Alex Norris
MP for Nottingham North and Kimberley · Labour (Co-op) · United Kingdom
“It tackles the record and rising Crown court backlog that we inherited, which now sits at nearly 81,000 cases—more than double the level in 2019.”
House of Commons13 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“During this process, he has been elevated to the other place, where he is the noble Lord Leveson of Liverpool. What a public servant he is, and what work he did in his review! I recognise his efforts, in this area and in many other aspects of British life.”
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“I am proud that through other legislation alongside this Bill we have already been able to bring forward measures to improve victims’ experiences of court, with new specialist courts for survivors of rape and sexual offences. I want to recognise, as other colleagues did, the work of my hon.”
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“As the noble Lord Leveson of Liverpool made clear, and as all the evidence shows, only when we have structural reform in the form of pragmatic changes can we really begin to turn the tide on the backlog. That is what this Bill will deliver.”
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“People suffer appalling crimes; they summon extraordinary courage to come forward; they relive their most traumatic experiences; and they put their trust in the system, and hope that justice will be done. What happens next is that they wait, and wait, and wait. Trials are pushed back.”
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“We are acting to put the interests of the British people first, because the status quo, which would take our courts to a point of no return, which continues to deny fast and fair justice to those who need it, and which damages public confidence and consent, is simply unacceptable to us.”
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“We are acting to put the interests of the British people first, because the status quo, which would take our courts to a point of no return, which continues to deny fast and fair justice to those who need it, and which damages public confidence and consent, is simply unacceptable to us. The Government are the only ones with the courage to address the challenges we face head-on, and we have heard that in debates at all stages of the Bill. We are pulling every lever within our power to rebuild a court system capable of delivering justice fairly, swiftly and sustainably. With this Bill, we choose that path, because the cost of doing nothing is simply too high. I commend the Bill to the House.”
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“I recognise the incredible efforts of Claire Throssell to bring this change forward and make it a reality today. It has come at extraordinary cost. I hope that this is a day of pride at what is a significant step forward. Much of the debate around this Bill has invoked tradition, but the history of our justice system has never been a history of standing still. It has always been a history of adaptation and institutions evolving to meet the demands of a changing society and a changing age. This Bill represents those timeless values applied in a modern context.”
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“I am proud that through other legislation alongside this Bill we have already been able to bring forward measures to improve victims’ experiences of court, with new specialist courts for survivors of rape and sexual offences. I want to recognise, as other colleagues did, the work of my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Charlotte Nichols) at previous stages of the legislation to bring us to this point. The Bill goes further in supporting that wider effort and challenging the damaging myths that have so often silenced rape victims. It makes it easier for victims to access special measures in order to give their best and proper evidence. Crucially, in the family courts it will finally repeal the presumption of parental involvement. The safety of children must always come first.”
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“As the noble Lord Leveson of Liverpool made clear, and as all the evidence shows, only when we have structural reform in the form of pragmatic changes can we really begin to turn the tide on the backlog. That is what this Bill will deliver. I make no apology for looking again at this proposal— I myself as the new Lord Chancellor and my right hon. Friend as the new Prime Minister. Of course we looked again at some of the measures in the Bill. We listened to the strength of feeling from across the House and the legal sector, and we have made changes that mean that now almost all defendants facing trial in the Crown court will continue to be tried by a jury. The Bill is not solely about bringing down the backlog. It is about making the system work better.”
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“We cannot continue to try to meet 21st-century pressures with a 20th-century model. On Report and throughout this process, we have heard colleagues call for greater investment. They are right, and we are investing at record levels. There are unlimited sitting days for our criminal courts. Others have called for modernisation. They are right to do so, and we are modernising. Through greater use of technology and AI to maximise our capacity, we can speed up justice and ensure that our system responds to the changing nature of crime, which has meant massive increases in digital evidence and demands on court time. But investment alone will not solve the crisis, nor will modernisation.”
