Examination of Witnesses (Questions 120-139)
TUESDAY 11 MARCH 2003
MR NICK
SMEDLEY, MR
KEVIN SADLER,
MR MARTIN
JONES AND
MS DEBORA
MATTHEWS
Peter Bottomley
120. There are about 10,000 staff in the magistrates'
courts. No-one has yet given them a clear TUPE assurance of their
rights. Has that happened, or are people trying to duck the issue
of whether their terms and conditions will be no worse than they
are at the moment?
(Ms Matthews) No. TUPE does not apply to this type
of transfer. We have said the spirit of TUPE will be applied to
transfers associated with the creation of the unified administration.
We have been talking to our trade union colleagues about some
of the detail of how that is set out in the Bill, and we continue
to do that, and ministers have said that they are listening to
the concerns that have been raised on behalf of the trade union
side about the way that that is expressed now.
121. If someone put it to you or your people
that there have been two or three ham-fisted attempts to do this,
and the assurance has been spoilt by qualifications and weasel
words, how would you respond to that?
(Ms Matthews) I think we have made a little more progress
than that now.
122. Following Clive Soley's points, it has
been put to me that local Courts Administration Councils are changed
in nature from the original intention of the local management
board. Is that a misreading of the situation, or have ministers
actually changed their minds and said they do not want to have
local management; they do want to have it, as you said, run by
the Lord Chancellor's Department?
(Ms Matthews) I think it is a little bit of both actually.
I think it is ministers responding to the debate that has gone
on since the publication of the White Paper. It is quite interesting,
some of the perceptions of that change, so it is very useful that
you have asked me that question. In the White Paper we described
the involvement of local community court users, magistrates and
judges as a local management board, including a chief officer.
That is how we saw the organisation developing at the time. As
we consulted with some of our major stakeholders, it became apparent
to us, as it did to ministers, that what we really needed to do
was to give the non-professional, the non-court manager people
on that board some kind of independent status, which is how the
concept of the Courts Administration Council, with backing in
primary legislation and with its own independent access and right
to be heard by ministers was developed, so that they actually
had teeth and power of their own, acting independently of the
chief officer. It was almost splitting the concept of a local
management board into two, giving the external members of the
local management board independent teeth, and actually expecting
that in normal circumstances the type of partnership working that
we hope to establish between Courts Administration Councils and
the local chief officers will effectively be that local management
board that we envisaged in the White Paper. There was a recognition
that we needed to give the external members teeth, and that is
how the concept arose.
123. The final area I wanted to raise is this.
The courts and the probation service went through, some would
say change, others would call it significant disruption, a couple
of years ago to go to common boundaries with local authority areas
and police authority boundaries as well. Is there any assurance
that the number of areas for the courts will remain at the 42
figure so that you maintain this coterminosity?
(Ms Matthews) Yes. Ministers have said in Parliament
that the 42 criminal justice areas will be a basic building block
of the new organisation, and that we will retain coterminosity
of those areas. One of the aspects of the discussion groups is
to work out precisely what the geographical organisation of the
new agency should be, and we are looking with our major stakeholders
at whether areas ought to be amalgamated, whether we ought to
stay at the 42, or whether we ought to have 42 but with some sort
of support service or regional tier. We are working that through
with our customers and our stakeholders, but there is a basic
assurance that 42 will be a building block.
124. You do not feel a need to try to make them
coterminous with the civil courts?
(Ms Matthews) The new unified administration will
include civil courts and family courts, so county courts, crown
courts and magistrates' courts will all be part of the same organisation.
That is why it is not quite so straightforward to say yes, 42
is the number of areas. For example, we were in Warwick, where
we had a discussion group yesterday. Warwickshire does not have
enough cases to support a dedicated family care judge. The catchment
area for those cases has to be wider than that, and the new organisation
has to be able to cope with that.
Chairman
125. Witnesses who have come before us seem
to me to have different views about whether there was an executive
role for the CACs or not. Why does the Bill not make clear if
they are to have no executive role at all? Indeed, why are they
not called Courts Advisory Councils, if that is what they are?
