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Mr. John Bercow (Buckingham): I am working on the assumption that new clause 2 is a probing clause, notwithstanding the legitimate and good intentions that underlie it. On the strength of the Government's track record to date, does the hon. Gentleman fear that the likely response will be for Ministers to profess their support for the principle of the independence of the judiciary in general, while in practice failing to observe it in the particular?
Mr. Heath: In the latter point the hon. Gentleman is right, but in the former he is not. I am deadly serious about having something in statute that at least attempts to preserve the independence of the judiciary. Indeed, his colleagues clearly feel the same way in terms of the new clause that they have tabled to the same effect.
I have my worries, because as soon as we move away from the specific position of Lord Chancellor to dealing with a Secretary of State—as we know, in the way that British law is constituted, Secretaries of State are interchangeable and there is no specific Secretary of State to whom a duty may be applied, other than the Lord Chancellor—the duty will become a general duty, which I think will be largely ignored. This may be imperfect phrasing, but the principle must be right and it must be one on which the House has a clear view. I hope that it will be expressed later this evening.
I am happy to see that my amendment No. 1 also carries the names of Conservative Front Benchers, which is hardly surprising as we made common cause on the issue in Committee and elsewhere. The amendment deals with accessibility, which has been at the core of almost all our debates on the subject. We had sapient advice from the Select Committee on the Lord Chancellor's Department as to what ought to be in the Bill. Indeed, the wording I have chosen is exactly that recommended by the Committee, which I believe it took from evidence it received from Professor Bridges of Warwick university. I think that it is right.
The amendment deals with a general duty of ensuring not only that courts are simply "efficient and effective", as the Bill says, but that they are accessible to the people who need access to them. The words "efficient and effective" are good in themselves, but they can disguise a multitude of sins. As I said in Committee, it would be efficient and effective to have a single court, which would run at a low unit cost. It would not, however, be accessible to most of our constituents and it would not be in the interests of justice.
The Government's response throughout has been to point to clause 30, which deals with the accessibility of courthouses, and the amendment that, with whatever degree of reluctance, they accepted from another place. I shall be clear about this: I accept that that is a major advance. The Government tried desperately to prevent it in the Lords, despite the fact that they are now saying that it is the best thing since sliced bread. They did not want it in the Bill because they know, as I do, that throughout the country courthouses have been closing year after year. I have to say, however, that that happened not only under this Administration but under the previous one.
What is the effect of those courthouses closing? First, people feel more and more remote from the criminal justice system. Secondly, particularly in rural areas such as mine and in small towns throughout the country, they feel that neither the police nor any other aspect of the criminal justice system has any interest in them any more. Furthermore, it will make for extra expense and inconvenience for everybody who has to use the courts—whether that be defendants, witnesses, the probation service, the police service or solicitors, who are finding it increasingly difficult to recruit to local criminal practice—other than those who run them. An additional and perverse effect will be that where police officers are required to escort prisoners they will be taken out for long periods from the local areas where we all want to see them policing. That is unfortunate.
The Government's view is that once courthouses have been dealt with, the whole problem has been dealt with. I disagree, because there is a lot more in the Bill where accessibility ought to underlie the position of the Lord Chancellor and the Department. For instance, it would be possible to maintain a courthouse and not hold a single sitting in it. That would be ludicrous, but we have seen similar things happen on the railways, where services are maintained but not advertised so that they can eventually be closed. It is quite likely, however, that major cases will be consistently moved to more and more distant courthouses. I believe not just that the geographical position of courthouses should be maintained, but that courts should hold convenient and regular sittings. Amendment No. 1 provides for that general duty of accessibility.
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Another point made in Committee—a valid point, I think—was that some courthouses might be accessible in geographical terms but not accessible in terms of structure to some people. My amendment would ensure that what is now the Department for Constitutional Affairs had an interest not just in maintaining the existence of courthouses, but in bringing them to a standard appropriate for the administration of justice, particularly in rural areas. I believe that all Opposition parties support the amendment. I shall listen carefully to the Minister's response, because we may well wish to press the amendment to a Division later.
Amendment No. 55 deals with fee structure and with financial barriers to justice. An extraordinary arrangement introduced not by the current Government but by their predecessor, by stealth, has had insidious effects. Under that arrangement, civil court fees should recover the full costs of the proceedings. That has never been publicly announced as a policy, and the House has never been asked to adjudicate on it. At one stage it was axiomatic that the state met the costs of judicial salaries and court accommodation; fees were not a product of the costs incurred in the administration of justice. I am very concerned about the change, which presages a vicious spiral in costs that will eventually deprive many people of fair process.
I am not alone in that view. My amendment is very similar to one suggested by the Law Society, which rightly takes the matter extremely seriously. It says that the policy of full cost recovery has placed considerable pressure on court fees, which have risen by about 12 per cent. in the past three or four years—about double the rate of inflation. Nor does the arrangement provide enough cash for the courts; the civil courts are still experiencing a great deal of difficulty.
