Mr. John Mark Taylorasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will give details of his field trials of time limits in criminal proceedings.
§ Mr. HurdField trials are now beginning in the four areas served by the Crown court centres at Birmingham, Bristol, Maidstone and Southwark. Test limits will apply to cases from 25 November in magistrates' courts and from January in the Crown court. For this stage of the trials, the prosecution has been encouraged to act as if the time limits had statutory force, but the statutory procedures for seeking extensions and the consequences of breaching limits will not apply. The courts will have regard to the limits on the prosecution in arranging their business.
Where the accused is in custody the test limits are 56 days to summary trial, 70 days to committal for trial (or beginning of committal proceedings), and 112 days from committal to arraignment, except at Southwark where this limit will be 182 days. The overall test limits which apply whether the accused is in custody or on bail are 20 weeks to summary trial or committal, and at Birmingham and Bristol 26 weeks from committal to arraignment.
The longer custody limit at Southwark and the lack of overall limits there or at Maidstone reflect current circumstances in the Crown court in London and the south east, where too high a proportion of cases would inevitably overrun limits which were achievable elsewhere. The test limits are intended to be realistic initial targets for improvement on current performance.
We shall study the effects of the test limits over about six months. We have it in mind thereafter to make regulations to apply statutory limits in the trial areas only in order to conduct a more lifelike test before wider implementation.