(Ms Matthews) The reason is to underline and emphasise
the amount of teeth that they will have. This is not going to
be a talking shop, this is not going to be a group whose views
and opinions can be lightly ignored, either by professional court
managers or by the Lord Chancellor. It is quite explicitly stated
in the Bill that they will be non-executive in the technical sense
of the word, so that executive power, accountability for performance
in the courts, there will be a direct line from the courts through
to parliament via the Lord Chancellor. That is clear and unfettered,
and it is not split in two different directions. It is not, if
I can quote you Chairman, a fudge. Those lines of accountability
are clear. But the idea that they are simply advisory and have
no influence in shaping plans for a local area would be untrue,
because that is not the way we see them.
Peter Bottomley
126. Let me make a comparison with the Health
Service. The way the Health Service is run, nobody within the
Health Service, unless they are in a trade union or press association,
makes any criticism. Will a Courts Administration Council be able
to say in public, "The Lord Chancellor's Department is not
giving us enough resources to do our job properly" or will
they be bound not to say that because in effect they are in the
club rather than being able to say this outside?
(Ms Matthews) Yes, they will.
Mr Cunningham
127. Clause 25 gives the Lord Chancellor the
power to direct where magistrates' courts may sit and do their
general business. Will that not lead to court closures?
(Mr Sadler) Ministers have made clear in the White
Paper that this Bill does not look to create court closures. In
fact, one of the advantages of the unified administration that
ministers have pointed to is the fact that it can actually help
us keep courts open and improve what is sometimes called the footprint
of the courts system across the country. There are already some
examples where we have been moving magistrates' courts and county
court business together to enable us to keep courts open in particular
areas. One of the examples is in Berwick-upon-Tweed, where we
have a county court that sits one day a week in the magistrates'
court. It is enabling us to keep courts open in the town. We may
not have two courts open in the town, but we have one court open,
which does both magistrates and county court business.
(Mr Jones) What Clause 25 does effectively is empower
the Lord Chancellor to direct where and when magistrates' courts
are to sit. The primary reason for having that is that at the
moment those are decisions for Magistrates' Courts Committees,
and with the abolition of Magistrates' Courts Committees the power
has to vest in somebody to make decisions and give guidance on
where magistrates' courts are to sit.
128. Does that mean in effect that the Lord
Chancellor will be prepared to answer parliamentary questions
about court closures, instead of passing it somewhere else?
(Mr Sadler) With the current arrangements for magistrates'
courts in particular, the Lord Chancellor has a responsibility
to determine appeals against closures of magistrates' courts,
which means he is confined in what he can say about the original
decision to close the court, because he acts as the appellate
authority in this context. Under the new organisation the Lord
Chancellor will be directly accountable to Parliament for the
network of courts and will be responsible for that. As Debora
said earlier, Courts Administration Councils will clearly have
a view about this, and in fact the statement of principles which
ministers put out before Christmas made it very clear that they
would expect Courts Administration Councils and local management
to work very carefully together on estates strategy and issues
of court closures. So we would still expect a local engagement,
but there is a direct political accountability there that is not
there at the moment.
Chairman: So the answer to Mr Cunningham's
question is yes.
Mr Cunningham
129. What about the changes in the use of court
resources. Would that not affect the parties involved in court
proceedings?
(Mr Sadler) I think I understand you to say that we
will have an ability to change the resourcing of courts in particular
areas and how will that affect people. Deborah may be able to
add something to this, but I think the basic point, which is made
clear in the White Paper, is there is more flexibility across
jurisdictions at a local level through the unified administration,
which means that we are better able to configure our services
at a local level. We would expect that to improve the kind of
engagement we get with court users, and again, one of the ideas
behind the Courts Administration Councils is to improve the accountability
to the wider set of users of courts and to strengthen that accountability
from that which exists at the moment.
(Ms Matthews) One of the strengths of the Court Service
that we want to preserve with the new agency is the ability to
move resources around to meet needs, to help each other out where
we can, without having to move across what at the moment are almost
insurmountable organisational boundaries in the magistrates' courts,
so the Magistrates' Courts Committees, with the best will in the
world, find it actually very difficult to make those kinds of
decisions when they have only responsibility for their own area.
