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Mr. Cash: The hon. Gentleman will acknowledge that many of the amendments were passed at the instigation of the Government and in response to the sensible recommendations of Members on both sides of the other House. If I may say so, the hon. Gentleman is speaking a lot of rot.
Stephen Hesford: The hon. Gentleman says that, but I have carefully followed the process by which the Bill has come before the House. There are several reasons why it has done so, some of which are pertinent to the debate. First, the Bill recognises that things need to be addressed; and, secondly, there is an interest on the street in the process being reformed. Those reasons matter because, as I have said already, this is not a traditional area of Labour policy or an issue that is often looked at or is easy to look at, so I congratulate my hon. Friend the Minister and the Lord Chancellor on introducing the proposals.
We must look at what is being said and—I have touched on this already—at what is being said about what is being said. We also need to look at the proposals. The Bill is timely and, as someone who has served in Committee on two major Bills relating to the reform agenda, I welcome it. Other hon. Members will have served on those Committees—that considering the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, which was broadly opposed by the Opposition, and that dealing with the Criminal Justice Bill, which is going through the other place at the moment. They are major parts of the reform agenda and form part of a whole package of measures. The Home Office is also considering reform of the police agenda. Again, that is all part of modernising the criminal justice system and improving access to justice.
The Lord Chancellor and Government must be taken at face value when they say that they are genuine in their desire for reform. A more difficult issue is whether the reforms go far enough, and I ask my hon. Friend the Minister to view the Bill as just one stage in an ongoing process, not the last word in it. Having said that, for reasons that I have given before, the fact that the agenda is being tackled at all is a radical proposition in itself.
I carefully studied proceedings in the other place, and I formed the impression that the radical nature of the agenda often was not picked up in some of the criticisms that were voiced. The Lord Chancellor and his team deserve our support and merit our congratulations.
I want to take a few moments to trace the history of the Bill, which was a manifesto commitment. Following that commitment, the Lord Chancellor commissioned Sir Robin Auld to conduct a review, which reported in October 2001. A White Paper, "Justice for All", was published in July 2002, and we now have this Bill, which is divided into nine parts.
Part 1, which is welcome, deals with modernising and maintaining the court system. Clause 1 lays a duty on the Lord Chancellor to provide an "efficient and effective system" to run the courts service. As I said to my hon. Friend the Minister in an intervention, the Lord Chancellor will be under a duty to lay a report on how the new system is working before both Houses of Parliament within 18 months of the Bill's enactment, which is a good thing.
Mr. Cash: The hon. Gentleman has made one or two disparaging remarks that have fallen a bit like water of a duck's back. I want to test him. Does he agree with me that the word "accessible" should be included in the duty? After all, we are talking about access to justice. Does he agree with the Government in respect of the omission of that word?
Stephen Hesford: The hon. Gentleman is being picky. According to any reasonable reading of clause 1, the word "accessible" is implicit.
The new executive agency is a sensible departure under the Lord Chancellor's Department. Clauses 1 and 6 replace the Court Service and the 42 magistrates courts committees with a unified court system. That is a welcome departure for the reasons set out in the Auld review. The principle of the new agency will be designed in line with suggestions from the Prime Minister's Office of Public Services Reform, set out in March 2002. The White Paper, "Justice for All", says that it is designed to
- "deliver decentralised management and local accountability within a national framework of standards and strategy direction."
The local boards will ensure that the administration of courts is focused on the needs of court users and the local community more generally. I welcome the focus that has been placed on that point. Indeed, as my hon. Friend the Minister said, local people with local knowledge of the court systems will sit on the boards and provide local input. They will be overseen by a judge.
Clause 2 will allow flexibility in the discharge of duties in that, for the provision of judicial decision makers, functions and duties may be enacted to give more flexibility for judicial office holding.
Part 2 deals with justices of the peace and contains provisions on how justices of the peace, district judges and magistrates should relate to each other. It will give magistrates national jurisdiction for the first time, which is a sensible reform. The Bill will abolish commission areas and petty sessions areas for the reasons set out by my hon. Friend the Minister. There will no longer be a requirement for residence, which the House will welcome because it will create a more flexible system for the appointment of justices. The Bill will create local justice areas, which may be varied by order. Lay justices will be assigned to a local justice area but a new departure will mean that lay justices will be able to sit anywhere in the country—not only on the bench to which they are assigned—provided that administrative arrangements are made with local boards and the Lord Chancellor's Department, which will increase flexibility.