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“It tackles the record and rising Crown court backlog that we inherited, which now sits at nearly 81,000 cases—more than double the level in 2019. I am afraid that is testament to the Conservative party’s record in government, and their failure to grasp the nettle and tackle the reform needed to wrestle our criminal justice system back on track. Again, today we have seen the Conservatives simply deny the reality; they refuse to be reconciled with their record. Our modelling shows exactly where this trajectory leads, if things are left unchecked: to even deeper delays, collapsing confidence, and a justice system that cannot fulfil its most basic promise, which is that justice will be done swiftly and fairly. This Government will not normalise that delay and allow victims, witnesses and defendants to bear the burden of a system under strain.”
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“People suffer appalling crimes; they summon extraordinary courage to come forward; they relive their most traumatic experiences; and they put their trust in the system, and hope that justice will be done. What happens next is that they wait, and wait, and wait. Trials are pushed back. Cases drift further into the future, and there are years of anxiety before a trial can even begin, while confidence in the system drains away. All too often, victims give up because the process is unbearable. As the Minister for Courts said—and as the age-old maxim goes—justice delayed is justice denied. This Government cannot and will not accept that. The Bill grips a problem that the previous Government simply would not.”
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“During this process, he has been elevated to the other place, where he is the noble Lord Leveson of Liverpool. What a public servant he is, and what work he did in his review! I recognise his efforts, in this area and in many other aspects of British life. It is a real pleasure to work with him, and we are grateful for his work, which underpins the Bill. Crucially, I recognise the victims and survivors who have shaped the reforms, including those who join us today in the Public Gallery. They should be proud of what they have done. I know that they bring forward their stories at a cost to themselves, in order to make change, and we are very lucky that they do so. The Bill has victims at its heart. Its purpose is urgent and long overdue: to ensure that justice in this country is fast and fair, because victims today face intolerable delays.”
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“I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time. Before I turn to the substance of this important Bill, let me recognise those who have helped bring it to this stage: those who have sat in the Chair, both in this Chamber and in Committee; the excellent Clerks of the House, who serve us so well; the Whips on all sides; the hon. and right hon. Members who served in Committee with such vigour; the Minister for Courts; my predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy); Members from across the House for their contributions to debate on the Bill, today and at previous stages, especially those who shared their or their constituents’ experiences; and those legal professionals from outside who have engaged with us. I give specific recognition to the artist formerly known as Sir Brian Leveson for his landmark review.”
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“Last week, the Leader of the House announced that the Courts and Tribunals Bill will return to this House on 13 October. I have been clear that my priority is to reduce the Crown court waiting list and enable victims to have their day in court more quickly. I look forward to working with experts in this House and beyond to deliver that.”
House of Commons15 September 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I would always caution the hon. Gentleman about believing reports. When there are things to be said, they will be said from the Dispatch Box. I think he would expect that I, as the new Lord Chancellor, and my right hon. Friend the new Prime Minister will look at every aspect of business in the Ministry of Justice to ensure that it is delivering for victims and for the public at large. The hon. Gentleman knows the legislation is coming back, and I look forward to discussing it in its fullness when it does.”
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“The shadow Secretary of State seeks to run ahead of the process that is going on at the moment. It is very important that Parliament has the opportunity to consider this really important legislation in the spirit that he talks about, and we have now reached Second Reading. I have been in this place for nine years, and legislation very rarely looks the same at the beginning of the process as it does at the end. My offer to him, and indeed to colleagues from across the House, is to engage in the conversation. If they have concerns and wish to see things changed, let us have that conversation.”
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“This is interesting: the Opposition do not know how to deal with either the new Prime Minister or the new Government. When we talk about wanting to improve things in the collective interest of the country, we mean it. The hon. Gentleman offers to be my correspondence secretary, but I do not think that is quite the answer.”
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“Thank you, Mr Speaker. I reiterate my commitment to the hon. Gentleman and to the House: if people have an interest in the legislation and want to discuss it, our door is open.”
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“and learned Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Sarah Sackman) has done—but it also behoves us to look at longer-term structural changes. As I say, I look forward to working with colleagues on that.”
