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Lord Donaldson of Lymington: My Lords, today's debate is about matters which may inhibit access to justice. The noble Lord, Lord Phillips, says he is happy for it to go wider and I believe that it should do so. The real subject for debate today should be "the provision of justice" and "justice as a public service".
On the news last night, it was said that both the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition were urgently turning their attention away from Europe and towards the provision of public services. They meant, of course, education, health and public safety. But why not justice? In the development of all civilised societies, the development of some system of justice, rudimentary though it may be, came a long time before consideration was given to health or education. That was not accidental. It was of supreme importance and it remains important to this day.
It has to be a system which is available to all on equal terms. That is of the essence of any public service. And this also creates a major problem for the justice system in this country. As we all know, it could not begin to cope if any significant number of cases were brought or defended by litigants in person.
Perforce the courts have been obliged to enlist the assistance of a corps of people whose task is to assist the court by investigating and presenting cases to the courts. We call them "litigation lawyers", although they would not necessarily have to be lawyers, provided they were properly trained and subject to proper professional supervision. Essentially, they are performing a function which is part and parcel of justice as a public service. This is emphasised by their own and the courts' insistence that, in case of conflict, their duty to the court overrides their duty to their clients.
Logically, this would meant that all or part of the expense of employing litigation lawyers should in all cases be met by the public purse. I do not go as far as that, but I want to draw attention to the extent to which we have gone, and are increasingly going, in the other direction. It is a wholly one-sided public/private partnership.
Magna Carta contains an undertaking by the King not to sell justice to any man. This referred, of course, to the sale of justice on a selective and corrupt basis. Today, the state sells justice not on a corrupt but on a wholesale basis. We have arrived at a pay-for-it-yourself system of justice.
That is no exaggeration. Under the Government's present policy, litigants are charged fees intended to recoup the cost of the court rooms, the cost of the court service and even the salary of the judge. In addition,
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they have to meet the cost of employing litigation lawyers unless they are resorting to the small claims court which, to its great credit, is designed to cope with do-it-yourself litigants.
No doubt we shall be told that there is legal aid and that court fees can be remitted in extreme circumstances. But eligibility for legal aid is continually being eroded either more or less arbitrarily or in favour of any other system which avoids the involvement of the public purse, such as conditional fees.
Today's practitioners may not be aware that when legal aid was first introduced there were few no-go areas. I believe that defamation was one. Eligibility was very generous by current standards, as the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, pointed out. Litigation lawyers from both sides of the profession were paid at market rates less 10 per cent. It was both simple and fair.
It seems to me that the time has come when serious consideration should be given to setting up a Royal Commission or some such independent and informed body. It should be invited to review the whole system of justice as a public service. Meanwhile, claims such as that 50 per cent of the criminal legal aid budget goes on 1 per cent of heavy cases for the benefit of "fat cat lawyers" are inaccurate, irrelevant and stupid.
The true comparison is between the degree of skill involved and the time spent on preparing and presenting the totality of the heavy cases as compared with that attributable to the totality of the run-of-the-mill cases. I do not know what the answer would be, but I know that it would be nowhere near the quoted figures. Nor, wherever the fault may lie, is it seemly that informed discussion on fees between the Government and the profession should be replaced by what appears to me to be oriental bargaining.
I welcome the debate and hope that it may be followed up by some action.
Lord Williams of Elvel: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, for introducing the debate. I am afraid that my noble friend Lord Filkin may find himself in some crossfire from mid-Wales. The noble Lord, Lord Hooson, spoke about the problems of mid-Wales and I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Livsey, will address them. I, too, will do so because the problem in mid-Wales is possibly a paradigm for how magistrates' courts shut down all over England and Wales are depriving access to justice for those who cannot afford to pay. It is a problem which my noble friend must address.
First, I want to declare a non-financial interest. I am patron of the Llandrindod Wells Spa Town Trust and as such I have an interest in Llandrindod Wells. I gave my noble friend notice of the points I would make and I wrote to my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer on 6 June this year explaining what I was about and what I would say. I therefore hope that he has considered all those points and will have a substantive response to those of us who object to the closure of the Llandrindod Wells magistrates' court.
