Courts and Tribunals Bill — Written evidence submitted by an individual who wishes to remain anonymous (CTB13)

Written evidence submitted by an individual who wishes to remain
anonymous (CTB13)
SUMMARY
I am a member of the public going through a criminal court case in England involving
protest. I support modernising our courts. What I do not support is removing jury trial
to paper over a broken system that the government has chosen not to fix. The delays
and costs people experience in court have nothing to do with juries. They happen
before any trial begins, in hearings that are wasteful, expensive and entirely
avoidable. Independent analysis confirms the Bill would save at best one to two per
cent of Crown Court time. Meanwhile the real causes of delay and the true cost of
unnecessary hearings are not counted anywhere in the government’s figures. The
Bill’s scope covers exactly the charges most commonly brought against people
exercising rights of protest and removes the jury that is most needed in those cases.
This submission sets out the evidence, the alternatives, and why the right to be
judged by your peers matters, including for people in exactly my position.

1. Who I am and why I am writing this
I am an ordinary member of the public going through a criminal court case in England. I have
attended the Magistrates Court and the Crown Court. I have paid for legal representation at
each stage. I am also someone who has taken part in lawful protest.
I am writing because the waste I experienced had nothing to do with juries. It happened
before any trial, at hearings that served no meaningful purpose. I also want to make clear
that I understand why the right to jury trial matters beyond efficiency. In cases involving
protest and conscience, juries provide something no single judge can: the judgement of
ordinary people who bring common sense, life experience, and the ability to weigh whether a
prosecution is not just technically lawful but genuinely just.
I have seen what the system costs. I have looked at how other countries do it better. And I
want the Committee to understand both.

2. What I experienced personally
The hearing that served no purpose
My case started at the Magistrates Court. The hearing lasted only a few minutes. The court
looked at the charge and confirmed it was too serious for magistrates. That was it. No
evidence was heard. Nothing was decided. There was a judge, a clerk, a usher, prosecution
representation and my own legal representative all present for a decision that a case
assessor reviewing the charge on paper could have made in minutes on the day I was
charged.
That hearing cost me money, around £800. It cost the taxpayer an estimated £800 to £1500
in court running costs alone. Then I waited six weeks before anything moved to Crown
Court, six weeks added to the backlog for no reason other than the system required it.

The pretrial hearing that cost over £1,200
At Crown Court I then attended a formal hearing to agree dates and sort out administrative
arrangements. Wigs and gowns. A full court sitting. Over twelve hundred pounds of my own
money for a scheduling conversation. The taxpayer cost of that hearing is estimated at
£2,500 to £5,000 before legal aid is counted. In Denmark, Norway or Estonia that exchange
would have happened in writing, digitally, without anyone attending court at all.
Time wise, the hearing was set to 10am but we didn’t get out until after 2pm, this was
because they lump all cases that morning in at one time and I was last in the queue.
The system has many more steps to come
I am told I am still at the beginning. Each further hearing adds to my costs and to the public
cost. Nobody in government appears to have added up what unnecessary pretrial hearings
cost across the hundred thousand or so either way cases per year. A conservative estimate
puts it at hundreds of millions of pounds annually. None of it is in the government’s impact
assessment. None of it is addressed by the Bill.

3. The ten things the Committee should know
The table below sets out the ten most important facts about this Bill. A full cost comparison
with supporting figures is provided as a separate spreadsheet submitted alongside this letter.

# The fact Why it matters
1
The government claims this Bill will
save 20% of Crown Court time. The
independent Institute for
Government puts the real saving at
1 to 2 per cent.
A rape victim waiting over a year for trial would
get to court roughly one week earlier. That is the
entire return on removing a nine hundred year old
democratic right.
2
The government’s own impact
assessment puts implementation
costs for the Bill at £123 million.
That is enough to fund a national digital case
management system on the Estonian model,
which doubled caseload with the same number of
judges at one of the lowest per capita court
budgets in Europe.
3
Juries deliberate while judges run
other trials in parallel. The
government counts jury
deliberation as wasted time. It is
not.
Remove juries and that parallel capacity
disappears. The Bill therefore creates new time
burdens that will partially or entirely cancel the
savings it claims to be making.
4
The Bill adds a new hearing in
every affected case: a judge must
assess the likely sentence before
trial to determine whether a jury
applies.
This new hearing, which does not currently exist,
is not costed in the government’s model. In multi
defendant cases it means hearing from every
party’s lawyer before any evidence is tested.
5 40% of Magistrates Court
convictions appealed to Crown
The Bill removes the automatic right to make that
appeal. Nearly half of everyone who appeals is

Court are overturned. 47% of
sentences appealed are overturned.
currently found to have been wrongly convicted
or wrongly sentenced.
6
23% of Crown Court trials are
currently ineffective on the day they
are listed, mainly because of failed
prisoner transport.
The Bill does not address prisoner transport. The
CBA confirmed in February 2026 that a
defendant at Leicester Crown Court was not
expected to arrive until 5pm for a 9:45am
hearing. Fixing this alone would save thousands
of sitting days.
7
No top ranked judicial system in the
world fixed its court backlog by
removing jury trial.
Denmark (ranked first in the world), Estonia
(fastest in the EU), Norway (ranked second) all
modernised their processes. All kept jury trial.
Denmark routes cases directly from charge with
no relay hearing. Estonia went fully digital in 2005
and runs its entire court system for around 50
euros per person per year.
8
The right to be judged by your
peers dates to Magna Carta in 1215.
This Bill removes it for roughly half
of all current jury cases with no
electoral mandate and no public
consultation.
Clause 39 of Magna Carta stated that no free
person shall be tried except by the lawful
judgement of their peers. Eight hundred years
later that principle is being set aside not because
it causes the backlog, but because it is easier
than fixing the system.
9
Juries can acquit on conscience
where a judge cannot. This is most
relevant in protest cases, civil
disobedience, and cases where a
technically guilty verdict would be
widely seen as disproportionate.
Cases currently in scope of judge-only trial
include criminal damage, public order offences,
and charges under the Terrorism Act 2000 – the
charges most commonly brought against
protesters and those engaged in civil
disobedience. A single professional judge
working within the rules of law cannot weigh a
case the way twelve citizens drawn from the
community can. In recent years juries have
acquitted defendants in climate protest cases and
cases involving nonviolent direct action where a
judge applying the law strictly would likely have
convicted. Those acquittals are the jury system
working as intended. The Bill removes that
function entirely from this category of case.
10
The legal profession earns from
hearings. Solicitors and barristers
are paid per appearance. Nobody
inside the current system has a
financial interest in reducing the
number of physical court
appearances.
That is partly why the pretrial architecture has not
been reformed for decades despite everyone
knowing it is wasteful. The profession will argue
against removing jury trial, which is right. But they
will not propose eliminating the relay hearings
and in person case management that fund their
businesses. The public have to make that
argument themselves.

Full supporting data, cost estimates and international comparisons are set out in the
spreadsheet submitted alongside this letter.

4. What should happen instead

These measures would address the real causes of delay and cost without removing any
democratic safeguard. All are proven to work in countries that rank above England and
Wales on every measure of judicial quality.
• Remove the Magistrates relay hearing for either way cases. Route cases directly to
the appropriate court from the day of charge, by a case assessor on paper. No court
sitting required.
• Replace in person pretrial hearings with written and digital case management. Dates,
disclosure, administrative orders: all of this should happen electronically. Physical
hearings only where there is a genuine dispute to resolve.
• Build a national digital case file system. Estonia did this in 2005. England and Wales
is still conducting formal court sittings for tasks a secure online platform would handle
in minutes.
• Fix the prisoner transport contracts. Trials are adjourning every week because
defendants are arriving hours late or not at all. This has nothing to do with juries.
• Increase court sitting hours. Courts do not sit for the full available day. This requires
no legislation.
• Require full prosecution disclosure before any listing date is set. Late disclosure
causes adjournments. Make it a hard requirement.

