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Mr. Hogg: Does the right hon. Gentleman recognise as a weakness in the Bill the fact that the regulations may prescribe conduct that shall not be deemed to be misconduct, but not what is to be defined as misconduct?
Mr. Beith: That could be construed as a weakness. I took it to mean that, once enacted, the regulations would enable the power to be exercised, but delimit it in certain ways. I am not sure why the provision was included, because I am not sure what sorts of conduct the Government did not want to give rise to the possibility of third party costs. The right hon. and learned Gentleman asks a fair question, which should be cleared up before this part of the Bill is enacted. We cannot understand the scope of the power unless the regulations are before us.
Finally, I want to follow up a general point that was raised by several hon. Members—and by me in an earlier intervention. If, by the end of the week, it is not the Lord Chancellor's Department that is carrying out the powers in the Bill, but a new Ministry of Justice, a highly significant reform will have taken place. I am personally quite sympathetic to it, but that will be neither adequate nor credible without other consequential reforms to our judicial and courts system. Simply designating an hon. Member of this House as the Minister of Justice and allowing him or her to discharge the powers previously accorded to the Lord Chancellor would not resolve important questions such as who should make judicial appointments. Indeed, even more questions might arise about a member of the Executive making judicial appointments if he or she was a Member of the House of Commons, rather than of the House of Lords. Some might think that such a person would be an even more political figure than the Lord Chancellor. That would be difficult to claim for the present Lord Chancellor, but the contrast could be drawn with some previous Lord Chancellors, who had little contact with the political world before taking on the post.
It is important for the working of all aspects of the judicial system, including the Bill, that any reform is genuine and thoroughgoing. Members of the Select Committee are certainly conscious of the anxieties of members of the judiciary about the important relationship—necessarily somewhat distant—between themselves and Parliament. Some hon. Members have made suggestions about how that relationship should operate. When the Home Secretary goes to the Police Federation conference and makes a speech that is clearly designed to ingratiate him with his audience, saying that we want judges who will help the police to do their job, he might be seen to be placing a heavy emphasis on how much credibility judges should attach to police evidence as opposed to the evidence of other witnesses in a case.
Understandably, such comments cause concern among the judiciary that the relationship may become unbalanced. I counsel the Government that reforms of many aspects of the judicial system must have regard to that balance, and a quick decision about who should have what ministerial job on a Thursday afternoon is no way to resolve the major constitutional issues that my Committee has sought to consider.
Mr. Heath: Does my right hon. Friend agree that if we are to have a Ministry of Justice—this is a hypothetical question—it is important that it derive part of its powers from the present powers not only of the Lord Chancellor but of the Home Secretary to remove his propensity to interfere in matters of justice that he is ill equipped to consider?
Mr. Beith: I agree with my hon. Friend, although I do not wish to personalise the argument. I have criticised the Home Secretary, but there is a more general reason why powers that currently reside in the Home Office could usefully be grouped into a new Ministry of Justice, alongside many of the functions prescribed in the Bill. It is a difficult process and we have become aware of some of the anxieties felt by members of the judiciary about its implications. Indeed, we may at some stage report on aspects of it. My suspicion is that aspects of the issue would resound for some time for precisely the reason that I have given—that one cannot resolve the issues simply by announcing a list of new ministerial offices and duties. It might be unwise to claim too much for a mere reallocation of duties when major reform has much wider constitutional implications.
8.58 pm
Mr. David Kidney (Stafford): Like my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral, West (Stephen Hesford), I agree that the provisions of the Bill complement the provisions of other measures, including the Criminal Justice Bill, which is also passing through Parliament. I agree that it necessary to consider the two together, because that demonstrates the Government's commitment to a thoroughgoing reform of the legal system—and rightly so. There is a legitimate public interest in a system that dispenses justice to a quality that is widely respected around the world, and that must remain undiminished. However, we must also address the serious faults in the present system.
The faults include excessive delay, inconsistent outcomes and the difficulty in some areas of addressing the legitimate needs of law-abiding users of our courts, other than those accused of crimes. The accused are, of course, innocent until proven guilty, but I have in mind witnesses, including police officers, and victims of crime, who do not always receive the consideration from the system that they are entitled to expect.
