Court Closures and Reform

John Howell Excerpts

Tuesday 27th March 2018 Westminster Hall

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I am here because I am a member of the Justice Committee, which is meeting now. I have permission from the Chairman, my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), to attend and speak in the debate.

The hon. Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi) has raised an important point about access to justice. We ought to keep that concept firmly in mind. We in the Committee—certainly myself—are concerned for access to justice to remain a preferred concept throughout the process, and for it to permeate everything we think and do.

There is a need to maintain a network of well-maintained and fit-for-purpose courts. I understand what the hon. Gentleman has said but, unfortunately, some courthouses are not fit for purpose, and it is necessary to root them out, look at them and make changes to the way they function.

There are three other reasons why the court system is undergoing change and why it needs to be rigorously looked at. The first reason relates to Lord Justice Briggs’s work to set up the online courts, which are not yet set up in full. Lord Justice Briggs has made proposals to change the civil rules that govern how the courts work, which are being piloted in a three-stage process. It is an attractive system for running the courts, particularly for people who wish to avoid huge legal costs. The way in which the courts are being sorted out by that process is focused on the needs of individuals, because litigants in person are expected to be its clients.

[Liz Saville Roberts]

I listen with great interest to what the hon. Gentleman says, but does he share my concern that there are discrepancies in power between a person at a distant site contacting a court through video conferencing and a person in the court itself? We need to consider the impact of that on justice outcomes before moving ahead. As the process is at such an early stage, now is the time to do that.

[John Howell]

I will speak about aspects of the technology, but postpone answering that question for now, if I may. Having discussed online courts with Lord Justice Briggs, I am enthusiastic that they will come through in the fullness he wants.

The second reason for change is the need to improve technology. I recently did an Industry and Parliament Trust fellowship in law, where I sat with a number of judges in the High Court and the Court of Appeal for two and a half weeks. I sat with Mr Justice Knowles in a hearing in the commercial courts that was conducted entirely in Portuguese, because a Portuguese lawyer had brought the case and had elected for his case to be heard in English law. The level of sophistication of the technology had to be seen to be believed. Almost instantly after the appellant said something, the judge got a transcript in English on his laptop on his desk in front of him. That was an extremely efficient way of using technology. In the Court of Appeal, I saw for myself in a number of sentence referral cases that the court had been connected via video technology to the individual who was still in prison, in order to hear the case. I am absolutely convinced that that is a correct way to try to improve the technology.

In contrast, I experienced sitting with an employment tribunal where, as far as I was concerned, it was so antique that we might as well have been using the quill pen. Three judges were sitting. I coughed and spluttered when they said they would sit for seven days, but it was seven days because a litigant was appearing in person. Nothing was done that could not have been done on the first day—the other days were scheduled in order to ensure that more time could be given to the litigant if necessary.

[Liz Saville Roberts]

I want to alert people to the need to be very careful about how we use different languages in the courts, with reference to the last round of court closures. The Ministry of Justice has a Welsh language scheme, part of which is a requirement to carry out an impact assessment of changes. I and others had to press for that impact assessment to be carried out. Welsh speakers have a right to use their language in court, but with technology and changes to courts, that is truly a matter of concern.

[John Howell]

I will stick to the point that I started making. From what I have seen of how the courts are using technology, it is going in the right direction. The courts are making full use of the technology—indeed, they are pushing the technology beyond how we would normally expect it to be used.

The third element is alternative dispute resolution—I say that as the chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on alternative dispute resolution. Alternative dispute resolution takes cases out of the ambit of the courts and puts them in the hands of arbitrators who are able to hear the cases and resolve them, and they should do so. During the time I sat with judges in the commercial courts, it was obvious—the judge said it on many occasions—that people should have gone to arbitration before they went to court.

The last time I spoke on this issue, I was asked whether we ought to consider compulsory arbitration. I was doubtful at the time, but as I have come to consider it more, I now believe that a form of compulsory arbitration would be a good thing and should be included within the arbitration rules. This process is not just about the arbitration, or the alternative part of dispute resolution. Bodies such as Network Rail try to solve disputes before they happen by putting in place the mechanisms to solve them.

I mention that because it is an important point about how courts are not being used as much as they were. Alternative dispute resolution is cheaper, quicker and gives much more immediate access to justice—we should not forget that access to justice is one of the key elements of the process. It takes nothing away from the courts: if the alternative dispute resolution fails, there is still recourse to the courts at the end of the process.