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“I assure the hon. Lady that we will consider all evidence that is submitted, and certainly evidence submitted by those experts who I talked about in my opening answer. I am afraid that we cannot quite accept the hon. Lady’s characterisation. We will look at these things very closely and have that interaction through ordinary parliamentary processes and beyond, because I think we have a shared interest in this. I would caution the House about defending the status quo when we all know—because it is in our constituency mailbags—that our constituents are waiting until 2029 for trials, and soon it will be 2030. That is not justice, either. Yes, it behoves us to make important changes to the system to help address immediate capacity challenges—as my hon.”
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“The Government have increased foreign national offender returns by 41%, with more than 3,000 foreign national offenders removed directly from prison last year through the early removal scheme. From next year, new powers will enable most determinate sentence foreign national offenders to be deported immediately after sentencing, and I have established a cross-Government taskforce with the Home Office and the Foreign Office to maximise removals.”
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“The right hon. Gentleman may well have seen that I set out the Government’s approach in this regard from this Dispatch Box in July. He will know, and it is important to reiterate this, that the challenges in the Immigration Act 1971 are not merely technical, and setting them aside is not merely a technical answer. It is right that we do that properly. He will also know that we have ongoing negotiations and discussions with lots of countries around the world about foreign offenders, and we do not provide running commentaries on them.”
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“We are working with the Home Office and the Foreign Office in that venture, so that we can safely and securely remove people in a way that we can keep doing over the years ahead.”
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“I congratulate my hon. Friend on her new position. I have a double degree of anxiety: as a former Justice Minister, she will know very well of what she speaks, but she is also a Derby MP, which will create a Derby-Nottingham rivalry across the Select Committee room. I have a degree of trepidation about that, but I know how excellently she will do in her new job. I know her well and she is brilliant. My hon. Friend asks an important question. We have made significant strides in the removal of foreign offenders from this country, for which we make no apology. We want to go further, and again we make no apology for that. To do that well, and in a way that endures over the years, we need to work as well as possible with receiving countries. We want them to have the best information as early as possible.”
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“Our Government will bring forward legislation to end the IPP sentence by the end of this Parliament. We will do so through cross-party engagement. We recognise that these are complex cases, involving important considerations to do with public protection and victims, and it will take us time to get this right. I anticipate making a further announcement later this year.”
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“That is a long-standing cross-party position, and it is time that we move forward.”
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“I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her considered question. I have had similar conversations in my constituency surgeries, and I recognise the challenges that those prisoners face. In the immediate term, IPP prisoners have greater access to mental health support, including funding for specialist assessments by psychology services. She will know—I suspect that this is at the root of the conversations she had—that the Phoenix unit opened up at HMP Aylesbury last month to provide dedicated support for IPP prisoners. I know that those prisoners, their families and, indeed, their victims are looking to see what the Government will do next. We must get any changes that we make right, and ensure a balance with public safety, but these sentences have been discontinued for a very good reason.”
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“I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for the question, and the spirit in which it was asked. I will not be drawn on that individual case if it is with the Attorney General, because it is right that that process carries on unhindered. The hon. Gentleman will know that there is a tension on this issue. I do not think that he or anybody in this House believes that people who have served their sentence—or, in many cases, a decade or more beyond their sentence—should be held in prison. That is why we have discontinued those sentences, but he makes very important points about support, public safety and public protection. We are doing work on that at the moment, and I look forward to his scrutiny of our plans.”
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“I look forward to improving the Bill as it progresses so that it delivers for victims and continues to command the confidence of the British people.”
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“As I have mentioned, the Courts and Tribunals Bill will shortly come back to this House. The record and rising Crown court backlog we inherited has more than doubled from around 38,000 cases in 2019 to more than 80,000 today, denying victims justice for months or even years. To fix the system, as the Minister for Courts and Legal Services has said, we have invested in and continued to modernise the courts, and through the returning legislation, we have set in train much-needed structural reform. The Prime Minister has been clear that the answer to justice delayed cannot be justice diminished. We are looking again at the proposals, considering the evidence and listening to experts both inside and outside this House and, of course, to victims.”
