Court Closures

Baroness Laing of Elderslie Excerpts

Thursday 24th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Robert Neill]

I understand the point that the hon. Lady is making, but I will not go into individual cases, because that is not the job that the Select Committee has sought to take on.

In October 2015, following the 2010 to 2014 closure programme—the court estate reform programme, as it was described—during the previous Parliament, the Committee took evidence from Natalie Ceeney, chief executive of HM Courts and Tribunals Service. We asked, in particular, what progress had been made—[Interruption.] I hope that that is not my clerk or someone ringing me up. I think it is worse when it happens in court, Madam Deputy Speaker. I can only apologise.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. Let me say, for the avoidance of doubt, that it is worse when it happens here. For the moment, however, we will ignore it, and allow the hon. Gentleman to continue his excellent speech.

[Robert Neill]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. The honest truth is that it is worse anyway.

As I was saying, we wanted to know what progress had been made in the selling off of the courts that had been closed as part of the 2010 to 2014 programme. We were told that, as of 23 October last year, 10 court buildings remained unsold. It would be helpful if the Minister could update us. If courts are to be closed, it is important for them to be disposed of in a timely manner, given that one of the prime arguments for closures is the need to secure economies and value for money. There is certainly no virtue in continuing to spend money on mothballing unused buildings.

I agree with other Members that the issue of physical proximity and journey times is not unique to rural areas. When the last Labour Government were conducting court closure and amalgamation programmes in London, I made the point, as a London Assembly Member, that a journey in peak time from south-east London to, say, Wells Street—where a great deal of family court work was, at the time, being centralised—was likely to take an hour or an hour and a half, and that, if care or family cases were involved, that would impose an onerous and probably unfair burden on people who were in a difficult, perhaps vulnerable, state. Such issues do apply to urban areas as well.

The issue of longer travel times has been raised with the Committee, particularly in the context of our current inquiry into the role of the magistracy. There is a balance to be struck between the efficiency of the system and the localness of justice. Earlier this week we took evidence from the National Bench Chairmen’s Forum, which does what it says: it is the body representing the chairs of benches. The forum expressed concern about the issue. Interestingly, a representative of one of the benches in north Wales made exactly the same point as the hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) about the difficulty of getting mobile and other coverage in very rural areas. In fairness, it was not suggested that the problem was insuperable, but the point was made that if courts were to be amalgamated in such areas, it was important to get the technology right and in place first.

The magistrates expressed a fear—not only in oral evidence but in written evidence, which is available on the Committee’s website—that courts would inevitably be concentrated in more urban areas, that there would inevitably be a temptation for magistrates to be drawn from areas in the immediate proximity of the courts, and that rural areas would consequently be under-represented areas on the benches. I think that that is an important and legitimate point. It was also pointed out to us that larger benches—and some benches now contain up to 1,000 magistrates, or thereabouts—placed much greater burdens on the chairs of those benches. It was suggested that we should think about what support could be given to those chairing very large benches with considerable workloads in administrative matters that were not previously envisaged. Again, I do not think that the problem is insuperable, but we must ensure that that support is provided.

On the basis of the evidence that we heard, it is fair to say that members of the senior judiciary are much more positive about the opportunities that arise from the use of digital and other modern technology, and consider that it can alleviate some of the pressures that arise from court processes. On 23 February, the Lord Chief Justice gave evidence to us about digitisation in the courts service. He praised the approach taken by HM Courts and Tribunals in building its digital case system unit by unit rather than on a monolithic single contract—and I think it right to give praise where it is due—but he was also alert to the need to deal with digital exclusion.

The Master of the Rolls, Lord Dyson, while recognising that there was much value to be gained from the use of IT to overcome some of the access-to-court issues, also made the point—with which I think we would all agree—that the Government’s track record on IT projects was “not exactly shining”. Sir James Munby, president of the Family Division, said that a digitised divorce service would provide real opportunities to reduce the burdens on people at a difficult time in their lives, but he was “disappointed” by the lack of progress so far. The Senior President of Tribunals, Sir Ernest Ryder, had “reservations” about the Department’s capacity to deliver the modernisation programme, and that is a point that I particularly wanted to make today.

I think it worries many of us that, while a number of fairly senior practitioners in the field say that they have no problem with the modernisation programme and— in some instances—accept the rationale for estates rationalisation, a greater move towards digitisation, the use of video conferencing and so on, there is doubt about whether either the Ministry of Justice or HM Courts and Tribunals Service has the necessary technical and professional capacity to deliver on those issues. That concerns me as much in relation to the estates disposal programme as in relation to the digitisation programme.

