Speeches by Mahmood.

“Indeed—“to sitting day or not to sitting day”. Having got myself across all the ways in which sitting days are defined across the different jurisdictions, and they do vary, in order to take account of the specific features of the different courts and tribunals that we have, would you necessarily start with a sitting da…”

“For the 2,000?”

“Because it is for salaried judges, what you might term the HMCTS running the system cost is around £1 million. The consequential legal aid cost, I believe, is just over £8 million. The total cost comes in at about £9 million.”

“The advice I received from HMCTS is that the 2,000 sittings between now and the end of the year—the additional sitting days—is a viable number to be delivered. I appreciate that it is late in the day. If a headroom emerges in-year, there is always a choice about what you spend that headroom on. I guess I could have mad…”

“First, as I said in relation to a previous answer, I recognise the real-life consequences of having a Crown court backlog. I am first and foremost a constituency Member of Parliament, just like all the rest of you, and I see the impacts in my advice surgeries. I have constituents who are victims and who are caught up i…”

“It is a good question. It is why we took the time to make sure that when the Crown court statistics were published we were very confident they had been quality-assured by independent auditors as well. As it happens, the number has not changed very much, as you noted in your question, but it is important to make sure th…”

“Let me say a bit about the inherited position because those were the previous Government’s programmes. It would be fair to say that there is still a long way to go on—”

“First, thank you for your question. It gives me a good opportunity to pay tribute to the tremendous work done by the magistracy and our magistrates court system. I am sure that members of the Committee with professional experience know that 90% of all criminal cases go to the magistrates court. They hear around a milli…”

“It is a little early to have done that assessment, particularly on remand. It is something I will be following very closely, given the size of the remand population. It is one of the drivers for wanting to make the change, but it is too early to say. On the Crown court sitting days, it is expected to yield the equivale…”

“Watch this space, yes. Correct.”

“It is partly the tragedy of the inheritance, I guess, that even with all the money available to sit at maximum operational capacity, and go absolutely hell for leather, it is still not enough. You are right to observe, Chair, that in a way therefore the Leveson review is not dissimilar, in terms of the scale of the cha…”

“There is an absolute premium on not making anything worse or creating further problems. Of course, I would not want that to be the result of what we are considering, or what Sir Brian might recommend. Parts of his terms of reference are to make sure that we do not compromise our principles around fairness and due proce…”

“Correct, but I would like to signal that ahead of spending review phase 2 we are looking at productivity, the use of data and further digitalisation as part of the spending review process, not just as an MOJ responsibility but as a direct steer from the Prime Minister that he expects the whole of Government to be looki…”

“We will set out our fresh look at productivity gains that we can make from further digital infrastructure and greater use of data, more cross-Government working and so on at the next spending review process. Once we are able to reshape what we have inherited in that space, based on our own spending review priorities, I…”

“Let me take away the specific on the data and what it currently can and cannot do. Again, it may be helpful for me to explain our first principles approach. We think there is more that can be achieved with better-quality data, using that data to monitor live what is going on in the system, driving the best possible dec…”

“Yes.Q53 Tessa Munt: As I understand it, each Department has been asked to find 5% efficiencies by reducing expenditure that is not aligned with the priorities of the Department. What is not a priority in the MOJ?”

“I hope you will forgive me if I do not get ahead of a process that is only just being conducted. The spending review process, as you know, has been kicked off by the Chancellor and the Chief Secretary to the Treasury. We will be carrying out a zero-based review. Understandably, they wish to set a target on efficiency g…”

“In a way, this will all be part of the zero-based review, where we go through line by line what we are currently spending money on. We will, of course, be looking at staffing. The vast majority of staff for the MOJ are out in the community delivering services. They are frontline staff, whether that is probation staff o…”

“You will already know about the commitment on 1,000 new in probation by the end of March. On prisons specifically, we are, if not at full capacity on staffing, almost at it. I can write to the Committee with the exact number. You all know that obviously there is an attrition rate. You don’t stand still on your staffing…”

“When I came in, it was very much an emergency situation. It was a system and a system of people under huge amounts of stress, essentially going bust. That is a way of characterising what happens when you run out of prison places. What I was really struck by was that it was not just people in the MOJ bit of the system—p…”