| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Harrogate and Knaresborough
Q12. Mr. Willis: When he intends to visit Harrogate and Knaresborough. [12446]
The Prime Minister: I have no immediate plans to visit the hon. Gentleman's constituency, but I intend to continue to make visits to all regions of the country.
Mr. Willis: I assure the Prime Minister that he would be extremely welcome in Harrogate and Knaresborough. If he visited my constituency, he would discover one of the finest conference and exhibition businesses in the United Kingdom, which is wholly public sector-owned by the local authority. To protect some 5,000 jobs and more than 300 businesses, we need to build a new exhibition hall, but without trading credit approvals--which is the best way to secure finance for such local government development--those jobs cannot be protected. Is the Prime Minister prepared to support greater public sector involvement in new exhibition facilities?
The Prime Minister: I think I would be in some trouble if I just answered yes to that question. The Chancellor is sitting next to me. We will consider the case that has been made very carefully. I know Harrogate very well and the tremendous facilities that are there but, as the hon. Gentleman would expect me to say, any help that is given must be given within the financial constraints under which the Government operate.
Engagements
Q13. Mr. Savidge: As I am the first Scottish Member to ask the Prime Minister a question since the result of our historic referendum, does my right hon. Friend agree that, given the clear and decisive mandate that we received from the people of Scotland, Parliament should proceed as swiftly as possible to establish the Scottish Parliament? [12447]
The Prime Minister: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We were delighted with the result in the Scottish referendum and today the programme of constitutional change is being taken further with details of proposals for London, so that London people can have a proper, strategic authority and an elected mayor to oversee the issues of concern to people in London. It is all part of a process of bringing government closer to the people, ending the era of big government and ensuring that we get a constitution fit for the 21st century.
Q14. Dr. Michael Clark:
Does the Prime Minister recall that, almost exactly five years ago, several Conservative Members went out on a limb to help the coal industry? Is he aware that the coal contracts come up for re-signing in the spring and that if there is not a satisfactory agreement several pits could close? Does he think that many hon. Members on Government Benches will go out on a limb to help the coal industry this time round? [12448]
The Prime Minister:
I pay tribute to the work that the hon. Gentleman has always done in support of the coal industry, although any lectures from the Conservative party on the future of the coal industry are a little rich. Of course we understand the problem that the particular company he refers to faces, but we have to ensure that the prices that are being offered are properly competitive.
3.30 pm
The Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department (Mr. Geoffrey Hoon): With permission, Madam Speaker, I should like to make a statement on the organisation of magistrates courts. My right hon. and noble Friend the Lord Chancellor is making a similar statement in another place.
Magistrates and magistrates courts are critical to our criminal justice system. There are now more than 30,000 lay magistrates, and 90 stipendiary or professional magistrates, divided between the metropolitan stipendiary bench, serving inner London, and the provincial bench, serving the rest of England and Wales. The magistracy deals with about 97 per cent. of criminal offences prosecuted in England and Wales. It also has important family and local licensing jurisdictions. That is why it is vital that they are supported by policies that look to the next century--not back to the 19th century.
Arrangements for the management and funding of magistrates courts were enacted by Parliament in 1949. The previous Government brought forward proposals designed to clarify and improve the accountability of the magistrates courts system, through part IV of the Police and Magistrates' Courts Act 1994. A statutory responsibility was put on local magistrates courts committees, comprising magistrates selected by their colleagues, for the efficient and effective administration of the courts in their areas. It established the role of a justices chief executive as chief administrative officer responsible to each MCC. It also provided new powers for the Lord Chancellor, including one to initiate proposals for amalgamating MCC areas and implementing them where, after consultation, he considers that an amalgamation would be likely to lead to an overall increase in the efficiency of the administration of the courts in the area.
My right hon. and noble Friend the Lord Chancellor is committed to making these arrangements serve modern needs in support of both lay and professional magistrates alike. The hard work and dedication to justice of the lay magistracy is undoubted. We have no plans for a replacement of the lay magistracy with stipendiary magistrates. Our aim is to deploy the resources of the lay and the stipendiary magistracy to best effect.
