work or not. I am very concerned with that, because that is why we are …”

“It would be great if it did, but I would rather that we present a conservative estimate of what we can achieve, than that we guess and hope for the best and that all of a sudden, because one no longer has the right to elect, that is going to generate loads of early guilty pleas because that suits my case. I am not goin…”

“I will endeavour to keep my answers short.”

“That is not an assumption that we have made, although when it comes to—”

“No.”

“Chris will correct me if I am wrong, but that is not something that we have factored into the modelling. It might be part of the time saving that is realised. For example, going back to the previous question, it is possible to imagine that in a world where, as here, we pick up on the IRCC’s recommendation to move to ju…”

“Indeed it could.”