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7.20 pm
Mr. David Heath (Somerton and Frome): The debate has been proceeding in a measured and meticulous way, as is appropriate for such an important subject as the administration of justice in this country.
The situation is bizarre. The Bill is presented by the Lord Chancellor's Department, but if the newspapers are to be believed we will not have a Lord Chancellor's Department by the end of the week. The excellent Select Committee on the Lord Chancellor's Department, chaired by my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith), will either have to re-create itself after just one report or find itself a new title.
I say in parenthesis that we have long supported the idea of a ministry of justice with a Secretary of State responsible to this House. If that is the genuine reforming deal advanced by the Prime Minister, to which the hon. Member for Wirral, West (Stephen Hesford) referred, it will be warmly welcomed by Liberal Democrats, but who can tell whether that is the case?
Mr. Beith: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way at such an early stage. Although I fully share his enthusiasm that we should have a ministry of justice, does he recognise that getting rid of the Lord Chancellor's Department raises important constitutional issues that require a fair measure of consultation which might not be possible in the time scale between now and Thursday?
Mr. Heath: My right hon. Friend is right. All sorts of disentanglements will have to be made. One can only hope that whoever is responsible for the work of the important Lord Chancellor's Department has the opportunity to consult widely not only on the practicalities of establishing a ministry of justice, but on the constitutional position that is bound up with that of the Lord Chancellor in his magnificence and the various roles that he performs in the judiciary, the legislature and the Executive. However, I must not prolong the debate by discussing a hypothetical situation other than to say that it will be an interesting development, if anything comes of it. We look forward with anticipation to future announcements.
There is a great deal in the Bill that we welcome. It deals with necessary reforms to the judicial system. It is equally fair to say, however, that large parts of it gave cause for concern when it was first published. Those concerns were expressed widely by political parties in another place and outside Parliament among the ranks of the magistrates themselves, who after all are directly in the firing line of many of the reforms, and those who are involved in the court process. It is to the Government's credit that they have been persuaded—sometimes by dint of losing votes in another place; at other times, by acceding to persuasion—to improve the Bill substantially. For that reason, I advise my right hon. and hon. Friends not to oppose the Bill. However, we want further improvements and there must be no backsliding on the improvements already made because they are critical.
As I raised in an intervention on the Minister, one of the key issues is the accessibility of the justice system. We all want economy and efficiency in any publicly funded system, but efficiency can be defined in a number of ways. If the concept of efficiency is defined in such a way as to make courts more remote from the community that they serve, less accessible and with greater barriers to involvement, that is not a definition of efficiency to which I can subscribe. I suspect that many people feel the same way.
In recent months, a succession of hon. Members on both sides of the House have expressed their concerns about what is happening to the fabric of the court system in their specific areas. For far too long, the process of court closures—particularly, but not exclusively, in rural areas—has made the process of justice more remote from the communities that it serves. That is worrying for many reasons. It has an effect on the participants, because the defendants, victims, witnesses and the police and other agencies that have to attend the courts have to go further, which sometimes causes great personal difficulties. In addition, it has a corrosive effect on the confidence in the judicial system itself because it is allied to the withdrawal of other parts of the judicial and criminal system. People, especially in rural areas, often say, "We don't see our policemen any more. You've closed the local magistrates courts. To whom do we turn for the administration of justice?" They increasingly feel cut off from the process.
Locality is important for the provision of an effective and efficient court service.
Mr. Kidney: I agree with everything that the hon. Gentleman says, but does he accept that it is also important that court facilities are suitable to meet the demands of modern times? Does he also agree that accessibility involves other issues, such as more use of recorded evidence, video links and, crucially, public transport links to wherever the court is located?
Mr. Heath: I do not in any way disagree with the hon. Gentleman. However, proximity is a factor. If courts are too far away, people lose confidence because they find it increasingly difficult to access the system irrespective of how good the facilities are that have been provided.
Gareth Thomas: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Heath: I have not finished responding to the previous intervention, but I shall give way.
Gareth Thomas: Is not the hon. Gentleman in danger of ruining his basic point? We are all in favour of local justice, but surely he accepts that other factors are at play, as has been said. One simply cannot have a magistrates court in every provincial rural market town in England and Wales. It is not possible. Any responsible Government have to accept the need to manage resources properly.