There is now a very good family law centre in east London, which is part of the combined family court that we now have at Canary Wharf. It opened in December 2014 and is working well, but its opening was delayed. It was apparent to us that the delay was partly due to the fact that the estate managers who were dealing with the project on behalf of the Government, in house, had spent the better part of a year pursuing a site in the Canary Wharf area that was never realistically going to be available at an acceptable rent or on acceptable terms. The commercial property operators with whom they were dealing were understandably running rings around them.

Government Departments and agencies often do not have the level of direct commercial expertise in tough, hard money negotiations that they need if they are to deliver the courts rationalisation, disposal and, subsequently, renewal programme. I hope that the Minister will tell us what is being done to strengthen the technical, managerial and professional expertise that is available to the Government. I hope he will also concede that the process need not be carried out in house, and that, in some circumstances, it is very proper to buy in specialist advice from the legal and property sector to ensure that the Government get the best possible deal and the changes are made in a timely manner.

The Magistrates Association and the judiciary have drawn our attention to the possibility of overcoming some of the pressures caused by a loss of local connection, which are of legitimate and genuine concern, by using satellite courts to hear cases that may require less security than those that are heard at a main magistrates court. It might be possible to use a public building, closer to the locality where the offence had been committed. I can think of circumstances in which it would not be too difficult to make use of, say, a town hall or a civic centre. Intelligent listing can be done now that more digital listing is being used, and it could be used in cases that were unlikely to have custody requirements or a large number of witnesses. In cases involving a summary-only offence and in which the witnesses were likely to be local, it should be possible, with sensible management and support for the bench, to get magistrates from that locality to hear the case. We ought to explore more ways of doing that.

We have also suggested to magistrates and to the bench forums that we should look at some of the existing learning in the local government world. Some of the issues that confront magistrates servicing rural petty sessional divisions are not dissimilar to those confronting district councillors in rural areas. Some local authorities have done significant work on online decision making and on finding ways of setting up delegated local area committees. Those would not be dissimilar to the satellite courts that I have mentioned. There is experience in other areas that the judicial world could learn from, and I urge the Minister to encourage his Department as well as those in the judiciary and the magistrates to take that on board. This applies to the legal profession as well. The Committee has received the representations that other Members have referred to, and there is scope for sensible co-working between lawyers on some of these issues.

I am grateful for your indulgence, Madam Deputy Speaker, and, I hope, for your forgiveness. I hope that when the Minister replies to this important debate he will be able to respond to these points, which have struck a chord across the board among members of the Select Committee.

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow such thoughtful speeches from everyone, including the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) and my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon). I should also like to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) and the hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts) on securing this debate.

Wakefield magistrates court is one of the 86 Courts and Tribunals Service hearing centres affected by this latest round of closures. That figure represents nearly one fifth of the total court estate and a cut of 20% to our access to local justice. Wakefield’s court is a vital community resource that provides access to justice for people in Wakefield, and its closure will undermine that access.

The closure is part of a series of changes to the justice system since 2010 which have been, shall we say, a little more stop-start. We have certainly seen a series of changes in the past month. The Justice Secretary has scrapped restrictions on the number of books that prisoners can have. He has also scrapped court charges of up to £1,200 for defendants who plead guilty. I welcome his latest U-turn to reverse the imposition of legal aid contracts in January, which would have harmed access to legal aid in my constituency and across the country. However, he did that only after 99 legal challenges and a judicial review. I shall say a bit more about legal aid later.

In September last year I launched a public petition opposing the closure of Wakefield court, and it has been signed by hundreds of people. The court closure is the latest threat to Wakefield city centre, because it comes alongside the announcement by the Post Office that Wakefield post office should be run as a franchise. That will affect the whole city centre, because if it closes and goes into W.H. Smith or one of our shopping centres, shoppers will no longer be drawn to the high street. That will have a huge knock-on effect on the city centre economy, as will the fact that we will no longer have police officers, council officers and lawyers from the court going into the city centre at lunchtime to buy a delicious sandwich from one of the many pasty, pie and sandwich shops that we are proud to have there.

There is cross-party concern about these closures. It is important that justice is not only done and seen to be done but that it is seen to be done locally. The closures will also result in more failed cases, as victims and witnesses will have to travel long distances to get to court. That will also waste police time, because officers will have to travel further to those courts. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend said, this is just passing on cuts. In this case, the cuts will be outsourced to the police service, because it is the police who will have to spend time travelling from Wakefield to Leeds accompanying defendants or to give evidence. In the case of the family courts, it will be council officers’ time that will be spent in that way. This is not a cost-neutral solution. If we are looking at whole-government accounting, it would be useful for the Justice Committee to carry out a whole-cost inquiry into this matter, to determine the whole-cost implications. It is unacceptable to make a cut in one place that has to be absorbed by other parts of the system.

