To ask the Minister of Justice to detail (i) any actions being taken to speed up the progression of cases through the courts; and (ii) whether any measurable improvement in case timelines has been identified to date, including the impact any measures will have on the prison population.

The Speeding Up Justice Programme is a five-year programme of work, driven by Criminal Justice Board, aimed at reducing avoidable delay across the criminal justice system. The Programme is part of the Executive’s Programme for Government delivery, specifically with regard to the Safer Communities priority and underpinned by the Reform and Transformation of Public Services priority.

The Programme comprises five projects – Out of Court Disposals, Early Engagement, Committal Reform, Remit of the Magistrates’ Court and Digital. The Early Engagement and Out of Court Disposals projects are supported by £20.5m of transformation funding.

Out of Court Disposals is advancing at pace and I hope to bring forward secondary legislation on this issue in the coming months that should see expanded powers for our police officers to deal with more low-level offences by way of Penalty Notices. This will help divert cases which involve lower-level offending away from prosecution through the courts, where they are currently attracting only monetary fines, and ensure that finite criminal justice resources are used effectively.

Building on the first phase of Committal Reform, work is progressing on the next phase, direct committal, which I plan to implement later this year. This will allow the most serious cases to progress more quickly to the Crown Court.

This is supported by Early Engagement which is exploring opportunities for early engagement between police, prosecution and defence, so that cases move faster through the system. Work is progressing on a number of initiatives, including measures to improve file quality and taking the learning from the Better Case Management processes used in England and Wales.

I am also progressing work on the Remit of the Magistrates’ Court project, which is exploring options to expand the jurisdiction of the magistrates’ courts, enabling cases to be handled in a more proportionate manner and helping to reduce backlogs within the court system.

All the projects will be supported by Digital initiatives which can also help make the projects more sustainable in the long term.

Taken collectively the Programme should rebalance resources where lower-level offending will be dealt with outside formal court process, releasing much needed resources to deal with the most serious offences.

Published Northern Ireland case processing statistics show a slight improvement between 2023/24 and 2024/25, with the median time for criminal cases across all courts falling from 190 to 189 days. This is also down considerably from a height of 226 days in 2021/22. This change is driven mainly by quicker processing times in the magistrates’ courts. In the Crown Court, charge cases have improved slightly, but case processing times for cases proceeding by way of summons remain long. It will take time for the benefits of the Speeding Up Justice initiatives to embed and for they impact to be seen. Recent action by the Criminal Bar Association is likely to negatively impact on the Crown Court Caseload and this will be monitored closely.

While decisions on remand are ultimately matters for the Judiciary, where cases take longer to progress through investigation, prosecution and court proceedings, there can be a corresponding impact on the remand population and on the length of time accused persons remain in custody before their case is concluded. Therefore, it is expected that as cases progress in a more timely manner, the remand population may fall. It is important to note that whilst remand population might fall, there may be a corresponding increase in sentenced population. On that basis, it is too early to determine what the impact on the prison population may be.