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Family Mediation
33. Mr. Gareth R. Thomas (Harrow, West): What steps have been taken to increase funding for mediation in family-related matters. [118159]
The Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department (Jane Kennedy): The Government are committed to encouraging the greater use of family mediation. The provision of public funding for family mediation will be fully implemented throughout England and Wales by the latter part of this year. That will provide a significant source of income for many mediation services. In 1999-2000, approximately £5 million was spent by the Legal Services Commission on publicly funded mediation.
Mr. Thomas: Is my hon. Friend aware that magistrates courts in Middlesex--my area--have just withdrawn from
a scheme providing mediation in disputes with children? I understand that that is not an isolated example. Will my hon. Friend assure the House that she and her Department have a strategy to tackle that problem?
Jane Kennedy: I certainly hope to reassure the House on that point. Mediation services receive funding under the partnership arrangements that allow probation services to spend a proportion of their budgets in conjunction with voluntary organisations that are working to achieve similar objectives. The Middlesex probation service has reviewed its partnership funding arrangements to ensure that such funding is directed to those projects that contribute most to the service's objectives. Obviously, when those reviews take place, there are occasionally changes in the funding.
Miss Anne McIntosh (Vale of York): When the law is clear that it is for the parties to a marriage to bear the responsibility for saving that marriage, and when no children are involved in a divorce, why should public money be used for a mediation service to retrieve what is, in essence, a private relationship between two individuals?
Jane Kennedy: The Government support the institution of marriage and believe that it is the best way for children to be raised. However, on the specifics of the question that the hon. Lady asks, very often mediation is funded through charities and we fund a national family mediation service through public funds. Local mediation services are not funded by central Government funding, but the fact that we fund the national service relieves the local services of some of those central costs.
Judges (Complaints)
34. Dr. Vincent Cable (Twickenham): What criteria the Lord Chancellor adopts in choosing to investigate complaints from members of the public against judges. [118160]
The Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department (Mr. David Lock): The Lord Chancellor can investigate complaints about the personal conduct of judges. He cannot consider complaints about judicial decisions. As a general rule he will investigate any complaint that a member of the judiciary has behaved in a way that falls short of the standards that both he and the public expect. This can include allegations of inappropriate behaviour, conflict of interest or rudeness.
Dr. Cable: Is there not scope for a fully independent and transparent system of complaints to deal with cases such as that of my constituent Mr. Darbar, who spent several years in jail for a crime that he did not commit because of a mistake made by a judge--subsequently picked up in the Court of Appeal but for which no redress was possible. Another constituent, a Mrs. Hood, lost her pension because of a confusion over dates on the part of a judge in an industrial tribunal--again, with no redress forthcoming. If doctors can be struck off following complaints, why cannot judges be subject to the same discipline?
Mr. Lock: I hear what the hon. Member says. The Lord Chancellor does consider complaints against judges
extremely seriously, but it is important to keep this matter in perspective. Last year, there were about 412 complaints relating to the personal conduct of judges, arising from approximately 250,000 sitting days, so the allegation that judges routinely make mistakes must be seen in the context that most of our judges are extremely hard-working, dedicated and professional servants of the public.
Angela Smith (Basildon): Although I accept the Minister's comments, does he not accept that if there were truly independent evaluation and monitoring of judges, it would lead to greater transparency and far greater public confidence? When I raised the subject with my hon. Friend previously and suggested that he introduce Ofjudge, he said that was a novel idea. May I suggest to him that all good ideas start off by being novel? Will he reconsider?
Mr. Lock: I am always willing to listen to my hon. Friend's interesting, and perhaps novel, suggestions, but the independence of the judiciary from the Executive is a fundamental principle of our constitution and should be upheld, and any suggestion that the Executive should have a role in monitoring what judges do and the way that they do it would have to be very carefully considered to ensure that it did not infringe that very important principle of judicial independence.
Mr. Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Cotswold): There is a suspicion among my constituents that the inflexibility of judges' working hours leads to the postponement of an unnecessary number of cases to another day, involving increased numbers of witnesses having to travel extra days to attend court. Has the spokesman of the Lord Chancellor had any complaints in that respect? If not, will he examine that problem?
Mr. Lock: I am always willing to accept complaints concerning specific instances where such a postponement has happened. The Lord Chancellor has made it entirely clear that the courts, like other public bodies, are there to serve the interests of the consumer, not to support the institution or to work in a way that is convenient for the professionals working in the system. It is essential that the consumers--the parties to the dispute and, very importantly, the witnesses--have the services that they are entitled to expect.
I invite the hon. Gentleman to write to me or my right hon. and learned Friend the Lord Chancellor if he knows of any specific instances concerning unnecessary adjournments. I will ensure that they are properly investigated.
