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Mr. Heath: I beg to move amendment No. 8, in page 14, line 14, after 'courts', insert
'(including family proceedings courts and youth courts)'.
Madam Deputy Speaker: With this it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments: No. 6, in page 14, line 33, after 'place', insert
'in the local justice area'.
No. 7, in page 14, line 33, at end insert—
'(e) a place where specific facilities are available which are necessary in the interests of justice'.
Mr. Heath: These amendments are in my name, but I am grateful to the hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Mr. Hawkins) and his hon. Friends for attaching their names to them.
We return to the issue of accessibility. The clause is headed, "Places, dates and times of sittings", and that might be considered to be at the crux of whether a court is likely to be accessible to the people who use it. Amendment No. 8 expressly extends the clause's remit to include family proceedings and youth courts, and amendment No. 6 would amend clause 30(5)(d) by inserting the words
- "in the local justice area",
- "a place where specific facilities are available which are necessary in the interests of justice".
The proposals would have put an end to the present system for family courts across most of London, particularly south London, and they would have concentrated proceedings in three specialist family centres. Those family centres were to be situated in central and north London.
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There is an argument for having specialist family court centres. I understand that argument and I do not intend to ridicule it in any way. The real fear that was expressed by Lady Woolf, as well as by other chairmen of family proceedings Benches and a great many other people across London, was that the consequence of the proposal would be that some of the most vulnerable people to be dealt with by the court system at the most vulnerable time of their lives would be placed in the almost impossible situation of having to travel across London to attend a specialist family centre, rather than having access to family proceedings courts in their own locality.
That proposal quite properly set a lot of alarm bells ringing. We often deal with children at risk, with battered wives, and with people in all manner of appalling circumstances. These people are probably the least able to afford to travel long distances, and the least able to do so in physical terms if they have young children in tow, because that is often what the family proceedings courts are about. Yet they are the people who are being asked to travel from the extremities of the metropolis—down in south-west London, over in Hillingdon, or down in Bexley, for example—to central London to be dealt with by a specialist centre. That is not a sensible suggestion, and it is unlikely to command the agreement of the people of London. Indeed, I have spoken to my hon. Friend the Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) about this, and he entirely concurs with my views in this respect. He has more experience than most from his own constituency of the difficulties involved.
I know that these plans have now been rethought in the face of the opposition that was expressed in the consultation exercise. I do not, therefore, want to prolong this argument, because I know that we shall be seeing different proposals that will take account of the underlying principles of the scheme and of the realities of life in London and the needs of the customers.
This matter seems, however, to underline the principle that the Government have accepted the Lords amendment, to which I shall draw attention when we talk later about matters of accessibility. Clause 30(2) states:
- "In exercising his powers under subsection (1), the Lord Chancellor shall have regard to the need to ensure that court-houses are accessible to persons resident in each local justice area."
Amendment No. 6 is equally important, and we had a debate on this issue in Committee. The hon. Member for Surrey Heath and I held very similar views on it. There is only one way in which I can interpret clause 30(5)(d). Subsection (5) identifies the places where courts are to be held. The first is
- "a place in the local justice area in which the offence is alleged to have been committed".
- "a place in the local justice area in which the person charged with the offence resides".
- "a place in the local justice area in which the witnesses, or the majority of the witnesses, reside".
- "a place where other cases raising similar issues are being dealt with."
In replying to the debate on this matter in Committee, the Minister laid a red herring across the trail. He said that specific facilities might be required for a particular type of case which might not be available in the local justice area, and that it might therefore be better to hear the case elsewhere. I have made allowance for that eventuality in amendment No. 7, which adds a new paragraph to deal specifically with that issue. I accept that, on very rare occasions, facilities such as video transmission systems might be needed, for example, or some other specific facility that is not available in the local courthouse.
The mischief that we are trying to remedy by tabling amendment No. 6 is the batch-processing of cases. It alarms the magistracy and many others that the Government might deem it convenient, efficient and effective to deal with many hundreds of cases of the same kind in one magistrates court in one central
location—however inconvenient that might be for the defendant, the witnesses and everyone else involved—because that would enable the swift prosecution and resolution of those cases. We already see this happening to a certain extent with traffic offences.The provision in the Bill would allow for an escalation of batch-processing. That is undesirable in all sorts of ways. It is undesirable in terms of accessibility to justice, as I have already suggested, and in terms of the convenience of those involved in the case. It is also undesirable in terms of the interests of justice. When a batch-processing system deals with a great number of similar cases, it is unlikely that the same care and consideration will be given to each individual case, because the similarities of the cases will disguise the differences between them and the individual circumstances of each person before the bench. Lastly, it is undesirable from the point of view of members of the bench. It is unsatisfactory for a magistrate to deal with one kind of case, day in and day out, in that kind of process. Nor is it satisfactory for the remaining members of the bench, who would effectively have had a whole category of offences taken out of their jurisdiction by this process, to be left with the remnants.
The facility in the clause to allow batch-processing must be rigorously resisted. A combination of amendments Nos. 6 and 7 would answer the case that the Minister put in Committee, restore the basic premise that justice should be locally administered in the local justice area—as stated in the remainder of clause 30(5)—and ensure that the Bill was a better one.
My proposals contain two basic premises: the first deals with family and youth courts; the second deals with batch-processing. It is very important that we receive a satisfactory response from the Minister tonight.
Mr. Hawkins: Once again, our perspective is similar to that of the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath). As he rightly said, we raised these matters in Committee. Batch-processing provoked an interesting discussion on 1 July this year, at columns 104 onwards. It was noteworthy that Back Benchers on both sides of the Committee were worried. My hon. Friend the Member for Henley (Mr. Johnson) raised the problem of making journalists aware of when cases were being heard. It is not satisfactory for press coverage if cases relating to one area are dealt with in courts miles away. The Labour Back Bencher, the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Mr. Miller), raised his concerns about batch-processing and gave the example of a constituent who was denied the chance of mitigation.
I am especially aware of the problem because some of the courts in which I practised, such as Northampton, have used batch-processing for fixed-penalty notices for the whole country. As the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome said, it can be an efficient system for the purposes of administrative convenience of the state, but that is not a good reason to allow it to happen.
I also share the hon. Gentleman's concern about family proceedings and youth courts. Although, as he rightly says, some of the issues raised by Lady Woolf
have been taken on board so that some of the problems with family proceedings in the London area have been reconsidered, it is fair to say that because there was a threat to introduce the system that worried Lady Woolf and many others, including those who wrote to me, the fear exists that that mentality will continue to operate. Although we have beaten off that risk this time and forced further consultation, it does not mean that those who prefer administrative convenience to the interests of justice will not be tempted to return to the same batch-processing mentality. As the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome said, there is only one way in which the qualifying phrase in clause 30(5)(d) can be read. It is all about administrative convenience.The House will realise that we have added our names to amendments Nos. 6 and 8 but not to amendment No. 7. That is not because we do not understand what the hon. Gentleman is trying to do, but because we are a bit worried that he is being too generous to the Government by giving them a way to reintroduce their red herring. I thought it better to stick simply to amendments Nos. 6 and 8. There is a judgment call to be made on whether we should give the Government any flexibility by introducing amendment No. 7.
I hope that even at this late stage the Government will be more flexible and recognise that we have a serious concern, which hon. Members on both sides of the Committee recognised. The concern is widely shared by senior magistrates, such as Lady Woolf and others. I hope that the Minister is prepared to accept that the amendments will not damage the Bill but will simply introduce extra safeguards.
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