Through all of this, there is a need to ensure that we connect with the communities that we are serving. Doing that through existing buildings without exploring the use of town halls and other buildings within a community is not the right way of proceeding.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

My hon. Friend made the point right at the start of his remarks about access to justice. Is he aware of any system operating thus far whereby technology replaces the entire work of a magistrates court in a full criminal case, or is that yet to be proven?

[John Howell]

If I do not know the answer, I think my hon. Friend is about to tell me where that is the case.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

No, I am asking you.

[John Howell]

I do not know of a case where that is happening across the whole system. The courts’ use of technology and how they are pushing it, including the exemplary work by Lord Justice Briggs to set up an online court, is going in the right direction in respect of bringing access to justice within the ambit of a huge number of people for whom—I say this with all deference to the Minister—the legal fees involved are out of this world. We should keep that in mind as being a fundamental part of ensuring access to justice.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Lucy Frazer)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I congratulate the hon. Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi) on securing this debate. He made some important points about the justice system in general. I am grateful that he secured the debate, has raised those points and has given me an opportunity to respond.

I make one point at the outset. The hon. Gentleman talked about cuts. The reform programme is certainly not about cuts. As he mentioned, the Government are putting £1 billion into our court reform programme and every time a court closes, the money from the sale of that court goes straight back into our justice system—more particularly, our court system.

Like the hon. Gentleman, I would like to address the issue of justice in broader terms. We should start by asking ourselves a question in the context of the debate. What is justice, and how should it be administered? It is not necessarily about a court, a wig and a dock—it is much broader than that. It is not constrained by a particular location or a setting. It is about the fair determination of rights. Although a court of course plays an important part in the determination of those rights, we must also think about how in the modern world we can deliver better, fairer and more effective justice, which is why the Ministry of Justice has started to invest £1 billion in our justice system over the last few years.

We are upgrading our system so that it works better for everyone—judges, legal professionals, vulnerable victims, witnesses, litigants and defendants. We are modernising the system. The hon. Member for Slough asked what the evidence is of the advantage of technology, and I will answer that. The Civil Justice Review of the 1980s said that we needed to use computers to manage listing. Lord Woolf called for the use of technology in the 1990s. In 2015, the Civil Justice Council stated that online dispute resolution had the possibility and potential to bring forward advantages to our justice system, such as lower cost but also more access to justice. When the court reform Bill went before the House before the general election, a document on transforming justice was put together by the Lord Chief Justice and Lord Chancellor of the time and the Senior President of Tribunals. They all called for our justice system to be brought up to date using technology. They recognised that it would bring our system forward and that by doing so, we would need fewer court buildings. I was interested to hear my hon. Friend the Member for Moray (Douglas Ross) calling for more digitalisation in Scotland.

[John Howell]

Would the Minister accept that the move towards, for example, online courts has come not from judges but from potential litigants who would like to see that as an alternative?

[Lucy Frazer]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is not only justices who are advocating online courts but people who use the system. We recently launched our online digital court process, through which people can make claims of up to £10,000. The pilot has been extremely successful.

That brings me on nicely to our other pilots. We are in the midst of upgrading our system in a variety of ways, in different courts and for different remedies that people need. It is now possible to apply for an uncontested divorce and for probate online. It is possible to make pleas for lower level offences, to respond to jury summonses and to issue and respond to civil money claims online. In the social security tribunal system, it is possible to track an appeal online and get mobile updates about the progress of a case. Those changes are making access to justice more efficient, quicker and, for many, much easier to use.

Thousands of people have already used those pilots and received straightforward digital access to justice for the first time, and the public feedback has been extremely positive. By providing services online, we are significantly improving the experience of those using the courts. We see that in the number of forms completed correctly. The rejection rate for paper divorce applications was 40% due to errors and omissions. Since the latest release of the online divorce service, the online rejection rate is now less than 1%.

The hon. Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi) made some important points about vulnerable people. She is right that not everybody has a computer, uses the internet or is comfortable doing so. We are establishing a range of support channels, including telephone and face-to-face assistance, and we have worked closely with other Departments to ensure vulnerable people are protected. Our experience shows that the most vulnerable will still be able to access digital services. For example, in relation to our help with fees, the rejection rate stands at about 20% after the introduction of digital processes, compared with 75% for the paper version.

The hon. Lady also said that court can sometimes be intimidating. I said previously that we have social security updates for people going through the system on their mobile phone, and the feedback from that has been extremely positive. Someone said recently, “Courts, judges, decision all quite frightening. This completely calmed me down.” My hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell) talked about the possibility of technology improving our court service—not only in the commercial court but elsewhere. It is right that we consider the possibilities for justice.