5. The cases this Bill would affect and why the jury matters most in
them
The Bill’s most significant effect is on either way offences below the three year sentencing
threshold. These include criminal damage, public order offences, and low level offences
under the Terrorism Act 2000. These are precisely the charges most commonly brought
against people exercising rights of protest and civil disobedience. Removing jury trial from
this category of case is therefore not a neutral administrative change. It removes the
safeguard that is most relevant in cases where the prosecution of a technically lawful charge
may not be just in the particular circumstances.
The record of jury decisions in recent years illustrates this. In cases involving climate
protesters charged with criminal damage, juries have repeatedly returned not guilty verdicts
after hearing evidence about the defendants’ motivations and circumstances. In cases where
ordinary people have been charged under public order and terrorism legislation for
displaying signs or engaging in nonviolent direct action, juries and courts have reached
conclusions that differ from what a professional judge applying the rules strictly might be
expected to find. These verdicts are not malfunctions. They reflect the function juries were
designed to perform: applying the moral judgement of the community, not just the technical
requirements of the law.
The Committee should be aware of the broader legal context in which this Bill arrives. Over
the preceding four years, the court of appeal has been used on two occasions by successive
attorneys general to remove defences previously available to protesters in criminal damage
cases – including the longstanding “consent” defence under the Criminal Damage Act 1971,
stripped away in March 2024 following a series of jury acquittals. Defendants have been
prohibited by trial judges from mentioning the words “climate change” in court. People have

been jailed for contempt simply for informing fellow jurors of their right to acquit on
conscience. Nearly three thousand people face charges under the Terrorism Act 2000 for
holding signs as part of a campaign to challenge the proscription of a domestic direct action
group, a proscription that the High Court in February 2026 found to be unlawful on two
separate grounds.
Taken individually, each of these steps can be presented as a technical legal clarification or
a court management measure. Taken together, they represent a sustained reduction in the
ability of ordinary people to challenge the exercise of state power through the courts. The
removal of jury trial for either way offences is the most significant of these steps. It does not
merely change procedure. It removes the only mechanism by which twelve members of the
public can collectively say, after hearing the evidence, that a conviction would not be just.
This matters to me personally. I am going through a criminal case involving protest. I am not
asking for special treatment. I am asking to be tried by my peers, as the law has guaranteed
for eight hundred years. That right is being removed not because it causes delay, it does not,
as the evidence in this submission demonstrates but because it is inconvenient for those
who prosecute. That is not a sufficient justification.

6. A note on access to justice
There is a wider point about who the legal system is designed to serve. The Bar is one of the
least accessible professions in Britain. Most barristers fund years of poorly paid or unpaid
work before they earn properly. That structurally selects for people from wealthy
backgrounds, typically private school and Oxbridge, who have family money to support them
through those years. The result is that the people with the most influence over how the
justice system is designed and operated are, as a group, those least likely to have
experienced it from the other side.
This is not an argument against those individuals. It is an observation about what happens
when a system is run by and for a professional class that has no financial incentive to
simplify it and no lived experience of what it costs ordinary people to go through it. Reform
that genuinely serves the public would make the process faster, cheaper, clearer and less
intimidating. It would also open the profession itself to people who cannot afford years of
financial struggle to get a foot in the door. The Bill does none of those things. It makes the
system cheaper for the government to run by removing a right. That is not the same thing.

7. Conclusion
The court system is archaic in how it operates, not in its principles. The principles, including
the right to jury trial, are sound. What is broken is the process: the relay hearings, the
expensive in person case management, the paper files, the ceremony for administrative
steps, the prisoner transport failures. All of that can be fixed. Other countries have fixed it.
None of them did it by taking away the right to be judged by your peers.

Eight hundred years ago, Magna Carta established that no free person should be tried
except by the judgement of their peers. That protection was not put there by accident. It was
put there because without it, the state decides outcomes and the individual has no
independent check on its power. A judge sitting alone, however good and however fair, is
still a professional operating within the rules of a system. A jury of twelve ordinary citizens
brings something different: conscience, common sense, and the ability to say that a
prosecution which is technically lawful is not in this case just.
That matters most in exactly the cases this Bill would remove from jury trial. Protest cases.
Cases where the law is being used in ways that feel disproportionate. Cases where ordinary
people acting on principle find themselves in court. I am one of those people. The right I am
defending is not abstract to me. It is the right to have my case heard by people like me, not
only by a professional appointed by the state.
I am asking the Committee to recommend that Clauses 1 to 7 are removed from the Bill, and
that before bringing any further proposal on mode of trial, the government is required to
model and publish the full cost of unnecessary pretrial hearings, to explain why no
international comparator country has reduced its court backlog by removing jury trial, and to
set out what safeguards it proposes for the categories of case - protest, civil disobedience,
charges under public order and terrorism legislation where the conscience function of the
jury is most clearly engaged. Fix the system. Keep the right.

A full cost comparison spreadsheet is submitted alongside this evidence.
I am willing to provide oral evidence if the Committee wishes to hear from me.

