Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Amendment 63, in schedule 2, page 38, line 33, leave out from “only if” to the end of line 35 and insert

“the Crown Court considers that—

(a) the appeal has a realistic prospect of success, or

(b) there is another compelling reason for the appeal to be heard.”

This amendment would broaden the test for granting permission to appeal from magistrates’ courts, so that appeals may proceed where they have a realistic prospect of success or where there is another compelling reason for the appeal to be heard.

Amendment 64, in schedule 2, page 38, line 33, after “appeal” insert “against sentence”.

This amendment is consequential upon Amendment 66.

Amendment 65, in schedule 2, page 39, line 1, after “(3)” insert “and (5)”.

This amendment is consequential upon Amendment 66.

Amendment 66, in schedule 2, page 39, line 10, at end insert—

“(5) There is a right to renew an application for permission to appeal orally.

(6) Grounds for appeal may raise issues of procedure and fact arising in the trial as well as law.”

This amendment ensures a right to appeal orally, and provides that grounds for appeal include procedure and fact, as well as points of law.

Amendment 54, in schedule 2, page 39, line 16, leave out from “if” to end of line 18 and insert

“the defendant has made one.”

This amendment would require the Crown Court to allow an appeal if the defendant makes one.

Amendment 55, in schedule 2, page 42, line 15, leave out “magistrates’ court” and insert

“jury in the Crown Court”.

This amendment would allow the Crown Court to order a retrial by jury in the event that it allows an appeal against a conviction or sentence in the magistrates court.

Amendment 56, in schedule 2, page 47, line 13, leave out “magistrates’ court” and insert

“jury in the Crown Court”.

This amendment would allow the Crown Court to order a retrial by jury in the event that it allows an appeal against a conviction or sentence in the magistrates court.

Amendment 57, in schedule 2, page 49, line 36, leave out from “Court” to end of line 39 and insert

“must allow an appeal under section 108 if the defendant makes one.”

This amendment would remove the provision limiting appeals to specific grounds and instead ensure the Crown Court allows appeals if one is made.

Schedule 2.

Amendment 37, in Clause 26, page 35, line 19, at end insert—

“(3A) The Lord Chancellor may not make a statutory instrument containing regulations under subsection (3) bringing section 7 into force until he has undertaken an assessment of the rate of upheld appeals on convictions and sentences handed down in the magistrates’ court in the previous two years.”

This amendment would prevent the restriction of right of appeal against magistrates court decisions unless the rate of successful appeals from the magistrates courts has been below 10% in the previous two years.

It is a pleasure to see you in your place, Dr Huq. I thank the hon. Members for Blackburn (Mr Hussain) and for Bexhill and Battle, and my hon. Friend Rachael Maskell, for tabling the amendments in this group.

I will come to the amendments, but first I will take the opportunity to set out the rationale for the Clause and schedule 2. The existing position for criminal appeals from the magistrates court is this: when an appellant wishes to appeal a conviction or sentence in the magistrates courts, they proceed to a full rehearing of their case in the Crown court. They do not have to state why they wish to challenge their conviction or sentence, nor produce any grounds for appeal. They simply lodge an appeal and obtain a full rehearing in the Crown court.

In many cases, there is no justifiable reason for that, yet the impact on victims and witnesses, who are often required to go through the ordeal of a second trial, in the Crown court, can be significant. Indeed, we heard from victims in the Committee’s evidence sessions that going through a trial was so traumatic that they would have probably dropped out if the case had been appealed to the Crown court.

Part of the evidence that persuaded Sir Brian Leveson to make recommendations 21 and 22 in his report, in respect of appeals, was that

“many minor sexual assaults that were dealt with in the magistrates courts or the youth courts, which could include rape, almost automatically went to appeal to the Crown court, on the basis that the victim would not turn up the second time and be prepared to go through the whole process again.”––[Official Report, Courts and Tribunals Public Bill Committee, 25 March 2026; c. 9, Q11.]

This situation is unique in our criminal justice system. Magistrates courts are the only criminal court in which there is an automatic right to appeal without filter. In every other criminal court, including the Crown court, the appellant must obtain permission to appeal, they must provide their grounds, and the court has the opportunity to review appeal applications to determine whether there are sufficient grounds to warrant reconsideration.

The purpose of the clause and the provisions in schedule 2 is to bring magistrates courts appeals in line with other criminal appeals processes, and thereby reduce the number of unnecessary hearings that progress to the Crown court. That has the dual benefit of reducing the burden of appeals on victims and witnesses, and ensuring a sensible use of court resources, reserving Crown court time for the most serious cases.

Let me be clear on the data. Of all the cases in the magistrates court, which we know can be hundreds of thousands, only 1% get appealed to the Crown court. This to me is indicative of a system that generally commands confidence. I understand the concerns about access to justice, but to be clear, the right to appeal in magistrates courts remains. Defendants will still be able to appeal a conviction or sentence in magistrates courts, but with a straightforward permission stage, as already exists elsewhere, so that appeals with arguable grounds continue to receive a full appeal hearing. Appellants will retain the ability to seek a judicial review of a refusal of permission in the High Court, and applications to the Criminal Cases Review Commission remain possible where there have been alleged miscarriages of justice.

The clause also mandates the recording of trial and sentencing proceedings to support the evidential record for appeals. This is a significant step in making our courts more transparent and open to scrutiny, and it provides an opportunity to go further than in the current criminal procedure rules. The clause is proportionate and targeted. It will filter out unmeritorious, weak applications, helping to increase efficiency across the criminal courts and reduce the burden of appeals, which we know is born by witnesses and victims, while maintaining fairness and access to justice.

Amendment 63 was tabled by the hon. Member for Blackburn; I seek your guidance, Dr Huq, on whether it has actually been moved.

It is in the group.

Thank you, Dr Huq. Amendment 63 seeks to broaden the test for allowing an appeal from magistrates courts under the new reforms. The amendment expands the existing test so that permission will be granted where there is some other compelling reason. That is a test used in civil proceedings in the Court of Appeal civil Division. There is not equivalent test for appeals in the Court of Appeal criminal division, which is what our new process for appeals in the magistrates courts is based on.

