The panel is expected to champion English law globally
UK deputy prime minister David Lammy is set to announce the establishment of a new English law panel and court expansion plans in his first justice secretary speech, reported the Law Society Gazette.
The panel is expected to champion English law across the globe, building on the UK’s status as the second-biggest legal services provider in the world per the Gazette. The legal services sector contains 1.6 percent of the region’s workforce (~526,000 people), and its economic contribution reaches £57.8 billion each year.
In his speech at the 2025 Labour party conference, Lammy will also share plans to expand problem-solving courts in the criminal justice system in line with reoffending reduction efforts, the Gazette reported. These plans will begin with a new women’s intensive supervision court to be based in Liverpool, the city hosting the conference.
Moreover, Lammy will touch on the justice system’s current state, including prison population and the Crown court backlog. The volume of pending cases has peaked at 78,329 cases in April-June 2025; per the UK Criminal Bar Association, a robbery case heading to London Crown court is not getting a trial until October 2029.
“The numbers are slightly difficult to fathom as we look at a caseload heading north of 80,000 cases. But it comes down to this - a resident in my constituency becomes a victim of crime. They report that crime. They have confidence in the police and CPS…But if their day in court is listed in 2029 or 2030, that old adage ‘justice delayed is justice denied’ is all too real. Justice that is not timely is not fair,” said UK justice minister Sarah Sackman in a statement to the Society of Labour Lawyers that was published by the Gazette.
Sackman told the organization at a fringe event that reducing the court backlog would be a litmus test for the justice ministry and that the government was considering Sir Brian Leveson’s recommendation for more judge-alone trials – a pitch that UK criminal barristers have pushed back against.
“My commitment and the commitment of the Ministry of Justice and this government is that by the end of this parliament, we will have successfully managed to bear down on that backlog,” Sackman said in a statement published by the Gazette.