Mr. Heath: It is interesting that that is an impossibility because it has been managed for centuries. We used to have a presumption of local justice administered by local people to local people. That is not an outdated concept. It is simply a matter of how resources are applied to achieve that objective. I had hoped that the hon. Gentleman was going to make a more constructive point. The problem that I raise has been encountered by hon. Members on both sides of the House. The hon. Member for Thurrock (Andrew Mackinlay) intervened on the Minister to welcome the fact that the court in his constituency, which was about to be closed, had been reprieved. I also welcome that. The Minister has shown some signs of turning around Government policy of recent years. A similar situation exists in Kingston upon Thames and there are other
instances, too. Perhaps the message has got across at long last that the issue is important. The fact remains, however, that it is not enshrined in the Bill.I agree with the evidence given to the Select Committee by Professor Bridges of the university of Warwick, who said that alongside the basic duty in clause 1 to maintain an efficient and effective system of courts, we should add the words "and accessible". I shall certainly press for their inclusion. That stipulation would apply not just to magistrates courts, but to the Supreme Court and the county court. Every level of justice must be accessible, not in the sense of the same proximity in geographical terms, but in terms of people being able to access the judicial system that they require.
David Taylor: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that one of the pieces of evidence that shows the increasing inaccessibility of the shrinking magistrates court network is that, because local newspapers are much less likely to go to a town that is 15, 20 or 25 miles away, the coverage of the offences in question is that much more limited and so has less of an impact on criminality and the behaviour of people who believe that they can get away with it in every sense, their neighbours being unaware of the fact that they have been convicted of crimes?
Mr. Heath: The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point, which I know stems from his own experience. There are all sorts of factors. For instance, the availability of defence solicitors who are prepared to take on criminal work is reducing all the time, and one factor in their deciding to withdraw from criminal work is that they increasingly have to go to a remote magistrates court where the proceedings are often short and they lose half a day in their practice as a result. This is a key issue, which we shall not let drop in Committee, on which we need a great deal more clarity of policy than we have had hitherto.
One of the problems has been that up to now there has always been a fogginess about who set the policy. Ministers say, "It's nothing to do with us, Guv. It's the magistrates courts committees that close the courts, unless we choose to reprieve them on appeal," and the magistrates courts committees say, "It's nothing to do with us. We are working within a budget and parameters set by the Lord Chancellor's Department and we have no choice other than to close local courts." I know for a fact that there are many courts whose closure plans are in abeyance awaiting the outcome of the Bill. Their magistrates courts committees do not want to close courts within their area, but know that they will have to unless the responsibility is moved somewhere else, in which case they can say that it is up to the Minister or the courts boards to do what they think is necessary. We need a clear policy that locality proximity is important in the administration of magistrates courts.
Reference has already been made to the lack of inclusion of the family division in this unified process. We have to make the best and most effective use of the buildings that we have. Very often, co-location is an important part of the equation of maintaining a local judicial and magistrates presence in a smaller town. That needs to be addressed.
The second issue is exactly what the courts boards will do. To what degree will they have any role beyond the consultative, if they are to have any at all? How many will there be? We have heard the figure of 42, which is the same as the number of police authorities. I can see the argument for coterminosity between police, judicial and prosecution authorities, and so on. I am all for clarity in this issue, which enables proper accountability, but the Minister will understand that the geographical scope of police authorities is hugely different. We have some small county forces and some enormous joint forces. The Avon and Somerset constabulary is towards the upper end and Thames Valley, Greater Manchester and the West Midlands police cover large areas where the degree of local accountability will be very different. If we are moving to better local accountability in terms of police, built on a basic command unit, will the legislation have the scope and flexibility to enable the court systems also to move towards that new coterminosity that deals with a smaller unit that relates to the location in which people live and work? That again is something that we need to address.
My third point concerns access denied by the fee structure. That has already been exemplified by the hon. Member for Stone and others. We know, largely because the Law Society has been fighting an effective battle on the issue, that that was a policy introduced by stealth by the previous Administration, which has little basis in a reasoned view of what ought to happen within our civil court system. Surely, the resolution of disputes by legal means is a public good, and something that we should want to happen. We should not create barriers that may produce less access in future.
- "full cost recovery is wrong in principle, requires levels of fees that limit access to justice and is limiting court resources to such an extent that the inefficiency of the courts is undermining the Woolf reforms."
- "the greatest threat to service provision is that fee increases may generate a vicious circle by dissuading potential litigants from using the courts, with the resultant reduced volume necessitating greater fee increases and more court closures."
If those extra costs are to be loaded on to litigants, we will increasingly have a barrier to effective justice. We have a vicious circle whereby the fewer people who can access justice by this means, the greater are the costs that are loaded on those who do, which means that we end up with justice for the rich but not for the poor, and that cannot be right in our civil legal system.
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