Local justice will not be seen to be done if Wakefield court closes, because the local press will not turn up to report cases being heard in courts many miles away. This will have a real impact on the excellent work being done by the journalists on the Wakefield Express, who go along to the court diligently each week to report on what is happening locally. A local solicitor has told me that the consequences of the closure could be catastrophic for some of Wakefield’s law firms. Solicitors will go where the work is, and firms that do not have offices in Leeds have talked about the possibility of moving out of Wakefield. That would be yet another big on-cost to our city centre. Those firms cannot afford to be in a city where there is no court, because they cannot afford to pay regular expenses for their lawyers to travel to Leeds.

The Government cut funding for our justice system by £2.1 billion in the last Parliament, with a further £900 million of cuts to come by the end of this Parliament. Despite those cuts, Wakefield magistrates court has been performing to a high standard. The Government said in their own consultation document that the building was “well used” and, according to the Law Society, Wakefield court is a “busy court” operating at a higher capacity than the England and Wales average. For the year to date, our conviction rate for cases in Wakefield district and magistrates court is 87%, compared with the national target of 85%. It also has a very low overall attrition rate of just 10%, compared with the national attrition rate target of 15%. This is particularly important in regard to protecting the vulnerable.

A couple of weeks ago I met Mabs Hussain, the new district commander of Wakefield police. He is rightly proud of the work that Wakefield police are doing to achieve a very high conviction rate for domestic violence. That has certainly changed for the better since I was elected as the MP for Wakefield 10 years ago. I can remember asking for a specialist domestic violence court for Wakefield and being told by a court official, almost with a pat on my hand, that I did not really understand domestic violence and that the trouble with such allegations was that he would find the parties involved sitting holding hands outside the court. It is always nice to be told what I do and do not understand by court officials. I left him in no doubt about my understanding and suggested that he perhaps needed to understand a little more about domestic violence and abuse cases. We have worked hard on this, and the council has worked hard on its Safe at Home project for victims of domestic violence. We have a conviction rate of 81% compared with a national target of 75%, along with a very low attrition rate. Commander Hussain is rightly concerned about what the court closure would mean in this regard. Wakefield also has a very low average for the number of days from first hearing to trial: 65 days compared with 103 days nationally.

This is the second round of court closures in Wakefield since 2010. We had the closure of Pontefract magistrates court in 2013, and the work of that court and its staff have now transferred to Wakefield. The latest closure will mean that all parties—victims, defendants, witnesses and solicitors—will need to travel into Leeds, which will significantly increase their travel times. The Minister has said that 95% of citizens will still be able to reach their court by car, but we have already heard that the courts deal with the poorest and most vulnerable people in our society. According to the Law Society, 47% of Wakefield court users will have to travel for more than an hour in each direction to reach a court by public transport. That will reduce access to justice.

I am concerned about the impact of longer, more expensive journeys on victims, witnesses, defendants and magistrates. Those living in Horbury and Ossett, or in villages such as Netherton or Middlestown, will have difficulty getting to Leeds by public transport on the sporadic bus services. What about the people who live in the old pit villages such as Hemsworth, Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford? They either go directly to Leeds or have to come into Wakefield on the irregular bus services, which often do not turn up, and change on to a train and then travel by foot, putting them at greater risk of bumping into the people whom they may be appearing against in court. I can tell the House from personal experience that that is not a comfortable place for a victim to be in. People on low incomes are also unable to claim back the travel expenses incurred when attending court. Some will never have been to Leeds in their lives, or perhaps only a few times. Such people do not have access to Google Maps on their smartphones and can easily get lost, and we heard earlier about the case of the man in his 80s who had to appear in court against his neighbour.

I want to give a concrete example from when I witnessed antisocial behaviour outside some school gates in Wakefield. I said to the lady that it happened to that I had seen it, she reported it to the police, and the case against this aggressive individual came up during the general election campaign. It was scheduled to be heard at 10 am, so I gave up my morning’s canvassing in the interest of local justice and seeing justice done. I sat in the victims room with the complainant, her husband and her neighbour, who had turned up in support—people often need one or two other people to support them. The defendant turned up with his solicitor and was then advised to plead guilty.

Until someone becomes a victim, it is hard to realise how important it is that witnesses and victims turn up. If they do not, the case will not proceed and the defendant gets away. That was brought home to me 20 years ago when I was the victim of assault. I stopped a large, rampaging group of girls who were kicking a young woman on a zebra crossing in north London and who went on to assault a tube worker and then me. It was only when I turned up at court that I realised how important it was that the victims were in that room that day when those girls pleaded guilty to the charge of affray. Nobody knows that until bad things happen to them, but it is important.

If people from my constituency have to drop their children at school at 8.50 am or 9 am, wait for the bus that comes at 9.15 am, get off the bus at quarter to 10, get a 10 am train into Leeds, arrive into Leeds at 10.15 am and walk to the court, it is probably 10.30 am and, if the case is listed for 10 am, it has already failed. This is really important for people in Wakefield. If the change has to happen, Wakefield cases should be listed in the afternoon to enable people to attend. The childcare issue, particularly for victims of domestic violence, cannot be overstated. Young people, victims of domestic abuse and all those who rely on public transport will be grievously affected. The Government are erecting hurdles for witnesses to overcome and that should not be the role of the justice system.

Legal professionals in Wakefield have told me how good our local court is at delivering local justice. There are concerns, such as those mentioned by the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst and my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend, about magistrates having no local knowledge or understanding—people who do not know about life and local circumstances in Wakefield and the surrounding villages. We will lose local decisions on local justice matters. The Government talk the talk about devolving power to communities, but their every action takes power away from local communities.

We have heard some creative examples of where court hearings could be held, but I am insistent that victims should feel comfortable and protected when they walk into court. Wakefield Council has a court chamber, and we have a county court building as well, where Bill Nighy did some filming a couple of months ago, which was an exciting day for our city—it certainly was for me. Such buildings could be used in specific cases.

On access to justice, the Lord Chief Justice stated two weeks ago:

“Our system of justice has become unaffordable to most”.

The Law Society describes access to justice as being

“on the verge of a crisis”.

Funding for civil cases has fallen by 62% since civil legal aid was cut. The closures will only serve to worsen that trend.

On the legal aid changes, the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for North West Cambridgeshire (Mr Vara), is well aware of the case of Bobby and Christi Shepherd from my constituency, who died from carbon monoxide poisoning while on holiday in Corfu. Their parents, Neil Shepherd and Sharon Wood, were refused legal aid at first because lawyers are not usually required at inquests. I am eternally grateful to the Minister, who was able to work with us and the Legal Aid Agency to get the decision overturned after we petitioned the Prime Minister and secured a meeting with him.

There is another similar case. Zane Gbangbola died at his home in Chertsey during the floods in February 2014 and his father, Kye Gbangbola, was left paralysed from the waist down after a cardiac arrest. The parents believe that Zane may have been killed by cyanide gas that leaked from a former landfill site through the floodwater. Kye and his wife, Nicole Lawler, were told by the Legal Aid Agency that their request for legal aid had been rejected on the grounds that Zane’s inquest did not concern the public interest. I have discussed the matter with the hon. Member for Spelthorne (Kwasi Kwarteng) and hope that the Legal Aid Agency will review the funding as a matter of the utmost urgency. I hope that the Minister will personally intervene once again so that the family can get justice and will not have to present their own case and examine witnesses, the father doing so from his wheelchair, at the inquest.

The Minister has suggested that those too far away to attend court could appear via video link. Wakefield court already has up-to-date technological facilities, including its own prison-to-court video service, which is important because the constituency has two prisons: Wakefield prison, which houses high-risk offenders, and New Hall women’s prison.

In evidence to the Public Accounts Committee last week, Natalie Ceeney, chief executive of Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service, said that she had negotiated with the Treasury during the spending review to ensure that proceeds from the sale of any court building can be reinvested in modernisation. However, the Ministry of Justice has yet to dispose of 15 closed courts from its 2010 closure programme, at a cost to the taxpayer of at least £40,000 a month to secure and maintain, with figures not available for three sites. The old Pontefract magistrates court has fallen into rack and ruin in the town centre, and I do not want the same to happen in Wakefield. We already have a derelict Crown court building, which the council had to compulsorily purchase and will have to spend money on to prevent it from falling down. Although the savings are made nationally, local people pick up the cost through antisocial behaviour and ensuring that derelict buildings are secure and properly maintained.

From the Secretary of State for Justice, we have had changes to legal aid, prison reform, which is welcome, and he has U-turned on a range of issues, but there have also been mistakes that have cost money. The legal aid contract is an example of an intervention in the market that threw an entire system up in the air, causing huge upset and concern for people and their livelihoods, only for it to be withdrawn at the last minute. What have been the costs to local solicitors and law firms across the country from bidding for contracts and winning them or not winning them? The Minister would do well to listen before making another costly and damaging error.

Wakefield is a city with great people and great transport connections from north to south, but not from east to west—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. I hesitate to interrupt the hon. Lady, who is making some very important points, and the House appreciates that, but I hope that she will soon be drawing her remarks to a close, because a significant number of other people are waiting to speak.

[Mary Creagh]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I shall conclude my remarks by saying that justice is supposed to convict the guilty and protect the innocent, and there is a grave risk that these proposals will do the reverse.

--- Later in debate ---

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. As there are so many hon. Members waiting to speak, I now have to impose a time limit of eight minutes.