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The Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department (Ms Rosie Winterton): I live there.
Mr. Malins: The Minister says that she lives there, but she does not spend time at Thames court in Bow and Poplar. The truth is that cars are not registered. People who get their cars registered in their name, pay their fines.
This is the absolute clincher. What happens if the defendant removes the clamp from his vehicle? He can be fined!
8.29 pm
Gareth Thomas (Clwyd, West): It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Woking (Mr. Malins). He made an amusing speech and we have benefited from his experience as a recorder. Judging from what he has told us, I certainly would not want to appear before him either as a defendant or a lawyer. He talked a lot of sense, as did my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Dudley, North (Ross Cranston), who gave an account of the chaos in the fines collection system. It is a travesty and a scandal, as the hon. Member for Woking said, that the fines system is something of a voluntary system. Something must be done about it but I do not share his scepticism because I think that the Government have taken on board the fact that there is a need to improve performance.
Performance in different parts of the country varies greatly. The collection rate is 40 per cent. in some, and 80 per cent. in others. If ever there were an illustration of why the system needs to be modernised and reformed, that is one. There are others. That is the principle behind the Bill. It goes a considerable way to modernising our rather ad hoc criminal justice system, which is the product of historical accident and accretion from the time of the Norman kings, Henry I and the Plantagenets.
The system is in need of reform. Magistrates courts committees are an outmoded way of dealing with the need for an efficient and local system of summary justice. The Government are right to take account of the
public interest in ensuring a credible criminal justice system. We will probably have to revisit the subject in a few years but we must surely all agree with the principle behind the Bill, which is to ensure a more effective and efficient system. There is a case for unifying the administration of the various courts, which is the basis of clause 1.The Bill is the product of considerable consultation and deliberation. The Government have been most intelligent in their response to the various arguments. I have had the privilege of appearing before various magistrates courts as a lawyer. Some of them were in pretty awful buildings that were inadequate, inappropriate and insecure. One could not have a private conversation with a client. Local courts need to be in physical proximity to population centres but that must be qualified by the need to ensure appropriate court buildings.
It is sometimes exasperating to appear before a bench of local magistrates. That reminds me of an experience that I had appearing with a colleague at the Bar, who in his exasperation and frustration in being unable to get a point over to the magistrates was driven to say, "Your worships, I always thought that a bench was something thick and immoveable and you are no exception."
Those comments do not apply to our Front-Bench team and I am probably driven to say that they do not apply to those on the Opposition Benches either. A lot of good sense has been spoken in the debate. The Government have made a commitment to maintain the lay magistracy. I would like the Parliamentary Secretary to re-emphasise that commitment in her reply. It is essential that the pluralism of our society is maintained. A healthy civil society must be committed to ensuring that there is a strong connection between criminal justice and local lay representatives but there is a need for a new Executive agency and the Government are to be congratulated on grasping that nettle.
Of course, there is tension between the understandable pressure on central Government to make resources go further and the need to ensure that justice is local. The Government have grappled with that. I am pleased that they moved, as I understand it, an amendment to require local boards to be consulted by the court agency. That is a safeguard. It will ensure that there will be a proper and appropriate local connection when justice is dispensed in magistrates courts—over 90 per cent. of criminal cases are dealt with by magistrates courts—but there is a need to ensure a more efficient central system.
Other measures in the Bill are long overdue. We have heard reference to the chaotic system of fines collection. The power to enact pilot schemes is an effective way of proceeding. There is no monopoly of wisdom on how to do it but we need to deal with the matter. I am sure that the Parliamentary Secretary is well aware that there is a crisis that undermines people's confidence in the credibility of our criminal justice system.
There are clauses dealing with the need to bring about procedural changes, aligning the procedure in the Crown courts with that in the magistrates courts. That is overdue, as are the welcome provisions to improve court security. There is a brave stab at codification of criminal procedure. It comes to something when one hears judges sitting in the court of criminal appeal decrying the over-
complex nature of criminal law and procedure. There is a need for us to look again at that and to codify the procedure.Reference has already been made to the corrosive effect of cheque-book journalism on the outcome of criminal cases. It is welcome that the Bill will allow, in the context of criminal proceedings, third party costs orders, which have been made under civil jurisdiction for some time, to be made in criminal courts. That may put a useful brake upon the abuse of the system carried out by unscrupulous journalists. A number of notable cases have come to grief because of abuse by the press.