Cost category Volume per year Unit cost (£) Annual cost (£)
TOTAL SYSTEM CONTEXT: HMCTS
operating budget (all courts & tribunals
combined)
System-wide
(not a waste figure) n/a £2,744,000,000
TOTAL SYSTEM CONTEXT: Criminal
legal aid annual spend (all stages)
System-wide
(not a waste figure) n/a £873,000,000
TOTAL SYSTEM CONTEXT: Crown
Court criminal legal aid (estimated
share)
~120,000 Crown
Court cases/yr n/a £654,750,000
Magistrates relay hearings: cases plainly
going to Crown Court
(indictable-only + high-value either-way)
~70,000/yr
(est. based on
~120,000 Crown
Court receipts minus
those decided at
Magistrates)
£1,150
(mid-estimate) £80,500,000
Crown Court Plea & Trial Preparation
Hearings (PTPH)
(one per case, case management only, no
evidence heard)
~120,000/yr
(one per Crown Court
receipt)
£3,750
(mid-estimate) £450,000,000
Ineffective Crown Court trials (adjourned on
the day,
main cause: prisoner transport failure)
~24,000/yr
(23% of ~107,000
listed trials)
£8,000
(full day, all parties
assembled)
£192,000,000
£55,500,000
ESTIMATED AVOIDABLE WASTE IN
CURRENT SYSTEM (relay hearings +
PTPH + ineffective trials + transport)
£778,000,000
B. WHAT REAL PROCESS REFORM
WOULD SAVE (DENMARK / ESTONIA /
NORWAY MODEL)
Reform measure
Cases / hearings
affected Saving per case (£) Annual saving (£)
Abolish Magistrates relay hearing for cases
going to Crown Court
(replaced by paper routing on day of
charge)
~70,000 hearings/yr £1,150 (court + legal
aid) £80,500,000
Replace Crown Court Plea & Trial
Preparation Hearings with written / digital
case management
(as in Denmark, Norway, Estonia)
~120,000 hearings/yr £2,500–£5,000
(using £3,750 mid) £450,000,000
Fix prisoner transport contracts
(eliminate avoidable ineffective trials)
~20,000 ineffective
trials/yr
(50% avoidable via
transport fix)
£8,000 each £160,000,000
Introduce digital case file system
(Estonia model: eliminate paper filing,
reduce admin hearings)
All ~120,000 Crown
Court cases/yr
£500–£1,000
(admin saving per
case)
£75,000,000
Extend court sitting hours to full available
day
(courts currently under-utilised)
110,000 sitting days/yr
funded
£1,850 extra value
per extended day £55,000,000
Notes
Full saving: court time, judicial time, prosecution representation,
defence preparation. Denmark does this already. Zero new
legislation required if done administratively.
Full court sitting replaced by written exchange. Parties submit
documents electronically. Dates agreed without physical
attendance. Norway legislated this permanently in 2022.
Conservative assumption: fixing transport contracts eliminates
50% of ineffective trials. CBA evidence Feb 2026. No
legislation required – contract management.
Estonia doubled caseload with same judges after 2005
digitalisation. Running court budget ~50 euros/person/yr vs
England & Wales ~£200+/person/yr. Conservative saving
modelled at £500-£1,000 per Crown Court case in admin/staff
time.
Courts routinely finish early. Opposition amendment at 2nd
Reading called for this. Increasing average sitting by 30 minutes
across Crown Court would yield equiv of ~15,000 extra sitting
days/yr. No legislation needed.
23% ineffective trial rate (MoJ Criminal Court Statistics Q3
2025). Cost = full Crown Court sitting day plus all party
preparation already incurred.
Wasted sitting days from late prisoner transport
(cases part-heard or significantly delayed)
CBA evidence Feb 2026: Leicester Crown Court defendant not
expected until 17:00 for 09:45 hearing. No contractual penalty to
transport provider.
TOTAL OF THE FOUR AVOIDABLE WASTE ROWS ABOVE
ONLY (rows 10-13).
This does NOT include the context budget figures in rows 6-
8.
It represents spending on: relay hearings + pretrial
hearings + ineffective trials + transport waste.
CONTEXT ONLY – the full criminal legal aid budget. Crown
Court work = ~75% of this. Shown for scale. Not added into the
waste total below.
CONTEXT ONLY – estimated 75% of criminal legal aid. A large
share of this funds hearings that should not exist. Not added into
the waste total below.
▼ AVOIDABLE WASTE WITHIN THE SYSTEM – the four rows below are the specific wasteful costs this spreadsheet identifies. The red TOTAL below adds ONLY
these four rows.
Cost per hearing: court building, judge/magistrate, clerk, usher,
prosecution representation, administration. Law Society
£2,692/day (2018) uplifted to £3,450 by 2025-26 CPI. Half-day
average = £1,150-£1,750.
Full sitting, judge + clerk + usher + prosecution barrister (legal
aid) + defence. Crown Court sitting day cost ~£3,400-£4,000
(HMCTS budget / 110,000 sitting days). Typical PTPH = 1
morning.
Courts & Tribunals Bill 2026 – Where the Real Savings Are: A Reform-Based Model
All volume figures from MoJ Criminal Court Statistics Quarterly 2024-25 and Justice Data. Cost per hearing from Law Society analysis of HMCTS accounts (inflation-adjusted to
2025-26). Legal aid rates from Legal Aid Agency published fee schemes 2024-25. All savings are annual estimates. Conservative (low) and realistic (mid) estimates shown.
A. THE CURRENT SYSTEM – WHAT IT COSTS THE TAXPAYER EVERY YEAR
Notes / Source
CONTEXT ONLY – this is the full HMCTS budget for ALL courts
(criminal, civil, family, tribunals). It is shown for scale only. The
avoidable waste rows below are a subset of this total.

