The short answer is no. That is certainly my impression. The reason that we are making this change is that we have faith in our magistracy. I have spoken about the huge shift that they put in during the pandemic to get the backlog down in the magistrates courts. When it comes to trying to make guesses about what impact this will have, the key thing is to simply trust our magistrates to look at the case before them, to take into account sentencing guidelines, to take the advice of their legal advisers, and to make their sentence according to the circumstances of the case before them, which is how they always behave.
We want to make this change as quickly as possible, so that we can ensure maximum benefit for court recovery. That is why we will be implementing the policy on a national basis from the outset, rather than first running a pilot in select courts. This clause supplements the provisions to extend the sentencing powers of magistrates
courts by introducing a power to vary the limit on the length of sentence that the magistrates courts may give to either six months or 12 months in the future. This will ensure that there is the ability to return to the current position in the event that any unsustainable adverse impacts materialise—of course, we sincerely hope they will not.
Taken together, this amendment and the magistrates’ recruitment campaign launched this week shows that this Government are committed to our magistracy and understand how important they are for court recovery.