Part of Justice – in the House of Commons at on 16 May 2023.
Catherine West
Shadow Minister (Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs)
I warmly welcome the Secretary of State’s answer to the question from Nicola Richards, but how can he introduce fresh challenges for the Department when the backlog is so severe? A visit to Wandsworth prison at Easter with a cross-party group of MPs showed that 75% of prisoners were still waiting for a basic sentence. [Interruption.] While he is reassessing his priorities—and introducing new things such as legislation on SLAPPs—will he reconsider the day job and the bread-and-butter work of getting through the backlog, so that three quarters of prisoners actually get their sentence and victims get justice?
Secretary of State was originally the title given to the two officials who conducted the Royal Correspondence under Elizabeth I. Now it is the title held by some of the more important Government Ministers, for example the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.