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“I recognise the ambition of local partners to develop a justice quarter in Milton Keynes. I know that engagement has gone on—indeed, the Courts Minister is going to meet MPs—and that the Milton Keynes MPs are hunting in a pack on this matter. I think I have already committed to a visit, which I am sure I will make shortly. In the meantime, the Minister looks forward to meeting my hon. Friend.”
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“Yes, I give the hon. Gentleman the assurance that I have no concerns in that regard. The device we used was the commencement order. We chose to commence the provisions for some offences, but not for others. The point I was making to him in writing was that for parliamentarians it is discomfiting to have things lying on the statute book that are not intended for use, so it is good practice to remove them. It would not be without precedent for many provisions to be on the statute book without being turned on; nevertheless, that is what I was referring to in respect of further legislation. I am confident in our legal position.”
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“I understand that the hon. Gentleman is a champion of individual liberty, and I understand him to be someone who believes in the equal application of liberty for individuals too. He must, surely, share my discomfort that there are individuals with tariffs of 18 months who have served 18 years on those sentences. This has been a matter of consensus for a long period of time; that is why his colleagues, when in government, discontinued those sentences. That is not to say that it is easy. In exactly the spirit in which he says that it must be done safely, my commitment is to do that with him and with colleagues across the House.”
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“I am grateful for that question. It should discomfit colleagues that, in many cases, lots and lots of people across our communities have served long beyond their sentence and have not been permitted their release from prison, or have not been able to sustain a release from prison. Of course, there has been a lot of interest about what legislative approach we may take; we intend to publish legislation in due course. My hon. Friend is entirely right that we also have to ensure that those individuals who do leave have the best possible support that we can give them to ensure they can sustain that exit.”
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“Those aims will guide me as I tackle its challenges, reform it for a sustainable future and ensure it commands the confidence of the British public. I commend this statement to the House.”
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“To help solve the crisis in adult prisons, I have decided to temporarily hold some 18-year-olds in our youth estate for longer. My job is to balance the sustainability of our prisons with public protection, the rights of victims and public confidence in the justice system. The decisions that the Prime Minister and I have had to take are difficult ones. We would like to have gone further, but the Government inherited a system on the brink of failure. I am clear that there must always be space for dangerous offenders, because protecting the public means fixing prisons for good. Otherwise, it is victims who are let down. We will never let that happen. This Government will run towards problems, including the tough decisions needed to build a justice system that is firm, fair and that protects the public.”
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“In the meantime, we will do everything within the existing framework to support those in prison to move towards a safe and sustainable release. I also intend to look at how we can improve outcomes for offenders with complex needs. Women in prison often have high levels of trauma, abuse, mental ill-health and addiction. Many are mothers and their children can be affected profoundly by them being in prison, so I want to reduce the number of women in custody where it is safe to do so, alongside a cross-Government agenda to address the drivers of women’s offending. For youth offenders, I am announcing £4.5 million of investment for robust community alternatives to locking children up in expensive, ineffective and unsuitable prisons.”
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“We will soon bring forward legislation to end the sentence, once and for all, by the end of this Parliament. These are complex cases, and some of these offenders have committed serious crimes. Public safety will always be my top priority, but we must balance that with fairness on sentences. It will take time to get this right, but the work will begin immediately, and I offer Members of all parties and none in this place the opportunity to work together on a cross-party basis. I will listen to experts inside and outside this House, including the former Justice Secretary, Robert Buckland, and the former Home Secretary, David Blunkett. They are committed advocates of IPP reform, whom I thank for agreeing to work with me.”
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“More than 2,000 people are still trapped by indeterminate imprisonment for public protection, or IPP, sentences. They were rightly abolished a decade ago, but offenders are still locked up for far longer than envisaged, often for crimes that, if committed today, would see them spend much less time in jail. Of those who have never been released, 99% are beyond the tariff imposed by the court, and 80% have served 10 years or more beyond it. Tragically, with no end of their sentence in sight, some IPP prisoners have taken their own lives. Concerns about IPPs have been raised across the political spectrum, including by the former Justice Secretary, Alex Chalk, who called them “a stain” on our justice system. The number of IPP offenders has been reducing, but the Prime Minister and I want to go further.”