Full cost recovery would be fine if—a big "if"—it were held that the court system in civil cases was there purely for the good of those involved in the proceedings, but I do not believe that to be the case. I believe that there is a common good in providing justice and mediation in such cases. That is the traditional view, held by most English-speaking jurisdictions. This policy is clearly Treasury-led: I cannot believe that any Lord Chancellor initiated it. What can be done to ameliorate it? My amendment provides for two major exceptions.
The first exception relates to judicial salaries. It is nonsensical that we should seek to recover the salary costs of the judiciary through court fees. That is a non sequitur—it is inappropriate and we should finish it. Secondly, there is the notional cost of heritage buildings. It will not have escaped hon. Members' notice that many of our court buildings are rather fine and are often in very expensive parts of the cities that they serve. We have only to look at the Royal Courts of Justice to see the apotheosis of high architecture in the court system. It is an enormously expensive listed building with huge maintenance requirements to keep it in the style in which English Heritage believes that it should be accustomed. Those costs are loaded on to the court fees that are applied. That is ridiculous. The average litigant, if asked to give their opinion on the appropriate venue, would say, "The cheapest hut that you can find, m'lud, because that will reduce my court fees." I do not advocate that because some court buildings are fine buildings that are
well suited to their purpose, but the notional cost of their usage that the Treasury works out should not be recovered from people who are seeking justice. My proposal is a sensible compromise—it is a compromise because I do not believe that there should be any linkage between costs and fees—that would at least take out some of the most unacceptable parts of the calculation of recovery costs.This group of amendments addresses three basic principles: first, judicial independence, because nothing could be more important in constitutional terms; secondly, the physical accessibility of courts, because nothing could be more important to many of our constituents who find themselves deprived of a courthouse within easy reach of where they live; and thirdly, financial accessibility, because it is a fundamental principle that no one should be deprived of justice simply because they cannot afford to go to court to establish the rightness of their claim. I look forward to the Minister's response.
Mr. Nick Hawkins (Surrey Heath): As the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) said, our parties made common cause on several issues in Committee, and we do so again today. As well as commenting on the Liberal Democrat new clauses and amendments, I shall discuss those that we have tabled.
I join the hon. Gentleman in his appropriate tributes to the continuing work of the Lord Chief Justice in standing up for judicial independence. I agree with the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith), who is Chairman of the Select Committee on the Lord Chancellor's Department, that the present Lord Chancellor appears to be not as robust a defender of that crucial principle as was his predecessor. I agree with the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome that there is a gap in the Cabinet in terms of fighting for judicial independence.
The issue goes beyond judicial independence. We are concerned, too, about the independence and impartiality with which the Government will treat the lay magistracy. Our new clause 4 therefore goes a little further than the Liberal Democrat new clause by proposing that the Lord Chancellor and the new Department for Constitutional Affairs should be
- "under a general duty to preserve and maintain the independence, impartiality and integrity of the judiciary and the lay magistracy".
It is strongly felt—not only by us, but by practitioners of many political persuasions and of none—that many more highly qualified people with experience of prosecutions should have been considered for the post of DPP, ahead of the person whom the Government chose. Of course, it subsequently being revealed that the new DPP had a serious criminal conviction for drugs offences—albeit from a long time ago in his youth—was also a matter of grave concern. Sufficient question marks exist for that appointment not to have happened. The possibility that such things might happen in future reinforces the need for the Bill to include a protection for the independence, integrity and impartiality of the judiciary and of the lay magistracy. Of course, we do not disagree with the Liberal Democrats' new clause 2, but our new clause 4 is certainly more far-reaching. I hope that the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome agrees that either new clause would be an improvement on the Government's current drafting—[Interruption.] I am glad to receive his assent to that proposition.
The Government have closed many courthouses—more than 100, according to the answer to my last parliamentary written question on the matter. The Minister will say that courthouses were closing under the previous Government, which is of course true, but that does not justify yet further closures. As the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome rightly said, as a result justice is becoming less local and less accessible. We debated this matter extensively in Committee, but it is worth ensuring that such important points are made again today in this Chamber. Often, commentators and reporters pay far too little attention to what happens in Committee; more notice is taken of what is said on Report and on Third Reading. We have become too used to Ministers trotting out the same tired cliché: that magistrates courts committees are taking decisions on court closures. As we pointed out in Committee, MCCs have been so boxed in by Government guidance that, in effect, such guidance is forcing court closures. That is happening because the Government do not value the local element of justice sufficiently highly.
During the past few years, we have heard at parliamentary questions many examples of the effects of court closures. In a highly publicised case in rural Wales, a defendant had to walk to court because the courthouse in which his case might have been tried many years ago had been closed, and there was no effective public transport. The case came to prominence when the defendant received a more lenient sentence because the court felt that, in the absence of public transport, he had made valiant attempts to get to court, walking some 30 miles. I agree very much with the forceful words of the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome that we must return to the basis of local magistrates, with knowledge of their local area, making judgments on cases.
Our amendments Nos. 48, 49 and 50 are intended to introduce into the Bill a mechanism to ensure that we have local justice again. There should be a magistrates court in every local authority. My local authority has just lost its last one, and it is wrong that a town the size of Camberley—the main town in my constituency—and a local authority the size of Surrey Heath should no longer have a single magistrates court between them.
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