I come to the debate as someone who, before becoming a Member of Parliament, was a solicitor for 20 years and had everyday experience of magistrates courts, county courts and Crown courts. However, I speak as a non-practising solicitor, determined to represent my constituents and my constituency, not as a
hack lawyer with faint memories of how things used to be. To that end, before this debate and before debates on the Criminal Justice Bill, I embarked on a round of meetings with magistrates, magistrates courts staff, the police, the Crown Prosecution Service, the probation service and voluntary sector groups. I did not meet anybody from Victim Support, but it gave me written briefings, which I read. For brevity, I want to address the Bill by concentrating on just two issues: first, the unified system for the management of courts; and, secondly, the collection of fines.I am wholly in favour of a unified system to manage all our courts. Such a system would not only manage our resources more effectively and efficiently; it would also enable us to let more people than those who are busy running the courts have a say in how the courts system should be managed.
I look forward to courts boards that are broadly representative of their communities. I look forward to their taking the—apparently narrow—brief in the Bill, running with it and making a success of their involvement in the courts system. I want them to oversee the development of courts that are genuinely accessible to their communities. As other Members have already said, accessibility includes the physical nature of the buildings; for example, disabled members of the community must be able to get into them. Accessibility means proper facilities for prosecution and defence witnesses or the witnesses on both sides of a case. It involves allowing people privacy for consultation with their lawyers. It involves adequate security so that people are safe while they are on the premises. Those are all as much aspects of accessibility as the distance that must be travelled to reach the court.
I look forward to the new courts boards contributing to the effective management of courts in their area so that there is genuine accessibility and so that we tackle other faults.
David Taylor: I am listening carefully to my hon. Friend. Does he agree that many of the 42 existing magistrates courts committees will have taken exactly the line that he describes in reviewing the courts under their care and control? What will the new courts boards add to the process?
Mr. Kidney: I shall deal directly with my hon. Friend's question in a moment when I talk about court closures, but his comments bring me to a point that I would have made later. I believe that we cannot praise magistrates courts often enough for their sterling work in the delivery of justice. The same goes for the staff who work in the magistrates courts and in the magistrates courts system. I am happy to say that.
I was about to say that I would expect courts boards to reduce unnecessary delays in the management of courts in their area—for example, where too many cases are waiting to be heard at one court and other courts in the district are under-utilised. We can balance court use in order to reduce delays.
That relates to court closures, so I shall now deal with my hon. Friend's point directly. I hope that, when an overview is taken of all the court assets in a district, the courts board can manage them in such a way as to avoid
unnecessary closures of magistrates courts. In Staffordshire, my area, some hit-and-miss discussions have been held between the Court Service and the magistrates courts committee to consider whether there can be shared use of magistrates courts and county courts to avoid the complete closure of courts in one system or the other. In the past, however, that process has by no means been formal, nor has it been adopted in every case. Unification of the system would give us better and more regular opportunities to do that. That is my answer to my hon. Friend's question.The enforcement of fines is probably a much bigger and more important issue than some Members have recognised so far. Let us reflect on the fact that the proportion of the monetary value of fines imposed that has been collected has consistently fallen in the past decade. At the same time, the option of using fines as the sentence of disposal by courts has similarly fallen, and it is very likely that the former is the cause of the latter trend.
It is extremely important that we satisfy the public and the sentencers that where fines are the correct choice of sentence they will be collected and paid by offenders. Otherwise, sentencers will look for other sentences. We have seen a rapid rise in our prison population, which suggests that sentences of imprisonment are sometimes imposed because fines do not seem credible to the sentencers. It is essential for humanity and the correct choice of sentence that we satisfy the courts and the public that fines will be paid when they are imposed.
Hon. Members may remember the reports in the national press last autumn about the poor performance of some courts in collecting fines. When I met the staff of my local magistrates court to discuss their performance in collecting fines, they said that there was a noticeable drop in the payment of fines on the back of that public reporting, again showing the sensitivity of everyone outside the court system to the effectiveness of collecting fines.
When I spoke to those at my local courts in mid-Staffordshire about collecting fines, they told me that their collection rate is much better than the national average—68 per cent. compared with 58 per cent.—but they are not happy with that performance and want to do better. They already employ enforcement officers, who try to manage the outstanding case load of fine payments. They have taken measures to attract people back into engaging with them when they are not paying their fines. They have already introduced advice sessions for people who want to pay their fines but are having difficulty doing so.
My local court staff raised issues about the exchange of information and the speed at which other agencies co-operate with them. For example, if they want to deduct money from people's benefits, they experience a four-week delay in getting a response from the Department for Work and Pensions, but at least they say that they experience good information sharing with that Department and that they get fair co-operation from the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, whereas they get no co-operation from the tax authorities.
That was why I asked my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary about the law on gaining information from other agencies for the purposes of enforcing the payment of fines. If I understood my hon.
Friend correctly, she said that she would write to me to set out the position, and I then hope to make use of that information in relation to my local magistrates courts.
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