One reason why a court might hear an appeal due to some other compelling reason is to seek an authoritative binding judgment on a particular issue. A Crown court cannot provide a binding decision as to the law on magistrates courts generally, whereas the High Court can. If the appellant wished to appeal for this reason—in other words, in order to seek a binding judgment on a point of law—they could achieve that by using the existing process of appeals by way of case stated to the High Court. In short, we do not think it would be appropriate for there to be appeals to the Crown court in this context.

Instead, we have replicated the existing grounds for appeal in the Court of Appeal criminal division: whether it is reasonably arguable that an appeal will be allowed. An appeal of conviction will be allowed if it is unsafe, which can be the consequence of the incorrect application of the law, procedural irregularities, or the introduction of fresh evidence. An appeal against sentence will be allowed in the same circumstances as in the Court of Appeal: where a sentence is manifestly excessive or otherwise wrong in law or principle. These are well-established tests.

We are committed to ensuring that we create a fair appeals system that provides adequate safeguards for summary justice. In the event that appellants feel an incorrect decision has been made in respect of their application for permission, they have the opportunity to seek a judicial review of that decision to the High Court. I remind the Committee that, as I said earlier, the introduction of recording equipment into magistrates courts to accompany the change in the appeals process will increase the ability to scrutinise the decisions of magistrates courts. I hope I have reassured the Committee of our commitment to a fair and accessible criminal appeals process, and I urge that amendment 63 not be pressed to a Division.

Amendments 64 to 66, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for York Central, relate to the right to renew an appeal for permission to appear at an oral hearing if the appeal has been refused on the papers. I will deal with these matters sequentially.

The right to renew an application for permission at an oral hearing when it has been refused on the papers does exist in appeals from the Crown court to the Court of Appeal. We decided not to replicate the provision for appeals from the magistrates courts. There will be occasions when an oral hearing may be regarded as necessary in order for a Crown court judge to determine whether to grant permission to appeal. For that reason, we have included a provision in proposed new section 108A of the Magistrates’ Courts Act 1980, so that judges can hold an oral hearing if they feel it is necessary or for the purpose of making a determination more expeditiously.

However, the key is whether an oral hearing is necessary in the context. We are keen to avoid an influx of applications to renew permission to appeal at an oral hearing where that is unnecessary. That is particularly important when we consider the high volume of cases that our magistrates courts already consider, and the higher volume of cases that we anticipate they will be considering after the other reforms in the Bill come into play. The volume of appeals from magistrates courts to the Crown court will therefore be higher, proportionally, than the volume of appeals from the Crown court to the Court of Appeal. If we include provision for appellants to renew an application for permission that has already been refused, we risk creating a higher volume of unnecessary oral hearings than in the Court of Appeal, thereby placing a significant and unnecessary strain on Crown court time.

I understand that the amendment is driven by the desire to ensure that adequate safeguards are built into the process, and I hope my hon. Friend will be reassured that, as I have said, refusal of permission can still be challenged by applying to the High Court for judicial review.

The second part of the amendment provides that the grounds of appeal may be based on issues of procedure and fact arising in the trial, as well as on points of law. I want to reassure my hon. Friend that the grounds for appeal as currently drafted in the Bill capture the points raised in the amendment. An appeal of conviction will be allowed if it is unsafe, which can be the consequence of an incorrect application of law, procedural irregularities or fresh evidence.

Appeals of sentence could also be successful on the basis that the magistrates court has made a mistake as to the facts of the case or made a procedural error, as long as, by virtue of that mistake, the sentence was manifestly excessive or wrong in law or principle. The amendment would not change that position.

For the reasons I have set out, I urge Members not to support amendments 64 to 66. In essence, they are already covered by the Bill.

I thank the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle for tabling amendments 54 and 57, which would provide that whenever an appeal against conviction or sentence is made from the magistrates court to the Crown court, the appeal must be allowed, irrespective of whether there is any merit in the appeal. I suspect that was not the intention behind the amendments. If I read them in the spirit that I imagine they were tabled, I think they were designed to remove the permission test, rather than indicating to the Court that it should allow all such appeals.

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Wimbledon, who is not in his place, for the advice received in relation to Amendment 54, which was drafted with the assistance of the Clerks. The Minister is right that our intention was to unpick the barriers at the permission stage that the Bill introduces. I think her point applies just to the first amendment; the other amendments fit because they are about what happens after a successful appeal and how it might be re-instigated. On that basis, I will not press amendment 54 to a vote. We will table a suitable amendment at a later stage.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that clarification. I was pretty sure that that was what he must have meant and that it was not his intention to suggest that we should, essentially, allow and uphold all appeals as an automatic right. I understand, though, his intention to debate the merits of the permission test in the Bill.

I should make one point about the consequence anticipated in the amendments, in terms of appeals being directed automatically to a jury trial. To be clear, that is not how appeals currently operate, whereby a judge sitting with magistrates rehears the case on appeal in the Crown court. The effect of the amendments together could mean that we would see large numbers of appeals of conviction being allowed and sent to the Crown court for a retrial by jury, absent any permission test or filter. That could mean, for example, that low-level summary-only offences, such as being drunk and disorderly, are added to the Crown court caseload and, by extension, the backlog, which would only increase the waiting times for the more serious offences, which we want to get on with more expeditiously.

I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s correction, but we take issue with not just the effect of the Amendment but the fact that it would mean that appeals would go to a jury trial, because that would extend the right to, or access to, a jury trial, which we do not want to encourage in this context. I anticipate that the intention was to expand the grounds for permission, so that instead of applying a test, any application for permission would be allowed. This would essentially remove the permission filter and return us to the status quo, where there is an automatic right to a rehearing on appeal, absent any filter for the merit of an appeal.

As I have already outlined, the current automatic right can place an unnecessary burden on the criminal courts, as well as on those who are required to relive the trauma of the trial for a second time for no justifiable reason. The existing system of appeals works well in appeals from the Crown court, ensuring that only those appeals with merit—those that are reasonably arguable—proceed to a full appeal hearing. We have sought to replicate that well-established test for the magistrates court.

To be clear, we are not doing away with the right to appeal magistrates court decisions; we are refining the process so that it protects the rights of defendants, victims and witnesses in a more proportionate way. For those reasons, I urge the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle not to press his amendments to a vote.