£64,000,000
TOTAL ESTIMATED ANNUAL SAVING
FROM PROCESS REFORM
(conservative model)
£884,500,000C. WHAT THE GOVERNMENT'S BILL
ACTUALLY SAVES (AND COSTS) – FOR
COMPARISON
Bill measure Cases affected Claimed saving Independent
estimate
Remove right to elect jury trial for either-
way offences
~50,000 cases/yr
moved from Crown
Court to magistrates
16,000 Crown Court
sitting days saved/yr
(~£55m)
1-2% of Crown Court
time
(IfG: ~£27m-£54m)
Net saving much
lower due to new
burdens
Increase magistrates sentencing powers to
18-24 months
~8,000 cases kept at
magistrates/yr
8,000 Crown Court
sitting days saved/yr
(~£27m)
Modest but partially
valid
– this measure has
been done before
(2021)
Judge-only trials for 'complex' cases (fraud
etc)
~200 cases/yr
(very small cohort)
200 sitting days
saved/yr
(~£700k)
Broadly accepted as
marginal
(CBA Nutshell Guide)
TOTAL CLAIMED BY GOVERNMENT N/A
£55m + £27m +
£0.7m
= ~£83m gross saving
IfG estimate:
£27m–£54m gross
before new costs
deducted
D. HEAD-TO-HEAD: THE BILL vs REAL
REFORM
Metric Current system Government's Bill Real process reform
Estimated annual saving to taxpayer Baseline: £0
£27m–£54m gross
(MINUS £9m+ running
costs
= ~£18m–£45m net)
£884,500,000
Implementation cost N/A £123m one-off
(govt estimate)
Comparable
investment
but with proven ROI
(Estonia model)
Crown Court backlog (80,000+ cases) Growing: +25% since
July 2024
Minimal impact:
1–2% reduction
= ~800–1,600 cases
Significant: eliminating
relay hearings +
PTPH frees capacity
immediately
Waiting time for rape victims (423 day
average) 423 days ~1 week faster
Potentially months
faster
with direct routing +
digital case
management
Jury trial retained? Yes – 100%
No – ~50% of current
jury cases lose this
right
Yes – 100%
All reforms retain jury
trial
Magna Carta right (Clause 39, 1215) Protected
Removed for ~50,000
cases/yr without
mandate
Protected in full
Risk of wrongful conviction
(appeal overturn rate)
Baseline: 40% of
Magistrates
convictions
overturned on appeal.
47% of Magistrates
sentences overturned
on appeal.
(MoJ Criminal Courts
Statistics 2024-25)
HIGH RISK
INCREASED:
Bill removes
automatic right of
appeal.
~50,000 extra cases
routed to Magistrates.
At 40% overturn rate
= ~20,000 potential
wrongful
convictions/yr with no
automatic remedy.
LOW RISK:
Crown Court jury
acquittal rate higher
than Magistrates.
Process reform keeps
existing appeal rights
intact.
No change to wrongful
conviction exposure.
The Bill's own supporters admit the time saving is negligible
Only one option preserves democratic right
800 years of protection removed without consultation
The Bill suppresses the appeal data that exposes Magistrates
error rates, then removes the automatic right to appeal. These
two moves together significantly increase wrongful conviction
risk for the ~50,000 cases affected.
New costs created
New 'likely sentence assessment' hearing required per case
before trial = new uncosted hearings.
Judges must write conviction/acquittal reasons = hours per case.
Magistrates courts not resourced to absorb 50,000 extra
complex cases.
40% of Magistrates convictions overturned on appeal.
47% of Magistrates sentences overturned.
Bill removes automatic appeal right.
Opposition to this measure from legal profession.
Risk of judicial politicisation.
PLUS:
£123m implementation cost (govt's own figure)
£9m/yr added legal aid costs (govt's own figure)
£17m/yr probation costs (govt's own figure)
£1m/yr prison costs (govt's own figure)
What gets fixed?
Process reform saves 10–20x more than the Bill
Estonia's digital transformation paid for itself within years
Only process reform addresses the actual bottleneck
Late prosecution disclosure is a leading cause of adjourned
trials. MoJ Criminal Court Statistics 2023-24. Making this a hard
pre-condition for listing would eliminate the hearings entirely.
This saving is achieved WITHOUT removing jury trial,
WITHOUT new legislation for most measures, and
WITHOUT the £123m implementation cost the Bill requires.
Mandatory prosecution disclosure before listing
(eliminate adjournments from late disclosure)