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The noble Lord, Lord Hooson, expressed the problems perfectly well. The first is the geographical distance that defendants and witnesses may have to travel if the court is closed down—namely, to Brecon or to Newtown—is such as to deny them access to primary justice. There is no convenient public transport and there is no private transport of any convenience. Some time ago that difficulty was put to Yvette Cooper by a delegation from the town council of Llandrindod Wells.
I hope my second point is recognised by my noble friend. I believe that a considered view of our party—it is perhaps one of those views that I would support more than others—is that we should encourage local community spirit. As Llandrindod Wells is the site of the main office of the Powys County Council and as it has been designated as one of the towns in mid-Wales that is to be developed and enlarged, the spirit of the community is all the more important.
To be perfectly honest with my noble friend, I have been surprised how strong the feeling is about the magistrates' court in Llandrindod Wells. People come up to me in the street, as I am sure they do to the noble Lord, Lord Livsey, and say, "Why is the court being closed down?". It is a matter of community. It is a central mark of status in an important regional centre.
Apparently Yvette Cooper was sympathetic to the delegation's arguments, but pointed out that it was up to the Powys County Council to put forward proposals to maintain the court in Llandrindod Wells. The parish council apparently felt that if it did so, it risked financial assistance being given for new premises in Newtown. Frankly, that argument falls down in the face of the denial of elementary access to primary justice by those members of the community in and around Llandrindod Wells who cannot afford to go to Brecon or to Newtown. It should not be beyond the wit of man to tell the parish council in one form or another to revise its plans, even if it means a marginal increase in costs.
I am sure that I do not have to emphasise to my noble friend how important this matter is in mid-Wales and in Llandrindod. After all, it is a growing town. We believe in a community spirit. It has status. Llandrindod has a community spirit and that should not be wilfully set aside.
Lord Livsey of Talgarth: My Lords, I welcome this opportunity to speak on access to justice. I thank the noble Lords, Lord Hooson and Lord Williams of Elvel, for raising the subject of access to justice in Powys. My contribution will relate mainly to the denial of access for the whole of Radnorshire. It will result in some of the poorest people in the most sparsely populated area of England and Wales being faced with a 60-mile round trip to a court where little or no public transport exists. In geographical terms it is the equivalent of making the people of west London attend court in Reading, but with no public transport to get there.
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I believe that the urban decision makers need a geography lesson. Radnorshire and central Powys are parts of the county of Powys. I declare an interest in that I represented the constituency of Brecon and Radnorshire in the other place. It is the third largest constituency in the whole of the United Kingdom. Powys, if transposed to southern England, would stretch from the Severn Bridge to Hammersmith Flyover, a distance of 130 miles. Powys is the most sparsely populated area of England and Wales, three times more so than Cumbria, the most sparsely populated county in England. In that respect it is equivalent only to the Highlands of Scotland. In the past 20 years, 16 courts have been closed in Powys. They range from Presteigne, Crickhowell, and Llanwrtyd and I could name many others.
The old counties to which the noble Lord, Lord Hooson, referred of Montgomery, Radnor and Brecon, are now administered through three shire counties, which are under the umbrella of Powys County Council. The current proposal is for magistrates' courts to be reduced to two in the county. There were six and then five; Newtown has one, but it is not being used at present. We shall be faced with two courts 60 miles apart. That will leave only two courts in Powys which occupies between a fifth and a quarter of the whole of the land area of Wales. Of course there are courts in Brecon and Newtown, but it leaves only one court in Montgomeryshire, the old county, one in Breconshire and no court in Radnorshire.
The result is that Radnorshire people cannot get to court, as the noble Lord, Lord Williams of Elvel, has stressed. Defendants and witnesses cannot get to court on time and there is a deprived population with only 76 per cent of average EU gross domestic product, many of whom are elderly and infirm. Solicitors on legal aid cases are reluctant to travel more than 20 miles. There is outrage in local communities at these proposals.