Amendment 55, which was also tabled by the hon. Gentleman, would mean that a retrial ordered as a result of a successful appeal of conviction would be heard by a jury instead of returning for a retrial in the magistrates court. Currently, as I have indicated, if a defendant appeals a conviction received in the magistrates court, they proceed to a full rehearing of the case in the Crown court in front of a jury sitting with magistrates, not in front of a jury. There is no provision in the existing process to order a retrial in magistrates courts, as the appeal hearing in the Crown court essentially functions as a retrial.

In appeals from the Crown court to the Court of Appeal, there is no automatic rehearing on appeal, and the Court of Appeal will review only the specific issue identified at the permission stage, essentially narrowing down the issues in play. In the appeals process on which our new model is based, the Court of Appeal can order a retrial in the limited circumstances where an appeal of conviction was allowed and it is in the interests of justice to order a retrial. If that happens in the Court of Appeal, it is then sent back to the lower court that heard the original trial—the Crown court.

The amendment, which would require retrials to take place in front of a Crown court jury, goes beyond both the current practice for appeals from the magistrates court and beyond the established principles in other criminal appeal proceedings, whereby the lower court reconsiders the case. As I have indicated, it would create a situation in which lower-level summary-only offences could receive a jury trial on appeal. Most summary-only offences can never be retried on indictment. Those that can be are heard in the Crown court only if they are joined with a more serious offence. We have been clear throughout this process that trial by jury—that special constitution of the Crown court—should be reserved for the most serious cases and heard in a timely fashion.

The amendment contradicts the Government’s aims of increasing efficiency across the courts. I understand that it was likely born out of a desire to ensure adequate safeguards, but I reassure the hon. Gentleman that retrial in magistrates courts, which will be accompanied by a Crown court judge’s reasons for allowing the appeal, provides a fair trial appropriate to the seriousness of the offences being tried.

Amendment 56 concerns appellants who were originally dealt with by way of a mental health disposal without being convicted, on the basis that they were suffering from a mental disorder that justified that disposal. The findings leading to the mental health disposal can be appealed against as if they were a conviction, and if the appeal is successful, the judge will, under the new process, quash the order, and can decide whether the appellant is fit to stand trial.

Under the amendment, the judge would order a trial by jury in the Crown court instead of the magistrates court, where the original proceedings took place. These appeals would function in the same way as an appeal of conviction or sentence would—currently, through a rehearing in the Crown court. In appeals from the Crown court to the Court of Appeal, if an appeal is successful and a judge considers the appellant to be fit for trial, a trial may be ordered in the lower court—the Crown court.

As with the previous amendment on appeals of conviction and sentence, we do not consider the suggestion that these types of appeals should have a trial heard by a Crown court jury to be proportionate, efficient or necessary. The new magistrates courts appeal process is grounded in a well-established process that already takes place in the Court of Appeal, and we are confident in it.

Amendment 37 seeks to delay the introduction of our reforms to magistrates courts appeal until the condition is met that the rate of successful appeals drops below 10%. As I have stated before, this measure does not remove the right to appeal; it simply enables the court to filter out appeals that do not even meet the reasonably arguable threshold at an earlier stage in the process, thereby avoiding an unnecessary use of resources.

In 2025, there were about 5,000 appeals from the magistrates court to the Crown court against sentence, which translated into some 4% of annual Crown court receipts. That is not insignificant. Where those appeals were successful and had merit, that is of course an important, vital safeguard, but for those that were unnecessary and wholly lacking in merit, that is a needless waste of Crown court sitting time, which should be devoted to cases in the waiting list, with defendants on remand and complainants who need to see their day in court. Having a full rehearing in the Crown court for those unsuccessful cases is a waste of Crown court time, which could be avoided by having a judge review the applications for appeal and determining whether there is any likelihood of the appeal succeeding at an earlier stage.

We expect absolute appeal volumes to the Crown court to increase in the light of the wider reforms to retain more cases in the magistrates court. In many respects, the permission filter, building on the work of the independent review of the criminal courts, becomes all the more important when we consider the human impact behind the waiting lists.

The current state of play in relation to the appeal volumes demonstrates that, by and large, magistrates are doing a job in which those who work in the system and are affected by it can have confidence. They are doing a good job of applying the law consistently and accurately. Of course, it is vital that the right to appeal is retained where genuine errors are made. This measure is about proportionality and ensuring a sensible use of court resources while maintaining fair and well-established safeguards against miscarriages of justice. For those reasons, I urge the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle not to press amendments 54 to 57 and 37. I commend Clause 7 and schedule 2 to the Committee.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Huq. Clause 7 and schedule 2 represent a fundamental and troubling departure from the way that our justice system corrects error. As the Minister said, we have tabled a number of amendments, which essentially form two groups. The first group seeks to reconstitute the existing right of appeal, and Amendment 37 aims to stop the Government’s proposal until we have a more substantial and better understanding of how to drive the appeal success rate down, which is our primary aim.

As the Minister outlined, at present a defendant convicted in the magistrates court has an automatic right of appeal to the Crown court, where the case will be heard as a full rehearing before a judge and two lay magistrates. The Bill proposes to replace that long-standing framework with a permission-based model, whereby the defendant must first prove that their appeal is reasonably arguable before a single judge, often based only on written papers and transcripts. I rise to oppose that restriction on access to justice. I will argue that, where an appeal is successful, justice is best served by providing the option of a retrial before a jury.

I will reflect on the Minister’s remarks about how our amendments would operate. I always listen very carefully to what she says and, as I will explain, I think there is some merit in some of her points, so we can reflect on those. The Minister has pointed out the difference between the magistrates court and the Crown court, and processes elsewhere, but my contention is that that is not an accident or happenstance; that is by design, because the magistrates court is very different in many other ways from those other elements of the courts. That is why there is a difference there—for very good reason.

Because efficiency must be balanced with accuracy and fairness, the current automatic right of appeal is not simply a source of unnecessary delay; it is a vital check on a part of our system that others have described as being, to some extent, “rough justice”—a forum in which decisions are swift but carry a higher risk of mistake. The evidence—because let us look at the evidence; this is not just what people might say about it—is that the current system is performing a very necessary function. Around 40% to 42% of appeals against convictions from the magistrates court are successful, and roughly 44% to 47% of appeals against sentences are also successful. That is an extremely high rate of successful appeals. These are not marginal or trivial figures; they indicate, I am afraid, that the lower courts are making meaningful errors in nearly half of the cases in which they are challenged.

