The UK courts service spent £50.6 million last year on temporary agency and contract staff, more than ten times as much since 2010 when it spent less than £4 million, according to figures obtained by Richard Burgon, the Shadow Secretary of State for Justice and Shadow Lord Chancellor, and published in the The Guardian.  

The cost of temporary staff has increased over a period when the Ministry of Justice (‘MoJ’) has faced cuts and closed more than 220 courts across England and Wales. The MoJ has also revealed that a further eight courts have been earmarked for sale.

The figures showed that part of the increase in agency cost appears to be linked to a £1 billion court modernisation programme aimed at transferring more court hearings online or operating them through remote video-links.

“As we increase the use of digital services, it makes sense to consider the wider role and need for court buildings and assess whether some are still necessary to provide effective access to justice,” MP Lucy Frazer said. “Every penny raised will be put back into funding changes which will make justice easier to access for all at the same time as offering protections for the most vulnerable.”

In a tweet, Burgon addressed the figures, stating, “Yet more evidence of the costly failure of the Conservatives' obsession with outsourcing, privatisation and the use of agency work.”

“Given that the MoJ is facing the deepest budget cuts of any government department, spending tens of millions of pounds more on agency staff is a false economy and a reckless use of resources,” Burgon told the Guardian. “A huge amount of staffing expertise and experience has been lost by axing thousands of courts staff and this simply cannot be replaced by becoming increasingly reliant on agency staff. As the Carillion case shows, it is time that the MoJ ended its reliance on outsourcing, privatisation and the use of agency work.”

The number of HM Courts and Tribunal Service agency and contract staff in the period between 2011 and 2017 increased from 270 to 2,005, according to figures published by the HM Courts and Tribunal Service. In 2016, the figure stood at 1,193. The MoJ stated the expansion was due to the reform programme and a strategy to “maintain appropriate levels of workforce flexibility”.