All Radnorshire county councillors support the retention of Llandrindod magistrates' court and today county councillors Margaret Morris, the retiring chair of the Radnorshire committee, and Fred Barker have brought with them a 3,500-name petition to support the continuation of the Llandrindod court. The people who have signed the petition rightly feel that their human rights are threatened.
I want to address the process of how this came about. It does not do credit to the system. I believe that this is the case in many other areas of the United Kingdom. The proposal to reduce the number of courts to two came from the Dyfed Powys Magistrates' Court Committee which has now been abolished as a result of the Courts Act 2003. The magistrates' court committees have been replaced by courts boards, provided for in Part 1 of that Act. My complaint is that Powys County Council members were hoodwinked and coerced into supporting only two courts in Powys by the threat of the withdrawal of funding for upgrading of the two courts in Brecon and Newtown if they opted for a third court in Llandrindod Wells.
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I quote Powys County Council minutes in which Mr Peter Townsend, the former chief executive of Dyfed Powys Magistrates' Court Committee,
"confirmed that travel to the two Courts was a major consideration for the Magistrates Court Committee but legislation required that there be better accommodation and access issues but that the funding issue would prohibit the retention of all Courts"—
"He advised Council that if all Councils in the Dyfed Powys area were not in agreement that the bid should be made the finance of the proposals would therefore fall and the current buildings would by virtue of the legislation be taken out of use and the administration of justice within the County would then become uncertain".
The councillors were faced with that in their decision making.
What is perhaps even worse is that the local MP, my successor, Roger Williams, was sent an e-mail from the clerk to the magistrates' court which said:
"The procurement of the two Court Houses for Powys has reached a critical stage. If it is undermined now, then the investment which is planned for Powys will be lost. The support of the Local Authorities has been critical . . . the achievement of this investment and any wavering of this support could be fatal to both schemes . . . There is a real risk, that not only will the investment in new Courts for Powys be lost, but the current Court Houses will be closed sooner rather than later because they do not meet the standards required of them. Powys could be left with no effective Court . . . provision at all".
Frankly, that is unacceptable in those terms, but it is what councillors were threatened with by the chief executive of the magistrates' courts committee before they voted on the issue.
I believe that the matter can be resolved. A bullying tactic was used by the clerk of the magistrates' courts committee as I have just described. No councillors on the county councils want to see a withdrawal of funding for Newtown and Brecon courts. However, they were forced into a situation where they had to protect their own areas; the majority of councillors were in Breconshire or Montgomery indeed, Radnorshire's were then outvoted. This is a classic divide-and-rule tactic not worthy of the Lord Chancellor's department.
No appeal could be made to save Llandrindod court. The MCC's strategy worked, denying access to justice to the people of Radnorshire on financial grounds, not on the basis of people's needs. The MCC imposed a flawed system of decision-making on the county. Its arbitrary powers were underlined to me in a letter from the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor, dated 7 October 2003. Now the MCC is being abolished.
People's needs must be foremost; they have a right to an accessible court, to a criminal justice system in their own locality and to a justice system delivered in an affordable, secure local court. Llandrindod court building, which adjoins a police station, is not even owned by the Lord Chancellor, but by the Police Authority. Its budget could easily be used to upgrade the building at a very modest cost.
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I can quote cases of, for example, a mother whose children were going to be taken into care but who could not get to court because she had no means of transport; witnesses hitch-hiking, trying to reach court on time and often failing; and the cancellation of some hearings due to the inability of witnesses to attend. Do we really want a criminal justice system more akin to a banana republic? I am sure that the new Powys County Council and its chief executive will want to appeal against the closure of Llandrindod Wells court.
However, I need guarantees from the Minister that allocated, existing funding to Brecon and Newtown courts will not be withdrawn as a result of a Llandrindod appeal. The needs of the people of Radnorshire and the accessibility of their court are crucial factors in their own right. The Lord Chancellor has the powers within the Courts Act 2003 to put these matters right, particularly as regards the location of court houses. I interpret, therefore, that he has the power to specify the location of a court. I hope that he will accede to these circumstances in the case that I have made for Llandrindod today.
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