The Law Commission actually considered this issue in detail. It rejected the proposals that a permission stage should be introduced and highlighted a number of key points in relation to that. On the importance of correcting error, as I have mentioned, it emphasised the critical role that those appeals are playing. It also highlighted the low volume of appeals. The Minister talked about 4% of receipts in relation to one element; I think 1% of the total number of magistrates court cases are being appealed, so that demonstrates that this measure will make a transformative difference to the backlog.

We can talk about receipts, but the other thing to keep in mind is how long the actual appeals take. Although receipts are one way of looking at it—on a numbers basis—that is also distortive, of course, because appeals are much shorter hearings than the ordinary business of the Crown court.

The Law Commission pointed out that it found no meaningful evidence that this process was being abused, even without that permission stage in place. As we have talked about previously in the Bill, legal representatives cannot support an appeal that is completely without merit. As I have said, due to a combination of the low volume of appeals and the shorter hearing times, our contention is that there would be minimal efficiency gains to weigh against this erosion of an existing right.

Actually, the introduction of a permission stage is something that we welcome, but the work that will have to be done to support it, with the introduction of recordings and making available transcripts, will probably—or could—cost significantly more than will be saved. By introducing a permission stage, the Government are creating a multi-stage system that is complicated and potentially more inefficient than the current situation.

We know that many of those facing imprisonable offences in magistrates courts are currently unrepresented. The Bill simultaneously increases sentencing powers in clause 6 while narrowing the ability to challenge those decisions in this clause. The Bar Council has described this as a

“comprehensive rolling back of safeguards”.

An unrepresented defendant, potentially facing up to two years in prison, will now be expected to navigate the practicalities of reviewing transcripts and preparing permission grounds for appeal without professional help.

The legal aid gap means that many defendants who would have qualified for a solicitor and legal aid in the Crown court will be ineligible in the magistrates court due to the different low-income thresholds—£22,325 versus £37,500. Requiring those individuals to purchase costly transcripts just to ask for permission to appeal is a significant barrier that risks entrenching injustice. If the error rate in the magistrates court remains high, restricting access to the remedy is a recipe for uncorrected miscarriages of justice.

I will move on to our amendments about the case for retrial by jury. If we accept that the current appeal system exposes weaknesses in the original summary trial, we must also look at what happens after a successful appeal. As the Bill stands, if the Crown court quashes a conviction and determines that a retrial is necessary, the case must generally be returned to the magistrates court.

We believe that that is a rigid approach that ignores the complexity, which does not exist at present, of what might have been revealed by the appeal. Because we are introducing a new system of allocation and decisions around allocation, that is a new area of the law that could be contained within appeals. A successful appeal may demonstrate that the case was too complex, or the evidence too sensitive, for a summary disposal in the new Division. Returning cases to the same level of court that originally fell into error will do little to restore public confidence.

As we have discussed in debates on previous amendments, the grounds of an appeal may very well relate to an allocation decision. Someone could successfully appeal on the basis that their trial should never have been heard by a magistrate and that they should have had a jury instead. Providing the option for a jury retrial would ensure that the final determination of guilt in high-stakes cases is made by a representative group of 12 citizens. We have talked before about the importance and power of juries, and the Deputy prime minister himself has noted that jury deliberation is a “filter for prejudice” and ensures that

“power is also never concentrated in the hands of one individual.”

I understand the Minister’s criticism that the defendant making the appeal may be perfectly content to have their case reheard in the magistrates, and insisting that an appeal be reheard in a jury trial gives no flexibility in that direction—that is a fair point. In response, we will not press amendments 55 to 57 to a vote. However, at a later stage, I want to ensure that the defendant—and purely the defendant—has the option of a jury trial, given that the basis of their appeal may be that they should not have had a trial without a jury in the first place.

If the defendant is successful at appeal, we might say that they are doubly aggrieved: they have gone through the process and it has not worked for them. Surely we should want to do everything we can to support that group of people, so that they have a route to the mode of trial that they think is fairest, considering that the system has already, on some level, done them an injustice.

I accept the Minister’s point that to insist on that being the remedy is not necessarily what the defendant would want. We absolutely want to support defendants who have been through the process of a trial and a successful appeal. Where they could have had a Crown court trial with a jury, prior to the Government’s reforms, they should have a route to such a trial without any test or restriction, purely because that is the approach they want.

On amendment 37, I have talked about the high rate of error and injustice that is being corrected by the current appeal mechanism, and I have talked about the unrepresented defendants who will have to navigate a more complex and subjective system, such as by reviewing transcripts. On the whole, we do not think that we should be moving forward with this measure in clause 7, but even if we do not reject the Government’s proposals outright, they should certainly not be imposed until we have done more work to better understand them and to ensure that the appeal rate is driven right down. The Government would then be in a different position; they would not have to justify removing a right with such a high rate of error. If more was done to understand and reduce the rate of error, perhaps the change would then be more acceptable to the public.

In summary, clause 7 represents a substantial recasting of appellate rights that prioritises administrative throughput over the correction of error. We should not trade away, without any evidence of abuse and with little evidence of meaningful efficiency savings, a safeguard that is successfully correcting mistakes in 40% of cases for a permission stage that would primarily serve to block unrepresented and low-income defendants from seeking justice.

The justice system depends on the belief that mistakes can and will be fixed. By restricting access to appeals and forcing successful cases back into the summary system, we risk creating a parallel system that simply displaces the backlog, while degrading the quality of justice. We must maintain the automatic right to appeal, and provide the flexibility for successful appellants to have their day before a jury. That is the only way to ensure that our system remains fair, transparent and worthy of public trust.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Huq. I will speak to amendments 64 to 66, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for York Central.

We have had a discussion about this provision. The amendments seek to give a right to renew an application for permission to appeal orally, and to allow grounds for appeal to raise issues of procedure and fact arising in the trial, as well as issues of law. Clause 7 currently suggests that a person can only appeal in writing on matters of law, which means that a person is going to have to construct a proper legal argument. The problem with that is that the Majority of people in the magistrates court are unrepresented.

