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Invest in criminal justice and reduce court backlogs

Green · what the evidence says

An independent, source-checked look at Green’s policy “Invest in criminal justice and reduce court backlogs” — what it would actually do across the things that affect your life. Every claim below quotes the source behind it. How this works.

Public finances & the next generation — Hurts

moderate · moderate confidence

The policy commits £11bn in new MoJ spending with no stated funding source, which would add to public borrowing or require cuts elsewhere. Whether this worsens the debt path depends entirely on how it is financed — the policy text is silent on this.

The evidence

Biggest unknown: Whether the £11bn is funded through tax rises, cuts elsewhere, or borrowing — the policy text provides no answer, and only borrowing-financed spending would materially worsen the debt path.

Our reading: The policy's fiscal impact on O12 turns almost entirely on one fact the stated text omits: how the £11bn is financed. At roughly 80% of the current annual MoJ budget, it is a large commitment. The measurable baseline shows the MoJ has been chronically underfunded in per-capita terms over two decades, so some of this spending addresses a genuine structural deficit rather than pure consumption. However, even if some investment is productive (court buildings, judge capacity), the policy provides no funding mechanism — no tax measure, no borrowing rule, no offsetting cut. Under IFS/OBR conventions, unspecified spending commitments of this scale are treated as adding to borrowing until a funding source is identified. The current MoJ budget is already £13.5bn and growing at 2.4% per year in real terms; an additional £11bn on top of that trajectory would be a significant incremental addition to public expenditure. Some portion — court building repairs, judge recruitment — could be classified as productive capital investment, which under O12's macro-neutral criteria could improve long-run capacity and partially offset the fiscal cost. But legal aid restoration and Criminal Bar funding are current (resource) expenditure, not investment, and worsen the near-term current deficit if unfunded. On balance, absent any stated funding mechanism, the most honest verdict is that this policy worsens O12 at moderate magnitude, with the caveat that the verdict would improve significantly if the spending were shown to be fully funded or if the productive-investment component raised future court throughput sufficiently to reduce downstream costs.

Crime, justice & national security — Helps

moderate · moderate confidence

Investing £11bn in courts, legal aid, and the Criminal Bar directly targets the Crown Court backlog and access to justice, which are genuine barriers to justice working. The main caveat is that delivery delays, structural complexity, and causes of the backlog beyond funding mean the effect is real but uncertain in scale.

The evidence

Biggest unknown: Whether the funding translates into enough sitting days, barristers, and court capacity to materially reduce the 80,000+ Crown Court backlog before structural causes (case complexity, magistrates' court overflow) reassert themselves.

Our reading: The justice system's O5 indicators — court backlogs, charge/conviction times, and victims' access to justice — are demonstrably impaired. The Crown Court backlog exceeds 80,000 cases, day-to-day justice spending is at the same level as 23 years ago in real terms and 16% lower per person, legal aid spending is 29% below its 2007-08 level, and court buildings are physically deteriorating. These are not contested figures — they come from the IFS and the Law Society. The policy directly targets each of these failure points: court repair, legal aid restoration, Criminal Bar funding, and judge recruitment to increase throughput. There is early evidence that lifting sitting day caps (a related intervention already under way) is beginning to reduce the backlog in some regions. The mechanism is straightforward and well-evidenced: more sitting days plus more barristers plus better-resourced courts equals faster case disposal, which improves victims' access to justice and reduces the deterrent effect of delay on prosecutions. The direction is therefore 'improves'. Magnitude is moderate rather than major because: delivery risk is real (the Bar Council flagged a five-month funding delay); structural causes of the backlog — rising case complexity, increased police prosecutions, magistrates' court overflow — are not resolved by funding alone; and the Victims' Commissioner cautions that investment without structural reform will be insufficient. The time horizon is this-parliament since the investments are committed now and early backlog trends are already visible, but full impact on victims and conviction times will take years to feed through. Confidence is moderate: the baseline evidence is strong, but the causal chain from investment to measurable backlog reduction at scale is contested and partly dependent on implementation choices not yet finalised.

Equal treatment & democratic rights — Helps

moderate · moderate confidence

Restoring legal aid and funding the Criminal Bar would improve access to due process for people who cannot afford lawyers, and reducing court backlogs would shorten the time victims and defendants wait for justice. Whether the money arrives on time and whether structural reforms keep pace are the main uncertainties.

The evidence

Biggest unknown: Whether the promised funding reaches the Criminal Bar and legal aid system quickly enough to prevent further professional attrition, and whether investment alone resolves backlogs without structural reform.

Our reading: O9 turns on due process, equal treatment, and access to justice. Three mechanisms in this policy directly bear on those indicators. First, legal aid restoration. The baseline shows legal aid spending is 29% below 2007-08 levels in real terms — a sustained degradation of access to justice for those who cannot afford private representation. Restoring it would reverse a measurable harm to equal access to due process, benefiting disproportionately those with lower incomes who depend on publicly funded representation. Second, Criminal Bar funding. The 11% fall in legally-aided criminal barristers and ongoing delivery delays (as criticised by the Bar Council) show a supply-side risk to representation quality and availability. The committed £34m annual uplift, if delivered, addresses this — though the five-month delay already observed is a warning sign for delivery confidence. Third, court backlogs. With 80,203 Crown Court cases outstanding and projections of 200,000 by 2035 absent action, defendants and victims face protracted delays that undermine due process. Early evidence of backlog reduction following lifting of sitting-day caps is encouraging, but the Law Society and Victims' Commissioner caution that structural reform is also needed — investment alone may not be sufficient. Fourth, judicial diversity. Increasing the share of judges from underrepresented backgrounds (Black judges have remained at 1% for a decade) is relevant to equal treatment — a judiciary that better reflects the population it serves improves legitimacy and can reduce implicit bias in proceedings. This is a longer-term effect and its magnitude on O9 indicators is harder to quantify. Absent this policy, the trajectory is worsening backlogs, continued legal aid erosion, and bar attrition — all of which compound unequal access to justice. The policy's stated commitments and early measurable signs point to improvement, but delivery risk (already evidenced) and the need for structural reforms alongside investment reduce confidence to moderate.

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