In an intervention, I expressed some scepticism about the inflation of court fees and the effect that that is having upon access to justice. It is a characteristic of any state that it provides a peaceful method of resolving disputes. Any reasonable state should subsidise that and ensure that there is a system available to litigate effectively. People should not be unduly excluded from that. I take on board the comments of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Dudley, North (Ross Cranston); ensuring access to justice is difficult and not always possible, but we have to do the best we can, sometimes with limited resources. The power to order periodic payments by way of damages is also welcome.
My impression is that this is a good Bill, which is welcome and extends the Government's programme of reform to an area that is in real need of reform and modernisation.
8.39 pm
Mr. A. J. Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed): It has been a great pleasure to hear so much favourable reference made to the report of the Select Committee on the Lord Chancellor's Department, which it has been my privilege to chair. All three Front-Bench spokesmen referred to it, as did other Members. The hon. Member for Stone (Mr. Cash) was kind enough to describe it as innovative. I like to feel that it was.
We sought to do what a Special Standing Committee can do, which is to hear the witnesses who are participants in the process and might have views that they could not otherwise put to this House. I have always felt that the Special Standing Committee procedure usefully brings together the ability to call in witnesses with the process of going through the Bill in detail. This has been a slightly different process, but we sought to identify between the Lords and Commons stages those issues about which outside bodies were particularly concerned and to draw them to the attention of Members of this House for Second Reading and for the Committee. I hope that those who serve on the Standing Committee will find that helpful and will be able to pursue some of the issues further.
As others have said, the Committee found that there was broad acceptance of the principles, purposes and objectives of the Bill. If I do not say much about that, it is because I take it as read. There was little disagreement that measures of this kind were required. Most of the disagreement was about detail, or about the implications for long-standing practices and assumptions about how the court system works.
The first of the recommendations that I want to highlight relates to an issue that often concerns individual Members: court closures. During our
inquiry, we were aware of fears that the Bill's proposals would make it too easy for the Lord Chancellor to close courts. In practice, local magistrates courts committees have been blaming that on the Lord Chancellor for a long time, saying that the amount of money that they get locally does not allow them to maintain the number of courts or to carry out the improvements that are necessary to make individual courts suitable for modern purposes. By that, I do not mean removing attractive historic furniture but ensuring that witnesses can be treated properly, that children at a children's hearing are looked after properly in the court setting and that proper security protection is available. Those features are necessary and investment is required to bring them about.The combination of general stringency and the need to improve the suitability of courts for various reasons has led to a programme of closures that has gone on for many years—a couple of decades at least, and perhaps longer. No one can say that the Bill has introduced something new if it leads to the closure of courts. People are looking for some assurance that the extent to which the power is centralised will not make it easier to close courts than it is now.
As I envisage it, the Lord Chancellor's Minister—whoever that is following the current reshuffle—will be able to be questioned in Parliament about court closures in a way that is technically not possible now because the Lord Chancellor has an appellate power; the decision, theoretically, is being taken by a different body at the moment. I have some doubt as to whether that will be enough.
That is why the Committee laid great stress on accessibility in all its forms. As my distinguished Committee colleague, the hon. and learned Member for Dudley, North (Ross Cranston) pointed out, accessibility includes the ability to bring a case to court, including the cost factors. It includes the physical lay-out of courts and the ability of disabled people to get into courtrooms, as well as geographical accessibility. We would be pleased as a Committee to see that written into the Bill as one of the general duties of the Lord Chancellor, as well as a requirement that he consult local courts boards about any decisions that he makes about where courts can sit. Most of us know that that issue is very important to local communities. We need some assurance that the Bill will make sure that the views of local communities are more pertinent to the discussions about the future of local courts, and not less.
The Committee highlighted the nature of courts administration councils, or as they are now called—following an amendment in the Lords—courts boards. Participants in the structure had fundamentally conflicting views about how they would operate, and how they should operate. Some participants thought that they ought to be executive bodies; others thought that under no circumstances should they be executive bodies. Some participants, including Ministers, hinted that they might in some respects be executive bodies and make management decisions; others thought that that certainly would not happen. There were disagreements about both the principle and the facts. That is a recipe for chaos and confusion, as we pointed out.
During her introduction some four hours ago, the Minister sought to convince us that there is a middle way—a slightly worrying term—between these two extreme positions: some ground on which one can stand, whereby local communities feel that they are actually taking the decisions, even though they do not have the executive power to do so. I remain to be convinced of that, as the Committee undoubtedly will. I am not dismissive of the Minister's good faith, but there is normally a clear distinction between a decision that one can take, and a decision that one is asked about by someone who may, or may not, take notice of one's views. There are questions about the relative influence that they attach to one's views, but this remains a fundamental disagreement that is at the heart of the Bill. The House must get some clarity on it before this process is over.