Legal profession commercial interest
reduced?
No – every hearing =
income
No – relay hearings
and PTPH unchanged
New hearings added
Yes – unnecessary
hearings eliminated
Less income from
procedural waste
This is why the profession won't propose it
BOTTOM LINE: Process reform (direct routing + digital case management + prisoner transport fix) saves an estimated £880m+ annually in avoidable waste, preserves
jury trial in full, costs far less to implement than the Bill, and is already proven to work in Denmark, Norway and Estonia. The government's Bill saves ~£18m–£45m
net annually, removes nine hundred years of democratic right, costs £123m to implement, does not address the causes of delay at all, increases wrongful conviction
risk for ~50,000 cases per year, and removes jury trial from exactly the cases — protest, civil disobedience, public order and terrorism charges where the conscience
function of the jury matters most.
Protest, civil disobedience
and conscience cases

Hearing or step in your case Your cost (£) Taxpayer cost (£) Should this exist?
Magistrates Court relay hearing
(purpose: confirm case goes to Crown Court) £800
Est. £800 – £1,500
(court, judge, clerk,
usher, prosecution,
building)
NO. Should be a paper routing
decision made on day of charge.
Denmark does this.
6-week wait between Magistrates and Crown
Court listing
Cost of uncertainty, time
off work, anxiety
Administrative re-listing
cost + 6 weeks added to
backlog
NO. Direct routing eliminates this
delay entirely.
Crown Court Plea & Trial Preparation
Hearing
(purpose: agree dates and case
management)
£1,200
Est. £2,500 – £5,000
(judge, clerk, usher,
both barristers, building,
legal aid)
NO. Should be written and digital.
Norway has legislated this as
standard.
Further case management / mention
hearings
(before trial date is reached)
Further legal fees at
each stage
£1,200 each one
Est. £1,500 – £3,000
per hearing
MOSTLY NO. Most can be
handled in writing.
The trial itself £60K
Est. £15,000 –
£60,000+
depending on length
(all parties, jury, judge,
building)
YES. This is what the entire
system exists for.
Your Case: Estimated Cost to You and to the Taxpayer
Costs to you are your actual figures where known. Taxpayer costs are estimates based on HMCTS published budgets and Law
Society court cost analysis (inflation-adjusted to 2025-26). Figures exclude CPS prosecution costs which would add further.

KEY POINTThe government has not modelled the cost of the unnecessary pretrial hearings that every either-way
defendant in England and Wales must attend. With approximately 70,000 to 120,000 cases per year going through
Magistrates relay hearings and Crown Court PTPHs, the avoidable taxpayer cost is conservatively estimated at over £500
million per year. None of this is in the government's impact assessment. None of it is addressed by the Bill. Every
penny of it could be saved through process reform, without removing a single democratic right.