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“We have increased removals by 41% compared with the last two years of the previous Tory Government, and we have changed the law to expand the early removal scheme. Now we will go further. Next year we will begin removing foreign national offenders serving determinate sentences immediately after sentencing, but I want to reassure the House that the most dangerous offenders, such as those already excluded from the Sentencing Act changes, will still be required to serve prison time before being deported. I want to be clear that all removed offenders will be barred from returning to the UK for life, because deportation is the anchor of that punishment. If you break our laws and abuse Britain’s hospitality, we will permanently remove you. We will also act on a long-standing injustice.”
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“At the same time, my duty is to ensure that we always have the space to lock up offenders. Today I can announce a fast-tracked plan to create more headroom in our prison system by bringing forward more than £110 million of funding. We have identified where we can accelerate the delivery of more places, including by converting space within prisons into cells, and we are pushing to deliver current building plans more quickly. We will also invest in new land for prisons and build a credible pipeline of new sites to enable more prison building, because my top priority is to build a long-term, sustainable future for our prison estate. We are also freeing up space in the shorter term. There are thousands of foreign national offenders in our prisons, at vast expense to taxpayers.”
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“I want to reassure the House that victims in the victim contact scheme are being kept informed by dedicated victim liaison officers. We are rightly giving victims the opportunity to have their say on licence conditions for offenders in their case, and I have instructed my officials to attempt to trace all affected victims for whom we do not have the details. On top of that, we are boosting victim support with a £18.9 million funding package, including a dedicated free helpline offering emotional support for anyone affected, and specialist support for victims of violence against women and girls. I have asked the Prisons Minister to work with victims groups to shape our response, because victims must come first. The Prime Minister and I have pushed the system to its limits.”
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“We moved quickly to exclude rape and many serious child sex and grooming offences, and we have gone further still by excluding all unlawful killing offences—including death by dangerous or drink-driving, causing or allowing the death of a child, and manslaughter—as well as indecent assault, which has been used to prosecute historical child sex abuse. This means hundreds more dangerous criminals staying behind bars for longer, including those who killed PC Andrew Harper in the line of duty. It is the right thing to do, and I pay tribute to his wife Lissie and his mother Debbie, who campaigned for this. We would like to have gone further, but we were unable to do so due to the lack of investment by the previous Government over 14 years.”
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“This clearly asks more of our brilliant Probation Service, so we are also investing £700 million more in probation and community services by 2028-29, and we are hiring a further 1,300 trainee probation officers, on top of the 2,300 recruited in the past two years. Let me be clear about who the model applies to. The most dangerous offenders, who have been locked up for serious violent and sexual offences, and those on life sentences were never eligible, but the Prime Minister and I were determined to look again.”
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“We have overseen the largest ever expansion of tagging and, working closely with the police, we are giving the Probation Service access to the largest and toughest range of measures to manage offenders. Every single offender leaving prison can now be tagged, and strict licence conditions can include curfews and bans from pubs, clubs and even football matches. There will be exclusion zones where criminals cannot go. For the most serious sexual and violent offenders, we are introducing world-first “restriction zones” that confine them to specific areas, which are sometimes a few miles wide, curtailing their liberty in order to give victims more freedom. If conditions are breached, offenders can be recalled to prison.”
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“Compare that with the record of the Conservative party, which added just 500 net places in 14 years. We have also deported nearly 12,000 foreign national offenders, but we had to ensure that we never return to the shambolic emergency releases carried out, with little scrutiny or warning, by the previous Government. We passed the Sentencing Act, which introduced the earned progression model, whereby offenders on standard determinate sentences spend at least a third of their sentence behind bars, and longer if they behave badly. More serious offences require people to serve at least half of their sentence, with no upper limit for time spent inside for bad behaviour. But release from prison is not the end of the story.”