We are not just investing in digital. Since April 2015, we have spent £108 million on capital maintenance to improve our estate, including £2 million for refurbishments in Manchester Central, £1.5 million for rewiring and replacing windows in Preston and more than £1.5 million for a roof and lift replacements in Leeds Central.

Other hon. Members raised issues about court closures. We must recognise some important facts about the court and tribunal estate, which is underused. About 41% of courts and tribunals used less than half their available hearing capacity in financial year 2016-17, and much of that space is in poor condition. The hon. Member for Slough talked about Maidenhead. The court is underused and sat for less than one third of its available hours in the past financial year. It is in a poor state of affairs and requires a new roof and windows, generating a total maintenance backlog of more than £1 million.

HMP Liverpool

John Howell Excerpts

Thursday 22nd February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Robert Neill]

Let me say first that the Committee engaged with the POA on a number of occasions, and on an ongoing basis. Secondly, the issues relating to facilities maintenance were examined in some detail. We said in our report that we were not satisfied with the outcomes and intended to return to the issue. Thirdly, it was specifically not our role to examine the position of the previous governor in terms of the future. We heard evidence from the inspectorate about the position at that stage, and we heard evidence from the current governor about what is happening now, which is an improvement, but we did not think that going into further past history would be constructive. Our recommendations are for ways to try to ensure that this state of affairs does not occur again.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

One of the most distressing aspects of the report relates to healthcare. My hon. Friend has already spoken briefly about that. Does he feel, as I do, that we can have no confidence in the partnership agreement? One thing that it will not do is get prisoners out of their cells to attend appointments.

[Robert Neill]

I am particularly grateful to my hon. Friend for his work in the Committee on this and many other reports. He is absolutely right. We are calling for the partnership agreement to be published, so that we can examine it, because we cannot be satisfied that it is yet fit for purpose. Previous partnership agreements have broken down, so we need to know how this will be different—in terms of both its structure and the way in which it will operate—to be reassured that there will be no repetition of what went wrong in the past.

Mental Health in Prisons

John Howell Excerpts

Wednesday 10th January 2018 Westminster Hall

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Howarth.

This is such a crucial issue that it has been of great interest to the Select Committee on Justice throughout our sittings. I remember well that when the hon. Member for St Helens South and Whiston (Ms Rimmer) was a member of that Committee, she and I attended a number of prisons and examined this issue together while looking around them.

There is a high likelihood that prisoners will have some form of mental illness. The 1998 study to which the hon. Lady referred, which showed that 90% of prisoners had some sort of mental health issue, had so many people in it because alcohol misuse and drugs misuse were included within that definition, and that is quite broad.

I want to mention the drugs scene in prisons. We have to accept that two groups of people suffer from drug problems in prison: those who had drug problems before they went into prison, which should have been picked up in the assessment process—I will say something about that in a minute—and those who are switched on to drugs while in prison. The hon. Lady and I both know that a lot of effort is being put in to try to prevent the smuggling of drugs into prisons, particularly as people use more and more sophisticated means, such as drones, to do so. We have to stop these things coming into prisons.

The point made about the need for information sharing and about the assessment process when prisoners arrive is absolutely crucial. From the experience that the hon. Lady and I have had looking around prisons, it is absolutely the case that the assessment process is de minimis: it does not go into the depth that one would expect. That is partly for the historical reason that mental health has been a second service, and I hope that it is now changing.

[Kate Green]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman about that initial assessment. Does he agree that it is important that, when someone is already under the care of mental health services in the community, evidence is gathered from their own practitioner, and that it is not enough just to gather the evidence, but that conclusions need to be drawn and appropriate routes taken and that may mean not remanding or incarcerating someone as a result of a conviction?

--- Later in debate ---

[John Howell]

I agree with the hon. Lady. This problem goes back to the whole way in which the justice system is set up in anticipating the mental health issues suffered by many of the people who are brought before the courts. If a problem can be identified there, a better treatment can perhaps be undertaken to solve it. A greater emphasis needs to be put on the assessment process, which needs to include a very good assessment of patients’ mental health conditions.