It is wrong to say that this is comparable with Crown court cases going to the Court of Appeal, or the higher courts having to deal with the issue of leave to appeal—for example, as in judicial review. Magistrates courts tend to have some very “minor” offences leading to some quite serious repercussions. When I say “minor”, I am talking only in terms of sentencing, because we must remember that offences that we call minor can have a significant impact on a defendant’s life—for example, even drink driving, which does normally not carry a custodial sentence, certainly carries a disqualification.

That is also often a mandatory disqualification so that no discretion is given to the magistrates as to whether they should disqualify somebody. If someone is the sole breadwinner, or has care of a disabled person, and they feel that this conviction was wrong, they will not have the right to appeal—because very rarely will somebody charged with those matters will be getting legal aid.

However, in the Crown court, most people will have legal aid or be using legal advice at some point, because the trial will normally be conducted by solicitors or lawyers. Therefore, they are already being paid and if there is an appeal against either conviction or sentence, they already know what they are talking about and what they need to quote—the legal jurisprudence that they need to refer to, to prove their case—along with the issues with examining the witnesses or the evidence that has been given. They are then able to say, for example, that a particular witnesses’ evidence was not credible or that a witness said contradictory things or different things in their statement to the police compared with during the trial. They can do that because they have conducted the trial and they can forensically examine what happened—not only what legal direction the judge gave, but the factual evidence that came out during the trial. In the magistrates court, most people are not represented, so they cannot argue all those things.

To take away the automatic right to appeal is, therefore, a change to the fundamental basic rights of an individual. Let us remember that the state has all the might and all the resources, and that professionals will be prosecuting—whether they are lay prosecutors, Crown prosecutors or independent lawyers. On the one side, there will be the state represented by legal professionals; on the other, there will be the lone individual coming up by themselves to be subject to trial. If they are then not satisfied with the conviction or the sentence, they must then think how to legally write an appeal. That is putting a lot of pressure on them.

As Members of Parliament, many of us will have met many constituents who are quite reluctant to even write to us. I often say to constituents, “Please can you drop us an email?” and they say, “Well, I don’t know how to use a computer, and I don’t have the internet at home.” We then make a face-to-face appointment so that they can explain themselves. That is not unusual because a lot of people are not able to write very well and would not be in a position to construct a coherent legal argument as to why they should have their appeal in the Crown court.

Sometimes, when we are talking about possible efficiencies and saving money, we forget about individuals. People who come before the criminal justice system tend to be from poorer backgrounds and are often less well educated. Some of them may well be unemployed. A lot of them have other issues going on in their lives. Therefore, the fact that they can appeal to the Crown court automatically in the current system is an immense safeguard for them.

The hon. Member is making an important point that we have not really discussed on the Committee. It is estimated that half the prison population have a reading age of less than 11; that is to say, they are counted as functionally illiterate. We have seen a decline in prison education. How does she expect all these prison inmates to be able to negotiate or navigate an appeals process?

That is exactly the point I am trying to make. I think we sometimes forget, sitting in our rarefied environment, that a lot of the people out there—our citizens—are not well educated or able to write a proper paragraph or construct an argument. Sometimes they can just about get two or three simple sentences together. As they often do not have legal representation, allowing them to automatically appeal against a sentence or conviction is a really important safeguard for them. The Crown court and Court of Appeal criminal Division is not the right comparison, because in most Crown court cases people have full legal representation who will be able to advise on this.

The other thing we found is that apparently 40% of appeals are successful. Think about that: four out of 10 appeals are successful. If people do not have a right to appeal, they have to find a way to make a legal argument on matters of law, which they know very little about. Asking them to do that is basically letting four out of 10 people be convicted or receive a sentence that could have an impact on their lives.

On sentences, when a conviction happens, even if it is in the magistrates court, it fundamentally affects people’s lives. It could mean that they are not able to get a job again or are dismissed from the job they have. If someone’s job involves driving and they are disqualified because of drink driving, that will be an extra burden on them, but it is not just that. Even if someone gets a suspended sentence or community service order for what we call smaller offences, a lot of people are not able to do that. Taking away their right to appeal is, with respect, very harsh.

Legal aid has already been reduced considerably over the years. I have to put the blame for that on the Conservatives, because they massively cut legal aid while in government. They also massively restricted the rights of judicial review. In that respect, I have to hold the Conservatives a bit responsible for what they did in 14 years in power. I am very grateful that the Labour Government have put money into legal aid—that is great—but I ask them to please give that to the magistrates court as well.

I have travelled in different parts of the world where the justice system is perhaps a bit haphazard or where there is not much trust in the state’s justice system, for whatever reason. It does not necessarily have to do with the wealth of a country; there are very wealthy countries where the state is much more authoritarian and the institutions are almost stacked against the individual. The one thing that people really love about the UK, apart from our beautiful country and everything else, is our judicial system. I am not just saying that; it is the most respected system in the world, especially our criminal justice system, because people feel that they have protection at the point that their liberties are being taken away.

Think about a conviction for shoplifting: people say, “Oh, shoplifting,” but even if someone takes a bottle of milk out of a shop, they may get a conviction and there will be hundreds of jobs that they can never apply for. For a lot of people who rely on shop work or other manual jobs where they may come across money, it means that they are never going to get a job. If they get a conviction in the magistrates court for theft, that is devastating for them. The Theft Act refers to the “intention of permanently depriving”. That is quite important, because people make mistakes, but intention has to be proved, because the Theft Act requires it. It is not just taking the thing; it is the intention to permanently deprive. How do we define “permanently deprive”? A layperson would not know how to construct that argument, but a lawyer would.

We call these things in the magistrates court the smaller, lower things—they are not. As we know, most people who get charged with a criminal offence are dealt with in the magistrates court. Some 90% of criminal cases are heard in the magistrates court. Appeals form only about 1% of the Crown court backlog, which shows that the system is not being abused. People are not just appealing against a conviction or a sentence willy-nilly; they are doing it because they fundamentally disagree with the sentence and the conviction.