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“With your permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will make a statement on the implementation of the Sentencing Act 2026. When this Labour Government took office, we inherited a crisis in our prisons. They were regularly at 99% capacity, with fewer than 100 places available at one stage. We were one bad day away from running out of space, which would have meant the courts being forced to suspend trials, the police being unable to make arrests, and there would be nowhere to put dangerous criminals—a total breakdown of law and order, with victims bearing the brunt. My predecessors acted swiftly to stabilise our prisons by committing to the most ambitious prison-building programme since the Victorians and pledging 14,000 new prison places by 2031, with 3,200 already delivered.”
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“If I am able to make this acknowledgment, I hope he will at least reflect on it: there is a real dissatisfaction, as a result of the changes we have had to make, that some people will leave prison earlier than their sentence dictated, and that in many cases there will be people who are still there 10 years after. There is no easy solution to that. All I ask of him is to engage in a process to bring that to its resolution.”
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“He will know about the important work done on that at the Council of Europe. The Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Rother Valley (Jake Richards), has done a lot of important work in that space. Similarly, our work on article 8 is important and I hope the hon. Gentleman will support that when it comes before Parliament. He should not doubt our vigour; as I say, we are already doing well better than his predecessors—they are sat next to him, so he can talk to them about that—and we will go further. Let me finish on the IPP point, because I am really interested to see how it does and does not hold. I know that the hon. Gentleman is a champion of individual liberty and a sceptic of what he thinks is uneven justice.”
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“Of course, things do come in and out of the estate, including because of fire damage; I would not underestimate the importance of contamination either. Nevertheless, there will of course be significant places added in this Parliament and in our programme to 2031. The hon. Gentleman also asks about the chance to scrutinise the data. He will know that, under the Sentencing Act, we are committed to publishing an annual report. That is what we will do, and I am sure that he and I will get into it at that point. On foreign national offenders, if the hon. Gentleman has doubts, I will state my record to him and to the House. We have increased by 41% the removal of foreign offenders in this country. I gently say that that was my role in the Home Office, so he should not doubt my vigour. He mentions changes to article 3.”
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“Linked to that, he talks about how the changes will come into force. That will be done via varying the commencement order. He talks about home detention. I can say that I have no intention of going any further. The work we have put in as a result of the Sentencing Act is our way of managing the pressure in the system. On capacity, the hon. Gentleman asks for clarity. Well, I can provide a little bit of clarity: we should be clear that we have added 374 places in the adult male estate since the general election. Now, that is nowhere near where we want to get to as the end state—that is why our building programme has 14,000 places in it—but I would hope that wanting to do more is a point of shared interest.”
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“I recognise that it has created uncertainty and I apologise to victims, but I hope they understand that it was done with noble purpose. We must now use the time available to make sure that victims get the right support, particularly when it comes to shaping restrictions on offenders if they do come out. The hon. Gentleman mentions plans. The reality is that if we followed his plan, we would have a prison system that would be bust before Christmas. What would that mean for justice in this country? How could that be right? He jumps on the phrase “business as usual”. The point I am trying to make is that this Parliament has changed legislation. The Sentencing Act is the basis on which standard determinate sentences will be governed, and that will be the case for the foreseeable future.”
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“I am grateful for the shadow Secretary of State’s kind words of welcome. I do not know him well, but I know that he, like me, shares a love for this country and that everything he does is seen through that prism. My commitment to him is to work with him. There will be times, perhaps even including today, when we will need to disagree in the best traditions of this place, but I know there will be a lot that brings us together over the months and hopefully years to come. On plans and changed plans, I make no apology—certainly not to the Opposition—for being able to grab hold of a system that, when we left here in July, was not going to exclude rape offences, child sex offences and those who have taken lives. We have now done that, which is good.”
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“I agree wholeheartedly with the value my right hon. Friend places on the important work of our prison officers and our probation officers. She is exactly right that what surely binds all of us is that we want to reduce reoffending. What I have presented to Parliament today is a measure to get us through a crisis, but we know that we have to build a new criminal justice system. That can be done from this Dispatch Box, but it also has to be done much more widely, including through work with our prison officers, our Probation Service, the police and our communities in order to reduce reoffending, which is what we all want.”
House of Commons1 September 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