David Taylor (North-West Leicestershire): I am a member of the Magistrates Association. The association welcomes that specific provision, subject to the important proviso that no magistrate should be required to sit on a bench on which he or she does not wish to sit.
Stephen Hesford: I am obliged to my hon. Friend for that intervention because he speaks from experience, which is always welcome in the House, and he raises an important point. My reading of the Bill does not suggest that there will be any form of coercion—my hon. Friend did not use that word but he implied it. There will be flexibility to allow lay justices to be moved around should they want to perform their duties elsewhere or if there is business to be transacted elsewhere. That is not possible at the moment and, indeed, I know that many cases are held up because benches are not available, whether that is because of a shortage or because insufficient benches can be found to take up business. Years ago on our circuit, we were held up by having to wait for stipendiary magistrates to be bussed in to clear the backlog. The new system is designed to address that problem. The hon. Member for Stone talked about access, but the reform is designed entirely to deal with access. If I am wrong about that, I shall allow him to intervene. I notice that the hon. Gentleman has stayed in his seat.
Part 3 deals with changes to magistrates courts. I especially welcome the reform proposed in clause 45, which will give magistrates the same power to issue pre-trial rulings as in higher courts—Crown courts and the High Court. Allowing binding rulings to be issued to bring pre-trial hearings in line with procedures for the Crown court is a timely reform. My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen) mentioned solicitors who take advantage of the system to string cases out simply by trying to secure adjournments for spurious reasons. The reform to allow binding rulings to be issued represents an attempt to tackle that.
Vera Baird: Although I agree with what my hon. Friend says, is it not imperative that the right of appeal
against such binding rulings exists from the outset? In default of that, a trial can only go all the way to its end, after which there may be an appeal if the defendant is convicted. If the ruling was wrong in the first place, the defendant must be retried and the original trial would have been a completely wasted effort.
Stephen Hesford: I defer to my hon. and learned Friend in this sense: things must always be reviewable, but as long as neither side abuses the system the measure will be a valuable addition to the armoury of lay justices and deputy judges.
I welcome clauses 49 and 50, which deal with reform of the family proceedings courts and youth courts. They will abolish the panels and require personal authorisation to be given to sit on those separate courts under rules made by the Lord Chancellor. That will allow for consistent authorisation of a person's fitness to sit on a specific session.
Part 6 deals with judges and will make a simple, yet long overdue and welcome, amendment to the system. Clauses 63 and 64, as my hon. Friend the Minister said, will modernise judicial titles and change the presumption of gender in the Court of Appeal.
Part 7 addresses procedure rules and practice directions and will allow for closer integration among all parts of the criminal justice system—magistrates courts, Crown courts and the Court of Appeal. It will establish a criminal procedure rule committee to allow the Lord Chief Justice, with the concurrence of the Lord Chancellor, to make directions governing practice in criminal courts. A similar system will exist to allow the president of the family division to make directions.
I ask the Parliamentary Secretary to address only one thing in her winding-up speech. There is an attempt throughout the Bill to create a unified system, but there is considerable criminal jurisdiction in the divisional court. Although the divisional court is a hybrid court because it deals with other things, has any thought been given to a form of unification with the criminal jurisdiction exercised by the divisional court, which has great influence on the role and function of magistrates courts?
Part 8 contains miscellaneous provisions. I welcome the provision to allow a single judge of the Court of Appeal to give procedural directions to speed up the work of that court, which was suggested by the Auld review. I welcome the change proposed in clause 98 to allow for periodical payments in personal injury cases. It is an excellent new departure that will benefit many claimants in the civil courts. The measure should allow civil courts to reach decisions on damages more quickly.
In summary, I welcome the measures. I am saddened that the Opposition spokesman did not speak from a point of principle or with any enthusiasm for the measures, which are undoubtedly necessary and overdue. I look forward to sitting on the Standing Committee, if called upon to do so, and hope that the House gives the Bill a Second Reading.
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