The idea of a collegiate or corporate responsibility for delivery
of justice right across England and Wales is something we want
to carry forward into the new agency. It is one of the good things
about the Court Service that we want to preserve.
Mr Field
130. Inevitably, from our perspective as constituency
members, the issue of court closures is going to be the most important
thing, and you will appreciate there will be lots of questions
going out and they will be of grave concern. Is there not a concern
on your side that, on the one hand, you are talking about trying
to localise justice in various ways through CACs etc, but this
is a very centralising Bill? This is a grave concern that many
of us have, that a lot of what is being dictated will come from
the Department, which will have this template which it will impose
across the whole of the country. Is not the real concern here
that you are going to be faced with a battle quite quickly in
relation to court closures which will either expose the centralising
tendencies or, if a number are reprieved, there will be a sense
in which local groups know that they can undermine many of the
goals of this Bill by a hard-fought localised campaign?
(Ms Matthews) I hope you don't mind if I disagree
with you about the "centralising" aspects of the Bill.
I actually believe exactly the opposite. For the first time ever,
we will be subjecting the county courts and the crown courts to
the type of civic engagement in the administration of the courts,
and actually widening that civic involvement in the administration
of the magistrates' courts, because this will not just be about
magistrates being part of MCCs; it is bringing our judges and
our magistrates, together with community representatives and representatives
of our court user base together to consider some of those things.
I hope that will be clear if we work through, for example, our
estates strategy. First of all, it will enable much more sensible
and community-focused plans about the use of our estates strategy,
because we will have people in there right at the very beginning
at the germination of ideas, and working through the strategy
so that we are not going to put forward ideas that are just plainly
wrong. They will have a chance to comment, test and tease out
all of the aspects of that strategy, not just with their local
chief officer, but right the way through to the highest parts
of the organisation, and to test what the national organisation
might be saying about national priorities and resources. They
will not overcome the fact that money is always tight; we would
always like to have more money and to be able to keep more courts
open than maybe we can, but it should give us a better chance
to make sensible decisions about how our court footprint is rolled
out. I would disagree about centralisation. I hope it will help
us to make more sensible decisions about estates and help us get
that balance between local and national priorities right.
Chairman
131. It is the case, is it not, that there have
been a large number of court closures, a large number of amalgamations
of Magistrates' Courts Committees, both to a large extent centrally
driven under the present system, with limited accountability because
the Lord Chancellor could say on any occasion "This is a
decision that has been taken locally by the Magistrates' Courts
Committees"?
(Mr Sadler) I think ministers would see it slightly
differently. I think there are two points to make here. There
have been some amalgamations of Magistrates' Courts Committees.
We have gone down from over 100 to 42, but we still have a wide
variation in the size of Magistrates' Courts Committees. Warwickshire
I think has 86 staff and Greater London has 1,800, so there is
quite a lot of variation. But each MCC has taken a rather different
approach to the way they rationalise their estates. Some of them
have heavily rationalised their estates; some of them have not.
A lot of them would say that is in response to local circumstances.
They will all say, I am sure, that resources have played a big
part in that, and we will of course have our discussions with
Treasury about the level of resources, but at the moment the Lord
Chancellor cannot instruct or interfere with a decision to close
a court because he has this appellate responsibility, which does
mean that his accountability to Parliament is necessarily limited
by the legislation. The Bill takes that away and makes clearer
the tension between local needs and national constraints, and
ministers have talked about local engagement within a national
framework. I think ministers see this as improving the dialogue
between Parliament, the local community and the managers. The
other point I would just make is that the Court Service, which
is seen by some as a very centralised organisation—I think
the people working within it would see it rather differently—has
a process of consulting with local people about court closures,
and there are a number of examples where court closures have not
gone ahead because of community concerns and issues that have
come up through that consultation process.
Mr Dawson
132. Turning to fines officers, I am interested
in the rationale for the appointment of these people.
(Mr Jones) The fine as such is obviously the most
commonly used sentence in the courts, so the Government is clearly
concerned to ensure that that system is as effective as possible.
