Jack Straw is blaming magistrates for clogging up the Crown Court by sending thousands of trivial cases that they could deal with themselves.

The Justice Secretary said that in 2007 about 59,000 defendants were sentenced in the Crown Court for offences that could have been handled by magistrates.

In many of those cases the defendant had elected trial by jury, he said, leaving magistrates no option. An estimated 20,000 cases, though, had been sent by magistrates when they could have been tried in their own courts.

Mr Straw, addressing the annual meeting of the Magistrates’ Association, said that he understood that they took a cautious approach and “the upper end of the prosecution’s view” of a case.

Figures showed that in 2006 80 per cent of fines for offences of theft in the Crown Court were for less than £200 and 59 per cent were for less than £50, he said. “Some of those cases may have merited the attention of a Crown Court judge because of the prevalence of reputation. But at the same time the levels of fines suggest that some could have been dealt with just as effectively by magistrates.”

It was worth asking, Mr Straw said, whether the offence was “so serious that a Crown Court trial is necessary. Or would it be better — for victim, witness, defendant and public confidence — to dispose of the case more quickly in the magistrates’ court?”

If magistrates found at the end of a trial that their sentencing powers were not sufficient, then they could always refer the case, he said.

In a riposte to Mr Straw, magistrates said that their powers to jail offenders should be doubled from 6 to 12 months, saving tens of millions in court costs.

John Thornhill, chairman of the 30,000-strong Magistrates’ Association, said that the move would save about £25 million in trial waiting times and a further £40 million in trial costs.

He told 400 magistrates gathered in Birmingham that the legislation to extend their powers to sentence from 6 to 12 months was already on the statute book. If section 154 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 was implemented, then magistrates’ courts could take a large swathe of work from the Crown Court, he said.

A Ministry of Justice spokesman said that there were no current plans to change magistrates’ sentencing powers.

“We believe magistrates have sufficient sentencing powers. In his speech on Saturday, the Justice Secretary encouraged them to use these powers to their full extent on appropriate cases rather than referring them to the Crown Court, which can delay justice for the victim and incur additional costs,” he said.

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