Community Legal Service
35. Mr. Eric Martlew (Carlisle): What steps have been taken at a local level to distribute information on the community legal service in England and Wales. [118161]
The Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department (Mr. David Lock): The Lord Chancellor, my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Jane Kennedy) and I have attended local launches and seminars across the country to promote the community legal service and we have issued two CLS newsletters.
After the local elections in May, cards giving information about the CLS will be delivered to every household in a partnership area in England and Wales. That will be supported by advertising campaigns in the local media.
Mr. Martlew: I thank my hon. Friend for that reply, and I also thank him for recently visiting my constituency to talk and to see the actions of Cumbria county council. I understand that it was a very worthwhile visit, especially the video conference with the rural areas. Is my hon. Friend sure that his Department is making the best use of information technology to get the message of this new service across to the public?
Mr. Lock: I am very pleased that my hon. Friend asked that question. Since I went to Cumbria and saw the impressive work undertaken by the community legal service partnership there, including the innovative use of information technology, my right hon. and learned Friend the Lord Chancellor has also launched a community legal service, including the legal information advice website known as "Just Ask". This will provide valuable legal information and advice online to millions of people. I am pleased to be able to tell my hon. Friend that over 70,000 people have visited the website so far.
HOUSE OF COMMONS
The President of the Council was asked--
Westminster Hall
45. Mr. Owen Paterson (North Shropshire): If she will make a statement on the cost to date of the Westminster Hall experiment. [118171]
The President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mrs. Margaret Beckett): It is not possible to give a precise estimate of the cost of Westminster Hall itself, because it is housed in a refurbished Grand Committee Room, and that refurbishment would have been done in any event. Similarly, some £71,000 was spent on professional fees, and that would have been incurred in any refurbishment. But my understanding is that expenditure of some £30,000 was incurred in furnishing the Grand Committee Room additionally for the experiment, and that the running costs are some £13,000 a month.
Mr. Paterson: I think that that is a waste of money. I have attended debates in Westminster Hall which have been so poorly attended that there has been no atmosphere whatever, mainly because of the format. My main memories are of tourists in buses passing behind the Minister's head and bemused schoolchildren going out of the squeaky door. Could we not return to the familiar, traditional format of Committee Room 14, which would house all the Members who wished to attend the debates, a format that works and encourages rigorous debate?
Mrs. Beckett: The "traditional format" of Committee Room 14 has been used for a great many Committees. This is a separate feature. I remind the hon. Gentleman that we have found the opportunity for some 200 extra debates over a year as a result of the Westminster Hall
operations. If the hon. Gentleman wants to say that value for money should be judged in terms of using time in debate, or indeed the number of hon. Members who attend, he is setting rather a dangerous precedent.
Mr. Peter L. Pike (Burnley): Is it not very unfortunate that Conservative Members seem very widely to feel that the Westminster Hall experiment is a waste of time? Surely, as my right hon. Friend said, it cannot be judged by the money costs? Surely the important thing to judge it by is the way it gives many hon. Members on both sides of the House the opportunity to take part in debates on a far better basis than if we were simply to restrict debates to this Chamber.
Mrs. Beckett: I have noticed that since the Westminster Hall experiment commenced we now have the opportunity to debate about four times as many Select Committee reports as in the past, which in theory is supposed to be to the advantage of the Opposition. Moreover, because our capacity to hold Adjournment debates has increased, the demand for such debates has doubled. Indeed, many Opposition Members, including some who did not vote for the Westminster Hall experiment, make use of it in that way.
Mr. Paul Tyler (North Cornwall): May I endorse the last comment of the President of the Council? I have attended a number of debates in Westminster Hall--including debates initiated by Conservative Members--which have been excellent. May I draw the right hon. Lady's attention to the original recommendations of the Modernisation Committee in relation particularly to value for money in what we are doing in Westminster Hall, and remind her that the Law Commission said that it was desperate to have more opportunities for non-controversial legislation, tidying-up legislation, to be taken in a forum that would allow debate where a Division was not required? Has the right hon. Lady had any discussion with colleagues or with the other parties to see whether we could use this badly needed improvement to take some of our legislation in Westminster Hall?
Mrs. Beckett: I have not done so since the experiment began, although I am willing to do it as we review its working. One reason for not having done so is that, as the hon. Gentleman may recall, anxiety was expressed in some parts of the House--perfectly reasonably, I thought--that the Westminster Hall experiment would simply be another way for the Government to get through more legislation. So I gave an absolute assurance that the Government would not seek to use Westminster Hall as such a forum, certainly not during the experimental period. Obviously, we would look at that again only if the House so desired.
I accept, however, that the experiment drew on experience in Australia that provides for some uncontroversial legislation to be discussed in such a forum. Perhaps, over time, the House may want that to happen here, because we are talking not about legislation for which the Government might in some other way find time, but about legislation for which the Government--to put it frankly--never find time. I add a caveat, however. Sadly, what the Law Commission thinks is uncontroversial is not always uncontroversial to everyone else.
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