I am sorry to say that a lot of these people will not be able to construct a legal argument. However, having an automatic right to appeal means that they can go before a Crown court judge, sitting with two lay justices, and they can make their case again. The judge will be the qualified person who can look at issues of law far better than even the lay justices—I say that with no disrespect—because lay justices are normally guided by the clerk to the magistrates court, who gives them legal guidance. In the Crown court, we have the judge and the laypeople, and they can make a decision on facts and on matters of law.

If people cannot appeal, some could receive longer sentences. The combination will lead to a lot of unfairness. We need access to justice. The state’s ability to protect its citizens is the most fundamental right. The state has a duty, but we have a duty to our citizens as well. We must not keep taking away their rights. We are already doing that with the jury trial restrictions, and now we are doing it with this measure as well. I urge the Minister and the Government to rethink this one.

I will not press the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for York Central. However, it is important to bring to the Government’s attention the real-life situation of ordinary, working people—our constituents, who we see on a daily basis. We all know how they are. Most of them are quite nervous; a lot are quite scared. Sometimes they are even frightened and nervous about meeting their Member of Parliament. Those vulnerable people are the ones most likely to end up in the criminal justice system. Let us look after our vulnerable people and reconsider this provision.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Huq.

Clause 7 and schedule 2 will restrict the right to appeal the decision of a magistrates court to the Crown court, and will change the process that those appeals go through. Currently, a defendant has an automatic right of appeal from the magistrates court to the Crown court against either conviction or sentence; in either case, the appeal is a hearing before a judge and two magistrates. The Bill will instead introduce a requirement for an application for permission to appeal based on written grounds. A Crown court judge will decide whether to grant permission, and the appeal hearing would be heard by a single judge. Instead of a rehearing, the appeal would be only on the issues on which permission is granted. If the appeal is against conviction, the judge must allow the appeal if the conviction is unsafe. If so, the judge may order a retrial in the magistrates court.

It is not unreasonable to have a conversation about the appeals process, especially as there is a small amount of evidence of the system being abused by a very small minority of defendants who believe that the appeal will be successful on the grounds that the victim or witnesses will refuse to go through the experience again. I absolutely recognise that, and we need to put essential safeguards into the criminal justice system to provide greater protection for those victims. We will be getting to the crux of that issue over the next days in Committee.

However, clause 7 and schedule 2 are blunt instruments that will harm access to justice. We cannot ignore the fact that although a very small number of cases from the magistrates—less than 1%—go to appeal, more than 40% of those are successful at appeal. Given that the magistrates court will be hearing more complex cases that carry higher sentences, the measures will increase the risk of miscarriages of justice. Touching the appeals process at this point is unnecessary when it is currently sparingly used. The Criminal Bar Association has argued:

“Access to justice will be harmed. Who is going to find the lawyers who have time to review transcripts of evidence and prepare grounds of appeal? Who is going to pay them for that work? What about the defendants who were ineligible for Legal Aid, because of the lower cut off for eligibility?”

We discussed the eligibility cut-off in the previous clause.

JUSTICE has raised similar concerns, stating that replacing the automatic right of appeal with a multi-stage permission system

“is complicated and highly likely to be inefficient”,

and will fail defendants who cannot navigate these processes, as laid out articulately and clearly by the hon. Member for Bolton South and Walkden.

The current process means that appeals are heard by a judge and two magistrates. The opportunity for magistrates to sit with a Crown court judge to hear appeals is an important one, as it helps with the training of magistrates and drives up standards. Under the Bill, there are no circumstances in which lay justices would sit with professional judges. We are debating a number of amendments, some of which seek to restore the conditions we have right now—retaining the automatic right to appeal—and some that go further, although I think the Shadow Minister suggested that he would not press them all to a vote.

I would appreciate the Minister’s explaining whether she thinks the processes being put in place by clause 7 and schedule 2 are compatible with the principles of access to justice that she has laid out previously in Committee. I remain gravely concerned that the measures will have a huge impact on the most vulnerable in society.

I am happy to have you back in the Chair today, Dr Huq. I wish to oppose the Clause and the schedule. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Bolton South and Walkden for pointing out so clearly that the restrictions on appeals will push down hardest on the least advantaged people and will compound injustices in wider society, as well as the injustices put in place by other clauses.

I will not reiterate in detail the evidence we heard, or the speeches I made previously, about the risks of more errors due to the speedier but rougher and readier justice of the magistrates courts being applied to more cases, or the risks arising from higher sentences. However, clause 7 adds yet more risk to the potential harm from reducing the right to select a jury trial in clause 1 and the restrictions put in place by other clauses. This is counterproductive for the overall courts workload, too.

As others have pointed out, the clause will introduce a multi-step process. We heard in oral evidence from Emma Torr of Appeal that the

“multi-step process…will only increase the workload of both the magistrates and Crown courts. To give a very brief outline of how it works at the moment, the defendant or the solicitor can fill out a very simple form, which results in a quick rehearing at the Crown court. It takes a couple of hours at most and even less for sentence appeals.”

She also pointed out that the Law Commission had carefully considered the matter last year in a consultation paper that ran to 700 pages. She said:

“Its independent analysis was that the removal of the automatic right to appeal will increase the workload of the magistrates court and the Crown court.”––[Official Report, Courts and Tribunals Public Bill Committee, 25 March 2026; c. 83, Q174.]

In our oral evidence sessions, we heard clear views about the lack of legal aid in magistrates courts for people without representation to meet fairly the test set for appeals. Fiona Rutherford of JUSTICE told us:

“Without a lawyer being present, and of course without there even being the right to appeal directly, you are leaving a whole load of defendants, who may well be wrongly convicted or may get the wrong sentence for the crime they have committed, floundering…I simply don’t know who will inform these people about how they will put grounds of appeal together, what grounds of appeal even are, how you formulate those, what key points you need to make in them to persuade a Crown court judge sitting alone in a room with just some evidence papers and how to put your best case forward.” ––[Official Report, Courts and Tribunals Public Bill Committee, 25 March 2026; c. 86, Q184.]

These are serious matters of injustice. I do not know how the least advantaged defendants will be able to do anything to use the application to the High Court for judicial review, which seems to be the only remedy that the Minister has put forward to us today. I do not know how many miscarriages of justice are acceptable to the Minister, but I believe that these measures must not form part of the Bill, because of the impact that they will have on the right to justice for too many people.

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Huq. I do not support Clause 7 or schedule 2. I welcome the debate on various amendments and the comments from the Minister.

Clause 7 and schedule 2 would replace the current automatic right of appeal from the magistrates court to the Crown court with a much narrower permission-based system. At present, a defendant convicted in the magistrates court can appeal to the Crown court against conviction or sentence, and that appeal is heard by way of a full rehearing, usually before a Crown court judge sitting with between two and four magistrates. About 40% of conviction appeals and 47% of sentence appeals succeed.

We are now being asked to introduce a system that would instead require permission for such appeals, would usually proceed on written grounds, would be heard by a single judge and would limit the grounds on which permission is granted. The Government say that that would save about 500 Crown court sitting days. I feel that I may be running out of ways to phrase this sentence, but yet again we are seeing a significant roll-back of an important safeguard, justified on the basis of a small hypothetical gain.

We should ask ourselves whether an important protection is being weakened for anything like a proportionate return. On clause 7, I do not believe that it is. I strongly emphasise that appeals are not historical oddities or a procedural quirk; they are one of the principal safeguards against the risks inherent in summary justice. The Bar Council is very clear:

“The proposed change would remove a vital safeguard against wrongful summary conviction and excessive (or unlawful) sentences imposed by magistrates. The consequence risks adding to the burden on the criminal courts rather than reducing it.”

It goes further and says that the current right

“does not appear to be exercised frivolously or vexatiously.”

The Law Society made similar points in its written evidence: it said that the automatic appeal route is a “vital safeguard” and that in 2024 it was used in 2,487 cases, overturning magistrates’ decisions in 41% of convictions and 44% of sentences. It describes about 1,000 miscarriages of justice as being corrected through that route. That is the central fact that the Government cannot really get around. If four in 10 conviction appeals and nearly half of sentence appeals succeed, that cannot be read as evidence that the appeals process is being abused. In fact, it is the opposite: the process is demonstrably being exercised appropriately.

I am deeply concerned that if we roll back the right to appeal, we will be locking the door on an unknown number of cases in which a conviction might have been found to be erroneous, but will now not be identified as such. That is an unknown number of miscarriages of justice not put right, and an unknown number of lives ruined. I am not willing to pay that price for the gain of 500 sitting days, and I cannot bring myself to believe that Government Members are differently inclined.

We do not particularly need to speculate about what the safeguards protect against, because we can point to recent examples. In the notorious Hamit Coskun case, a defendant convicted in the magistrates court of a section 5 public order offence had his conviction quashed on appeal to the Crown court. The appeal court found that the prosecution had failed to prove essential elements of the offence and stated plainly:

“For these reasons we allow this appeal and quash…conviction”.

That is the automatic appeal route doing exactly what it is supposed to do and correcting a conviction that should never have been imposed.

The same is true on sentence. Members may recall a piece of written evidence that we received from a witness describing how, after a magistrates court conviction for criminal damage said to have caused zero pounds-worth of damage, an immediate three-month custodial sentence was imposed. Her co-defendant appealed and the sentence was reduced all the way down to a conditional discharge, but only after six weeks had already been spent in prison. If that is not a powerful example of why an accessible Crown court rehearing matters, I do not know what is.

That leads me naturally to my second point: the numbers do not support reform. Sir Brian Leveson noted that only about 0.4% of magistrates court decisions were appealed in 2024. The Bar Council quotes that figure directly, alongside the success rates of 41% and 44%, so we are dealing with a very small slice of the overall magistrates court workload, but a slice in which error correction is demonstrably important.

Five-hundred sitting days reclaimed is not nothing, but in the context of the overall criminal court crisis, it is modest at best. It is also far from obvious that those days would be saved, once one accounts for permission applications, arguments about grounds, challenges over transcripts, and the possibility that retrial is ordered back in the magistrates court. Indeed, the replacement of the automatic right with a multi-stage permission system is likely to be complicated and inefficient, and it does not properly consider the practicalities for defendants trying to find lawyers, review transcripts and prepare grounds. Once again, we see a by-now familiar pattern: a significant safeguard is being cut back for what may in reality be only a marginal gain.

It is vital to remember what sort of justice is being appealed from. Appeals from the magistrates court are not appeals from jury verdicts; they are appeals from decisions made in a jurisdiction in which there is no jury, where proceedings are intended to be quicker and simpler, where legal aid is harder to obtain, and where many defendants are unrepresented. That is why the analogy that some have tried to draw with the Court of Appeal is weak. The comparison with appeals from conviction on indictment is not well founded, because in the magistrates court, the defendant has not had the benefit of a trial by jury, only a trial before lay justices or a district judge. The possibility of a full rehearing is especially important where factual issues, credibility and fresh evidence are concerned, because further witnesses or documents may become available after the original hearing.

That is why the existing system makes sense. The magistrates court is not recorded and reviewed in the way that a Crown court jury trial is, so the present appeal system cannot be seen as a luxury; it is the mechanism by which error, questions of credibility, misjudgment and unfairness can be corrected in a jurisdiction in which the initial proceedings are already more compressed and less heavily safeguarded. The Law Society has stated:

“The Law Commission…considered and…rejected a leave requirement, citing the low number of appeals, lack of evidence of abuse, and the importance of correcting wrongful outcomes”.

The clause cannot be viewed in isolation from clause 6. As we have covered already in our proceedings, the Law Society expressly opposes the increase in magistrates’ sentencing powers in clause 6, particularly when combined with the restrictions on appeals in clause 7. That is understandable because, taken together, the two clauses will result in defendants receiving longer custodial sentences, with fewer safeguards and fewer opportunities to rectify wrongful convictions.

That matters politically and substantively. If the Government want magistrates courts to do more serious work, to keep more serious cases and, potentially, to impose longer prison terms, it is perverse to at the same time make it harder to challenge the outcomes of that expanded jurisdiction. One might have thought that the logic would run the other way: if Ministers insist on broadening summary justice, the need for appeal protection grows rather than shrinks. Yet this clause does the opposite.

One of the most troubling aspects of schedule 2 is the proposed permission stage itself. The Crown court would grant permission only if it is

“reasonably arguable that there are one or more grounds for allowing the appeal.”