Our objectives therefore are, first, to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the magistrates courts and, secondly, to reduce delay in the time taken for cases to be taken through those courts, and thereby honour our manifesto commitment. My right hon. and noble Friend's announcement today will help achieve these objectives through improved co-ordination and communication between the different agencies working in the criminal justice system, so as to improve the management of the system as a whole; better distribution and use of the public resources that the Government commit to the magistrates courts as an integral part of the processes for delivering justice; and better and more flexible deployment of professional judicial resources.
The provisions of the 1994 Act have yet to be implemented in a way that achieves significant improvement in the organisation and management of the magistrates courts throughout England and Wales. For too long we have been driving with the brakes on. We need to
create a modern structure, which provides the right local management within a national framework. We will continue to look afresh across the structures, processes and objectives of the criminal justice system. That process is not yet complete and it may produce still more radical options. But there is work that needs to be started now, and much can be achieved using the powers we already have.
There are 96 MCCs in England and Wales. They cover very different geographical areas, in many instances unrelated to the areas covered by other agencies involved in the criminal justice system and serving widely differing numbers of magistrates, staff and court buildings. As Her Majesty's chief inspector of the magistrates courts service states in her annual report for 1996-97, which has today been lodged in the Library:
Such an outcome is likely to lead to an overall increase in efficiency, both for the management of the courts themselves and for the wider criminal justice system. A greater coincidence of boundaries between the agencies should lead to administrative benefits, including the implementation of consistent and coherent policies throughout the area, for example, in fast-tracking particular types of case, which depends on effective co-operation between the various criminal justice agencies.
I have been struck in government by the extent to which delivery of objectives on which everyone is agreed in principle depends on effective co-operation among a large number of different agencies. Immediately after the general election, my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General asked the Director of Public Prosecutions to work out proposals for dividing the CPS into 42 areas to match existing police authority areas. She did so, and those proposals were announced in a written answer on 21 May 1997. Therefore, we have 42 CPS areas, 43 police forces and 96 separate independent administrative units in the magistrates courts system. I am not trying to establish administrative symmetry for its own sake, but I have to ask whether 96 separate administrative units in the magistrates courts are really necessary.
I want to make it plain that this is not about losing local courts. It is about being open-minded about the best way of providing administrative support to them. We are not planning mindlessly to sweep away tradition; we are striving for a justice system at least as good as any in the world. There is much that is good about our current arrangements, not least the involvement of intelligent,
committed volunteers as magistrates. What we want to do is build on the high quality which is already there, to secure the best possible service for the British people.
We are committed to local justice. Many decisions, for example about providing courthouses to match need, will properly remain to be taken at local level, but justice delivered locally is not the same as justice organised locally. In my clear view, local management requires a national framework.
The voluntary amalgamations that have occurred to date have shown the benefits that can be achieved. They include a fresh approach to the organisation of MCCs, with a reduction in the number of sub-committees and the establishment of clear levels of delegation to officers; better strategic planning in relation to the use of magistrates, staff and buildings, with an estate of sufficient size and flexibility to make the task mean something; better performance monitoring and the networking of performance initiatives; access to specialist staff, which the individual committees could not previously have supported; and the ability to review and standardise staffing policies and bring about other administrative efficiencies through rationalisation of functions previously duplicated by staff within the individual committees.
Our policy, therefore, is to promote a reduction in the number of MCC areas, which will involve a greater alignment of the MCC areas with those areas served by the Crown Prosecution Service and by the police. That provides a model and is the starting point for our consideration of MCC areas. My right hon. and noble Friend the Lord Chancellor will issue consultation papers on the amalgamation of MCC areas with a view to being in a position to make an amalgamation order under section 32 of the Justices of the Peace Act 1997 where that is justified.
Our first priority is to consider the position of the metropolitan MCCs, which currently include the largest number of small MCCs. We believe that the greatest scope for the largest efficiency gains lies in pooling their resources. We shall start the necessary consultative process with a view to having new shadow MCCs up and running on 1 April 1998, with a second phase on 1 April 1999.
In the shire counties, there remain some parts of the country where MCC areas do not align with the police and CPS boundaries, and, as appropriate, we shall introduce proposals on those MCCs.