Performance in fine enforcement has not been as good as we would
have hoped. The Government has been looking at this issue carefully
over the last year. The Public Accounts Committee looked at this
issue and came up with a whole raft of recommendations as to how
fine enforcement might be improved. The measures contained in
the Bill very much follow the recommendations of the Public Accounts
Committee in terms of providing tools, effectively, for the courts
to improve fine enforcement.
133. What sort of creatures are these fine enforcement
officers going to be? They combine a variety of roles and duties,
and in fact some substantial powers.
(Mr Jones) Exactly. They will be administrative staff
of the court. We already have staff at the moment in the magistrates'
courts enforcing fines, so one question immediately is, are those
exactly the staff we need? Probably in most cases yes. Then we
would need to look at the range of skills that they would need
to have to use these powers. There is certainly a commitment to
the need for further training to look at how they use these new
powers and whether there are additional skills they need to develop
to help out, because essentially they are going to be talking
to people paying their fines and dealing with a range of problems
which they are facing.
134. Are we talking about more staff than are
currently employed in this sort of function?
(Mr Jones) At the moment, there are staff employed
in all magistrates' courts in enforcing fines. The measures in
the Bill will be piloted to test how effective they are and what
precisely we need in place to make this work. In terms of the
number of fines officers we actually need in each court, the pilot
will guide us in terms of how many we do need and how that will
influence effectiveness.
135. Is there any evidence to say that the threat
of increased fines will actually encourage better payment?
(Mr Jones) I think there certainly has been evidence
that the more you can get incentives in place for people to pay,
that is likely to have a positive effect. What the Bill does is
provide for incentives for payment, and sanctions if you do not
pay, and a range of other measures to encourage. The research
that has been done in the past suggests that the courts need a
range of powers. For some offenders I am sure the prospect of
their fine being increased by a certain amount will have an effect;
for others it will not, and they will maybe need to use some of
the other powers contained in the Bill to improve this.
136. How will the pilot system operate?
(Mr Jones) Our expectation is through the powers contained
in the Bill in Schedule 2. This is how we see the scheme might
work. The Lord Chancellor has power to revise that scheme in the
light of experience. The expectation would be that the pilots
would be set up as soon as possible after Royal Assent, and in
a number of areas we would try to test the effectiveness of the
scheme, and in one area maybe testing different parts of the scheme
might be a possibility, but also to see at what level you should
set the increase. The power contained in the Bill is a maximum
of 50%, but is that the right level or should it be 20% or more
or less?
137. There would be a consultative process around
the results of that pilot exercise, would there?
(Mr Jones) Exactly. My expectation would certainly
be that ministers would want to report the results of the pilot
to Parliament, and then to work out, in the light of the report
of the success of the pilot, how to proceed from there.
Mrs Cryer
138. I wanted to ask you about court security.
Apparently Part 4 of the Bill introduces a new court security
regime and a new role, that of court security officers, and this
will apply apparently to all courts, not just magistrates' courts.
These new security officers will be unusual in that they will
exercise as civilians powers which are normally only exercised
by the police. I just wondered what sort of criteria the Government
will apply when appointing these officers, given that they are
likely to be on fairly low pay and quite a lot is going to be
expected of them.
(Mr Jones) The provisions in the Bill are obviously
intended to address the problems there have been with security
in the courts. I am sure members of the Committee are concerned
about that. What the Bill does is provide for this new court security
officer, and the Government has decided to give them powers which
will in our view help combat the problems that have been experienced
in the courts. There have been debates in the House of Lords about
who exactly should be recruited to do this job, and a number of
suggestions have come forward which the Government has noted with
great interest: former police officers, former members of the
forces are the sort of people who might be expected to have the
kinds of abilities that are needed. In terms of what they might
be paid, that needs to be thought about carefully because you
need the right quality of person in post. Generally speaking,
they will need a range of abilities. We do not necessarily just
want a big, burly man on the front door; we need someone with
good communications skills, so they can talk to people about what
they are doing and why they are doing it.
139. Certainly in Bradford Magistrates'Ccourt
you would need people with a touch of Punjabi in order to communicate.
Has there been any thought about the training of these officers?
(Mr Jones) There is provision in the Bill for the
Lord Chancellor to provide regulations for training. Certainly
the expectation is that there will definitely be a need for training,
but we need to consider exactly what form that training might
need to take.
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