We made the point about maintaining the coterminosity of courts boards' areas with criminal justice areas. That is not because they are perfect; as my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) noted, they are very different. However, the amalgamation of magistrates courts committees that has led us to this point, and which was supposed to be for the purpose of ensuring that all of these bodies could co-operate with each other, has been such a painful process that it would seem crazy now to go further and start carrying out more amalgamations, thereby leading to courts boards' areas actually being bigger than the criminal justice areas. Indeed, that was the point of our recommendation. If the argument that the areas should be the same had the weight that the Government attach to it—that was why they forced the amalgamation of MCCs—we should now have some stability. As long as the police areas remain as they are and bodies such as the Crown Prosecution Service work to them, courts boards' areas should remain as they are. There is indeed a case for some subdivision, but the Select Committee said that we should not go beyond coterminosity, to the point where there are fewer courts boards' areas than police authority and criminal justice areas.
We expressed some of the concerns that had been expressed to us about the independence of justices' clerks and their special relationship with magistrates—I am not sure that that has been finally resolved—and we also asked some questions about fines officers. That has been the subject of a very interesting debate, which included a contribution from the hon. Member for Woking (Mr. Malins), who sits as a recorder in south London and gave us an insight into life in the south London courts. The Committee had a genuine anxiety about how the problem of people on very low incomes would be dealt with, and whether the powers now being considered would address that category of fine defaulters. Again, that is a matter to be explored.
We also referred to court security. We were struck by some of the evidence that we received from members of the judiciary at all levels about the anxieties that they now have, given some of the incidents that have taken place. I was struck by the extent to which they rely on the presence in court buildings of police officers who are there for other purposes. That is a bonus, if one likes, but on several occasions incidents have either been prevented or brought to an end by police officers who were present because they were appearing as witnesses in a different case, or attending another courtroom in the
same building for a different purpose. That underlines the fact that the current system of security officers does not meet all the needs of court security. We must be satisfied that it can meet those needs, and that court security officers are appropriately accountable.On court fees, an issue that several hon. Members have raised, we strongly recommend that the House accept the Lords amendment that requires the Lord Chancellor to have regard to the need to facilitate access to justice when setting fees. We were worried about the concept of full cost recovery, which has apparently become a part of the system by no reasoned process; rather, it has simply become the practice. Our report made reference to one witness, who said that that the concept of full cost recovery
- "fails to recognise that the courts have a public as well as a private role."
- "judicial process serves important public functions by clarifying and developing the law and setting precedents for litigants to settle their cases or run their affairs, which is of wider benefit."
I have often heard Ministers refer to the process of judicial review as one of the ways in which legislation is interpreted and developed, with the implication that it is desirable for some matters to come up for judicial review. If it is a public good, it may not be appropriate to expect the body of litigants generally to meet the whole cost of doing so in all cases. There is a public good element to the courts system, which should be recognised in the funding. There is mounting evidence that the court system—and full accessibility to it—cannot properly be maintained if full cost recovery is made into an inflexible principle in setting court fees.
The final issue raised by the Select Committee that I want to address now is third-party costs. We examined it carefully and were generally sympathetic to what the Government are trying to achieve. Recent examples, some since the Government introduced their proposals, have tended to underline the need to do something about cases in which various sorts of conduct, including cheque-book journalism, lead to their destruction because a fair trial can no longer be secured. That can lead to people who are guilty not facing trial or the possibility of conviction and imprisonment, or to cases being mounted on a basis that should never have been allowed. Other sorts of misconduct can cause further expenses.
In media cases, an important balance has to be struck between the freedom of the press and the freedom of the individual, particularly an individual's right to a fair trial. We do not believe—and the Select Committee did not believe—that that balance in any way precludes the inclusion of a third party cost power, but the balance of liberties is so important that the House should have a clearer idea of what is involved before we legislate it into existence. That is why I emphasise the Select Committee's point that the Standing Committee considering the Bill should be able to consider the draft regulations that relate to it.
The Parliamentary Secretary was uncharacteristically confused on that point: she is not someone whom I ever associate with confusion on her brief, but there is no
doubt about it and she later corrected what she said. I hope that she has my attention on that point, even if the Leader of the House is attempting to influence her on some other matter. As I said, she was unusually and uncharacteristically confused, later correcting herself, in respect of whether the regulations and the guidance were necessary or important. We were talking specifically about the regulations, without which the powers cannot be brought into existence.
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