Thread by @BarristerSecret

I want to tell you about a criminal case I’ve been contacted about.

It’s not pleasant, but in light of @BorisJohnson’s comments yesterday, I think it’s important.

It’s not one of my cases, but it’s v similar to many I prosecute. It involves serious allegations of rape. [THREAD]

In early 2017, Annie, made a report of serious sexual offences to the police.

Two years later, in 2019, the case reached the Crown Court.

Why the delay?

Because @BorisJohnson’s party cut funding to the police and CPS, causing a logjam in police investigations.

This is sadly commonplace. In fact, this case is one of the lucky ones. Many cases I deal with - especially involving sexual allegations - go back to pre-2017, because the police simply don’t have the resources to progress investigations any quicker.

But anyway, back to 2019.

The trial joined a Crown Court backlog of 30,000 cases.

Why?

Because the government slashed funds to the courts, restricting the number of cases that courts were allowed to hear.

This backlog soared in 2019 to nearly 40,000.

[Note the date - nothing to do with Covid.]

So Annie’s trial was listed in September 2019.

But because of these cuts by @BorisJohnson’s party, the court wasn’t allowed to hear the trial.

There were enough courtrooms. Enough judges. The case was ready.

But the govt said no. So at the last minute the trial was adjourned.

The trial was adjourned to April 2020. But the backlog was only getting longer. Because even though lawyers were begging the government to stop the cuts, to open up the courtrooms and resource the system, @BorisJohnson refused.

And then along came Covid.

When Covid hit in March 2020, it was obvious that jury trials in the Crown Courts couldn’t continue as before.

Large venues were needed for socially-distanced juries. Theatres, cinemas, sports halls. The huge courts that the government had recently sold off to make a cheap buck.

What did @BorisJohnson’s government do?

Nothing.

Like Trump, it pretended the problem didn’t exist.

And the Court backlog grew even longer.

Lawyers begged the government to pay for more courts and alternative venues to open.

@BorisJohnson refused to make money available.

So suddenly serious sex trials like Annie’s found themselves without a venue to be tried. Annie’s trial went off again - to Autumn.

Across the country, people were forced to wait even longer for their trials.

But still @BorisJohnson refused to fund the criminal courts.

The trial was due to take place last month. Can you guess what happened?

Having prepared herself for the third time, Annie was told, the night before, that the trial could not go ahead.

Off to 2021. A fourth trial. Four years after she reported the allegation to the police.

.@BorisJohnson did find money for some things in criminal justice though.

He found money to fund extra prison places so he and @pritipatel could posture in the tabloids about “longer sentences”.

Never mind that we couldn’t even run a trial. “Tough sentences” were what mattered.

.@BorisJohnson also found time and money to change the law to increase the time that accused people could lawfully be held in custody awaiting trial. Just to relieve the pressure on the government to actually deal with the backlog.

In the meantime, criminal justice ground to a standstill. The people involved - real, breathing, bleeding, pained and desperate people - were ignored, their trials kicked into 2021, even 2022 in some areas of the country.

Still the government wouldn’t act.

So when I hear @BorisJohnson claim that the problems in criminal justice are the fault of us - the lawyers who have been working, without pay (we earn our money doing trials - no trials since March = no pay since March) to keep the show on the road - it makes me quite cross.

Because the truth is that the problems in criminal justice were all caused by politicians, not lawyers.

And @BorisJohnson has made them all far, far worse. While the “do-gooder” lawyers have been the ones speaking up for the people affected.

It didn’t have to be this way.

Faced with the growing court backlog, @BorisJohnson could have taken the problem seriously. He could have funded the courts to run at full capacity (typically he would run them at 1/3 to 1/2 capacity to cut costs)

When Covid hit, he could have opened Nightingale Courts.

But no.

Because the evidence is that @BorisJohnson doesn’t care about victims of sexual violence. Or victims of any crime. Or people accused of crime. Or witnesses. Or the public whose safety depends on functioning criminal justice

His only interest in justice is getting cheap headlines

Given the choice between a properly resourced justice system that gives complainants and defendants timely justice, and cutting the system to the bone and covering it up by blaming Covid and bleating in The Sun about “tough sentences”, it was obvious what @BorisJohnson would do.

#TheLawIsBroken.

But we didn’t break it.

Complainants like Annie are being denied justice by @BorisJohnson. He, and governments before him, have slashed criminal justice to the bone. He now openly lies to the public to deflect from this.

Don’t let him get away with it.