It would be for the Crown court to decide whether to hold a hearing to determine permission. In other words, the initial stages of the process will play out entirely on paper, without any oral hearing at all. That is a serious change.

The introduction of a paper application with no right to an oral hearing is a flaw. Even in appeals from the Crown court to the Court of Appeal, a refused paper application may be renewed orally. The Bar Council is clear that, where a decision is made on paper, there should be a safeguard in the form of a right to renew the appeal orally without permission, and it should be possible to raise procedure and fact, as well as law, as grounds of appeal.

I also oppose schedule 2, which would insert proposed new sections 108A to 108V into the Magistrates’ Court Act 1980. This is a comprehensive replacement framework. It is what introduces the permission requirement, the new grounds test, the single judge model, the new retrial provisions and the narrowing of what the appeal could do. If one thinks the underlying principle is wrong—I do—then it follows that schedule 2 should not be agreed to. Clause 7 is the doorway, but schedule 2 is the new architecture behind it.

There is a final and wider point here about confidence in the system. It seems obvious that restricting appeals will undermine confidence in jury-less justice. The magistrates court already lacks the democratic legitimacy and public reassurance that comes from jury trial. The answer to that deficit is not to make appellate correction harder; it is to preserve and, if necessary, strengthen the mechanisms by which errors can be corrected. The Bar Council also links this to the Lammy review, noting that juries were the success story, while magistrates justice showed more troubling disparities, particularly for some ethnic minority women. If that is the background, the case for preserving a meaningful Crown court rehearing appeal becomes stronger still.

For all those reasons, I oppose clause 7 and schedule 2. The current appeal route from the magistrates court exists for a reason. It is a vital safeguard used in a tiny proportion of cases, but succeeds at a strikingly high rate. The Government’s proposed replacement would introduce a narrower permission-based, paper-heavy and single-judge process for a claimed saving of only 500 sitting days. I am wholly unconvinced that that is anything close to an acceptable trade-off. It is especially unconvincing when paired with clause 6, which expands the seriousness of what magistrates may do in the first place.

I am grateful to all the Members who have spoken for the points they have raised. Without repeating myself, they have focused on a number of areas. The first is the concern around access to justice under the new process. We had a good debate on the question of the availability of legal aid in an earlier sitting. As I have said, the Government are committed to fair and accessible routes to legal aid. There are mechanisms such as passporting for those on universal credit. An example given was that the vast Majority of prisoners do not have an income. The real picture is that the vast majority of them, unless they have personal wealth, do access legal aid and therefore would be represented and supported by those who are able to give legal advice in what are, of course, high-stakes situations.

As I mentioned in the earlier debate, a hardship mechanism is available where the matter necessitates greater complexity and expenses. I recognise that, where there are litigants in person, there is more to do, and part of the implementation and delivery of these reforms will involve looking at what support can be given to those who find themselves in that position. At the moment, litigants in person in the Crown court on appeal to the Court of Appeal are given targeted information and forms that allow them to formulate grounds of appeal and that make it user-friendly and intelligible to a lay person. That sort of thing will have to be put in place if a permission stage is extended to the magistrates court.

The points that have been made are valid, but I also want to present a realistic picture of the fact that the majority will continue to access legal aid. As I said earlier, the Department has committed to review the position once we know what the final shape of the Bill looks like to ensure that we are not creating a problem in respect of access to justice. However, in the event that there are litigants in person, we also know that we need to strengthen support for them more broadly across the system, not just in the context of these reforms. That will be a vital feature of the implementation.

The second issue raised was about the trade-offs between the efficiency savings versus the introduction of a permission filter to match the sort of permission filter that already exists in the Crown court. While I recognise that the current volume of appeals, in the context of the volume of work that the magistrates undertake, is small, that will grow as the volume of work that the magistrates undertake grows.

The sorts of appeals where success is achieved are precisely the ones that will not be prevented by this appeal test, because it is a low bar; all that has to be shown is reasonable arguability, and a court can identify that straightforwardly. It is not as if, all of a sudden, a huge risk to access to justice is created. However, what is permitted is the filtering out of wholly unmeritorious appeals, the volume of which may grow as the overall volume of cases within the magistrates court expands.

I direct the Minister to the report from the Law Commission, which said that there was no significant evidence of people abusing the system or lots of unmeritorious appeals. The point is that someone has looked at this in detail, on an independent, non-party political basis, and they do not support the suggestion that there are lots of appeals going through that should not be in there.

I will say two things to that. Obviously, that report—as is typical from the Law Commission—is non-partisan, but it predates the reforms we are proposing in the Bill, which will inevitably increase the volume of cases we are talking about. It goes back to the point that, where we have finite resources, if the permission stage filters out only a relatively small number of cases—in fact, that is how I anticipate it will work—then that is all to the good, because even those take up a disproportionate amount of Crown court resources that we can ill afford to have directed to wholly unmeritorious appeals. That is what we are getting rid of.

The other thing is that this test is focused on specific grounds, much in the same way as exists in Crown court appeals. The treatment of that appeal can be directed towards the issue that has been the cause of the appeal, rather than having the whole thing looked at again, which is currently the case.

It is about the combination of those concerns, along with the fact that there are unrepresented people. The Minister is right to say that people who have representation, if their appeals are valid, will be able to carry on, because they will continue to meet the test. The reason the Opposition support the broader approach is because there are people who do not know the detail of the law or how to make a successful application. That is why there should be a freer approach. The concern is about those two things combining.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate pointed out, not only are things being made more consequential—longer sentences and a lower likelihood of a jury trial—but at the same time it is becoming more difficult in the other direction. That feels counterintuitive and not in line with what the Government are saying about making the system fairer. On that point, the Government are moving in directly opposing directions.

I have heard that argument, but I do not accept it. I do not think the provision makes it less fair. But I accept that there is work to be done, which does not necessarily need to be reflected in the Bill, to support litigants in person, and to examine the approach and the structure to legal aid, to narrow the gap for those who do not have access to it. That way we can reduce the number of people who have to navigate the system without legal representation.

I will not repeat the arguments that I made earlier. For those reasons, I commend the Clause and schedule 2 to the Committee.

Question put, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

The Committee divided: Ayes 9, Noes 5.

Question accordingly agreed to.

Clause 7 ordered to stand part of the Bill.