'Rebalance the Scales' Rolls Out Over Two Years
That's why we are making major changes to rebalance the scales of justice and put victims first. This includes rolling out specialist courtrooms for rape and serious sex offences.
Major changes, he says, will rebalance the scales of justice and put victims first. The specialist courtrooms in that sentence roll out over two years.
The Prime Minister said this on 20 September 2026. The Independent printed the line that Sunday night, at 22:30 BST. The verbs are now. Making. Rebalance. Put victims first. Rolling out. It reads like a courtroom that opens in the morning.
The same announcement, on the BBC, puts a clock on the rooms. Specialist courts for rape and other sexual offences will be introduced across England and Wales over the next two years. Each Crown Court will have at least one courtroom set up for those cases. A scale that takes two years is not a scale that tips today.
From next month — October — trials get fixed dates instead of floating lists. That part is nearer. A date on a list is not a new courtroom. A new courtroom, on the BBC's clock, is a two-year job.
The cash is around £23 million from the Ministry of Justice. Both papers use that figure. Twenty-three million is a budget line. It is not a verdict. It is not a waiting room that exists in every building this week.
Look at what the buildings can take. Survivors are to get private entrances and waiting rooms, plus rooms to pre-record evidence and watch sentencing from elsewhere. The BBC adds a catch. Private entrances and waiting rooms depend on the architecture of each building. A plan that depends on the stairs is not a plan that fits every court.
Staff will get trauma-informed training. Each survivor gets one named contact. Those are posts and courses. Posts and courses take time to fill. The quote does not say how many staff, or which court gets the first room.
Charlotte Nichols, a Labour MP, waived anonymity in March. She told the Commons she had waited more than 1,000 days to go to court. The BBC puts the wait at 1,088 days. Her attacker was acquitted at Crown Court. She later won compensation in a civil case. A thousand days is almost three years. Two more years of rollout, stacked on waits like that, is another diary, not a rebalance.
Labour's 2024 manifesto promised to halve violence against women and girls within a decade. A decade is ten years. Specialist rooms over two years sit inside that longer pledge. The quote on 20 September does not mention the decade. It mentions major changes.
The government also said, earlier this year, that rape victims would get specialist legal advice through the criminal process. That was March, on the BBC's timeline. Advice is not a courtroom. A courtroom with one specialist room per Crown Court is still one room in a building that hears many other cases.
Rape Crisis England and Wales called the measures necessary and long overdue. Ciara Bergman, the charity's chief executive, told the BBC this was a significant step forward. Welcome from a charity is not the same as a room that exists. Long overdue is an admission that the wait already happened.
Lord Chancellor Alex Norris said victims have been treated as cases to process and not as people to support. The funding, he said, will deliver courtrooms designed with victim needs in mind. Will deliver. Future tense. The Prime Minister's line is present tense: we are making major changes.
Nick Timothy, the Conservative shadow justice secretary, called tackling delays long overdue. He also asked why the government still wants to restrict jury trials if it can find money to speed rape trials. The Courts and Tribunals Bill would limit jury trials to cases with a likely prison sentence of three years or more. That fight is a separate Bill. It is not a specialist courtroom. Mixing the two in one week does not make them one policy.
Last year the Salford Survivor Project said victims were being failed as court backlogs hit a record. The BBC also told the story of a woman who dropped a sexual assault case because of delays. She reported the alleged attack in early 2022, gave evidence in December 2023, then faced an adjournment to September 2024 when a judge fell ill. She dropped the case. The Crown Prosecution Service said that without her testimony there was not enough evidence. A dropped case is a scale that already tipped. A two-year rollout does not put that case back on the list.
None of this says a private waiting room is a bad room. A fixed trial date can be a better date than a floating list. A named contact can be a kind person. The point is the size of the claim next to the size of the timetable. "Rebalance the scales" sounds like a court that works this week. "Over the next two years" is a works programme.
October's fixed dates are a diary change. Two years of specialist rooms are a building programme. £23 million is a line in a department budget. One room per Crown Court is a floor plan. Architecture that may not allow a private door is a building that stays as it is.
The Independent says every Crown Court in England and Wales will have at least one courtroom especially set up to hear such cases over the next two years. That is the full map. Not a national overnight switch. A room, then another room, then the rest of the list.
The pattern is a present-tense rebalance sold from a two-year works list.
A scale that rolls out over two years is still a waiting list. The wait is the story. The rooms are the later page.
Sources: The Independent, 20 September 2026 + BBC News, 20 September 2026
The Burnham Report — counter-commentary on what the Prime Minister says. Quotes are verbatim. Every claim is checked against a second source before publication.