We are talking here not about additional judges but about additional advocates-general. As I have argued, the advocates-general play an important role in assisting the judges of the Court in coming to a conclusion and in analysing the legal arguments in question. Clearly, I cannot give a 100% guarantee from this Dispatch Box, but I pray in aid the evidence of Sir Konrad Schiemann and others from the Court who have argued consistently that the provision of additional advocates-general would help them to address the backlog, in part by spreading out the preparatory work of legal
analysis and the provision of a learned opinion amongst a slightly greater number of expert advocates-general than is available to the Court now.
As the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz)—one of my predecessors in this role—will know, the enlargement of the EU over the last decade following the accession of a large number of new member states has inevitably led over time to a greater number of cases being brought, simply because there are more citizens and more businesses that might be in a position to bring a case before the European Courts.