Greater London provides its own problems, substantially because of the effects of the abolition of the Greater London council and successive changes to local government in that area. The Lord Chancellor has yet to receive and consider the interim review of the outer London strategic management body. However, the service cannot afford to wait until 1999 before any consideration is given to the way forward for outer London. We are examining appropriate ways to organise magistrates courts across the huge area of the metropolitan constabulary. If we are to achieve our national objectives for the service in London as a whole, we shall need to propose changes that tie in with those being introduced by the CPS in the area.
We have also been giving careful consideration to a better and more flexible use of the professional judicial resources available in the magistrates courts. Stipendiary magistrates are, by statute, appointed either to London or to a particular commission area: they do not have a national jurisdiction. We shall consult shortly on the desirability of creating a single, unified stipendiary bench that would enhance the efficiency with which stipendiary magistrates could respond to changes in national work load patterns. We shall also consult on whether the role that stipendiary magistrates now fulfil could be more accurately reflected in a change of judicial title: they are, after all, professional judges, and the word "magistrate" is most naturally associated in the public's mind with the lay magistracy.
We have been persuaded by representations from, among others, the Magistrates Association that our policy should be to encourage greater separation within the senior management of the magistrates courts, in particular between their administrative and legal functions. Justices clerks and all those advising magistrates in individual cases need to be able to concentrate on this important function.
Managing a modern magistrates courts service is an administrative function which requires dedicated administrators fully engaged on that task. To improve the status of those who provide legal advice to magistrates, we shall consult on the proposal that, in future, court clerks should be professionally qualified either as a barrister or as a solicitor. If it would help, we are prepared to consider a change of title to recognise their proper role in a modern magistrates courts system.
It is also our policy to ensure that dual appointments, where the same individual is both the justices chief executive and justices clerk with substantive legal responsibilities, will become exceptional. In any event, amalgamations will lead to MCC areas of a sufficient size to support a stand-alone justices chief executive and the appropriate number of justices clerks for the area.
Let me now deal with matters that are consequential to what I have said so far. Today, I lodged in the Library of the House a copy of the magistrates courts service inspectorate's report on the review of the proposal to amalgamate Birmingham, Coventry and Solihull magistrates courts committees. The chief inspector identifies the efficiency gains that could accrue from the rationalisation of the senior management structures in the area. She refers to the potential for new strategic thinking, reduced management overheads, sharing of initiatives, greater staff specialisation and better use of staff generally. She recommends that Ministers should actively pursue a reduction in the number of MCC areas, and that a new national strategy be developed to contribute to the better functioning of the criminal justice system as a whole. She does not recommend that Ministers proceed with the particular compulsory amalgamation of the three MCCs at this time. My right hon. and noble Friend the Lord Chancellor has broadly accepted her conclusions. He does not intend to proceed with the proposal to amalgamate the three MCCs of Birmingham, Coventry and Solihull, as that proposal is not wholly consistent with the strategy that I have outlined so far.
Associated with those changes will be other measures that we shall introduce to improve the national framework. The Department is currently reviewing the grant allocation formula; we intend to introduce a new
formula for 1999-2000, which will be better able to meet needs while recognising performance, and which will distribute the available resources more fairly. We shall introduce a requirement for MCCs in relation to the reports and plans that they are to produce and the performance standards that they are to maintain. Their operations will be supported by new information technology services currently being negotiated with suppliers, which will provide a more effective means of delivering information across the criminal justice system.
"In several of our 1996/97 inspection reports, we concluded that small MCC areas were managing their affairs competently within the grant allocated to them. However, without detracting from their achievement, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the existence of so many small organisational units is not in the best interest of a well-functioning Service nation-wide. In our view, overall improvement will only be achieved through a structure with fewer MCCs which are comparable in terms of workload and resources."
In the Government's view, there need to be fewer, and larger, MCC areas, providing a more consistent basis for the administration and management of the courts, and a much greater alignment with the local government areas served by other agencies in the criminal justice system--for example, the Crown Prosecution Service and police authorities--wherever that is appropriate. That requires a substantial programme of amalgamations of MCC areas.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |