Any credible ‘Plan for Britain’ must include a plan for justice
The Victims' Commissioner for England and Wales has warned that criminal justice reform was largely absent from the Prime Minister's vision for the country, despite mounting pressures across prisons, probation, policing, courts and victim services and growing concerns about public safety.
The warning follows the Prime Minister’s statement to Parliament on Tuesday 1 September setting out his proposed “Plan for Britain”. While the Prime Minister has acknowledged wider pressures across the criminal justice system and committed on Sunday to a ten-year programme of reform, the Commissioner said justice reform was not presented as a central pillar of the Government’s agenda.
Claire Waxman OBE, Victims’ Commissioner for England and Wales, said:
The first responsibility of any Government is to keep its citizens safe. Months into this crisis, I am still seeking assurance that Government has a credible answer to how it will manage more offenders in the community while managing risk, protecting victims, and ensuring agencies have the capacity to act quickly when warning signs emerge.
Senior leaders across prisons, probation, policing, courts, and victim services are all warning of unprecedented pressures. Effective coordination across the justice system has never been more important, yet the National Criminal Justice Board, on which I sit, has not convened once this year. At a time when ministers themselves acknowledge wider pressures across prisons, probation and the courts, that absence of system leadership is hard to understand.
Victims need confidence that there is a strategy, not another short-term intervention. We cannot solve the prison crisis in isolation. Around one in five prisoners are awaiting trial because cases are taking so long to be heard. Unless we tackle the chronic delays in our courts, we will never truly resolve the pressures facing our prisons.
That is why any credible ‘Plan for Britain’ must include a plan for justice. Yet criminal justice reform barely featured in the Prime Minister’s vision for the country to Parliament yesterday. Given the pressures facing prisons, probation, policing, courts and victim services, that is deeply disappointing.
Without meaningful reform across the justice system, we will continue this doom-loop, continually lurching from crisis to crisis, with victims and the public left to shoulder the consequences. Every failure chips away at confidence in a system that too many victims already feel is not working for them.
Speaking on BBC Breakfast on Tuesday morning, Claire Waxman warned that mounting pressures across prisons, probation, policing, courts and victim services had “the hallmarks of a national emergency” and questioned why COBRA had not been convened to coordinate a cross-government response.
Writing in the Daily Mirror over the weekend, the Commissioner pointed to the recent Simon Levy case as an example of the consequences when warning signs are missed, information is not effectively shared, and opportunities to manage risk are lost.
She wrote:
Catastrophic failures in the systems designed to identify risk and protect the public allowed those risks to go unmanaged.
With early release and increased community supervision set to place further pressure on probation, police and the wider criminal justice system, I am gravely concerned that these failures and oversights will not be isolated incidents.
The Commissioner has warned that, as more offenders are managed in the community, pressure on probation, policing and other public protection services will only increase, making effective leadership and coordination across the criminal justice system even more important.
Against that backdrop, the Commissioner has questioned the lack of system-wide leadership through the National Criminal Justice Board, which has not met since December 2025 despite mounting pressures across the justice system.
The National Criminal Justice Board brings together senior leaders from across the criminal justice system. The Victims’ Commissioner is a member of the Board.
The concerns were echoed in the House of Commons on Tuesday, where Liberal Democrat Justice spokesperson Jess Brown-Fuller highlighted the fact that the National Criminal Justice Board has not met this year and asked whether COBRA should be convened to coordinate the response.
In response, the Lord Chancellor acknowledged wider systemic failings and told MPs he wanted to “reinvigorate” the National Criminal Justice Board as a body that takes “real ownership” of reforming the criminal justice system, adding that “our criminal justice system is not delivering”.
The Commissioner has consistently argued that resolving pressures in prisons alone will not solve the wider challenges facing victims and the justice system. Meaningful reform must include tackling the court backlog, improving the experiences of victims waiting for justice, and ensuring that criminal justice reform is given the same strategic priority as other public service reforms.
Around one in five prisoners are currently awaiting trial because cases are taking so long to be heard, placing significant pressure on prison capacity while leaving victims waiting years for justice.
Around a third of the estimated 10,000 foreign national offenders are also held on remand, limiting the numbers that can be deported to free up prison capacity.
Further reading
Claire Waxman, Victims’ Commissioner for England and Wales, said changes in policy have fuelled distress and anxiety ‘raising a burning question: Is anyone truly in control of this crisis?’
Published on September 2, 2026
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