There are two aspects that I want to mention in connection with that. One is the power that we are giving prison governors. I am all in favour of giving prison governors back powers over their own prisons, but as a component of that we have to ensure that prison governors and their staff are fully aware of the mental health issues that they will face. From my visits to the prison in my constituency, I would not want to put a huge amount of greater stress on the prison governor, who is doing a very good job in difficult circumstances, but I would like to ensure a minimum level of mental health awareness at that level so that it can be taken into account. After all, as we are trying to put mental health care workers, or somebody with responsibility for mental health, into schools, it seems only appropriate that we should do the same in our prison estate, where larger numbers of people suffer from those issues.

My second point is the importance of purposeful imprisonment. It is absolutely crucial that we do not allow prisoners to stay in their cells for up to 22 hours a day. We need to find things for them to do. I will mention an example, because I think it predates the time when the hon. Member for St Helens South and Whiston was a member of the Select Committee. We went on a trip to Denmark, where we visited a prison. There is nothing unusual in that, but there was a great deal of unusualness in the way in which the prisoners were allowed to operate. Instead of the “Porridge”-style large prison benches for food, the prisoners were allowed to cook their own food. There was an issue over knives, which had to be chained to the wall, and things like that, but the prisoners could earn their own money, buy food from the shops and cook their own food.

[Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)]

I cannot resist asking a question now, although I will be talking about this in my speech. Does my hon. Friend agree that gardening projects—for example, prisoners growing their produce at the prison and then cooking it—can also be highly beneficial?

[John Howell]

I agree with my hon. Friend. It is important to recognise the extent of purposeful intent in the prison system; if gardening can fulfil that purpose, it is a very good one. I would like to see more done on prisoners’ ability to cook for themselves. I asked this of a former Lord Chancellor, who assured me that it was being developed within the prison system, so I hope that it is.

That is all I want to add to the debate. It is important and the issues that the hon. Member for St Helens South and Whiston raised are very germane to the topic.

Prison Reform and Safety

John Howell Excerpts

Thursday 7th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

I have three questions for the Minister. First, he has heard our concerns about the quality of the ageing estate and the living conditions of prisoners. What is he going to do about it? My second question relates to the status of the Government’s closure plans and the plans to update and replace our ageing prisons. What is he going to do about it? My third is about the impact of the uncertainty over closures on what the prisons are trying to do to update and improve their facilities.

To deal with my first question, the Minister will have seen, as we have, responses from the chief inspector of prisons. The Minister has heard from Members today that in many prisons they have seen the showers and lavatory facilities are filthy and dilapidated, and there are no credible or affordable plans for refurbishment. In a report published only a couple of months ago, the chief inspector of prisons said:

“prisoners are held in conditions that fall short of what most members of the public would consider as reasonable or decent”.

My question on what the Government are doing to address that is therefore very relevant.

On my second question, the Minister himself said only a couple of months ago that although his first priority is to ensure public protection and provide accommodation for all those sentenced by the courts, the commitment to close old prisons remains a viable option with which he wishes to continue. I would like to hear some detail about what is happening with that programme. The prison estate transformation programme reconfigured the estate into three functions looking after reception, training and resettlement, and those three are crucial to the better treatment of prisoners. The Ministry was also given £1.3 billion in 2015 as part of the spending review to invest over the next five years to transform the prison estates. What exactly is happening to that, what progress is being made and how is it being dealt with?

As for my third question, on the impact of the uncertainty about closure on prison performance and staff morale, I would echo the comments made by the hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge (Ellie Reeves) about the visit to Rochester prison. I was unable to go on that visit myself, but it is crucial that the lessons from it are learned. One lesson was, as governors told the Committee, that the decision about investing in maintenance or improving the facilities had not gone ahead since the announcement that the prison would close. As we have heard, the old 1840s prison buildings there are described as “deplorable” and “deteriorating”. That has an impact on recruitment, which had been frozen in Rochester, and it proves demoralising to staff.

I think that those three questions are the most pertinent.

[Robert Neill]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising the Rochester issue. He might like to know that we found on one wing that some 22 showers had been out of operation for months. When we spoke to people there, they said that the nub of the problem was that the facilities management contractors do not see the governors as their client. They see their client relationship being with MOJ’s commercial arm. That needs to be got right, because it means that the efforts of governors get nowhere—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. Can I be honest? We need shorter interventions. The hon. Gentleman was hoping to get two minutes at the end of the debate; he is eating into those two minutes, and he will understand if he does not get them.

[John Howell]

I fully accept the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), which goes back to what I said about the prison having given up on trying to invest any money in refurbishment or in replacing its ageing facilities. I have already quoted the chief inspector of prisons, who said that the shower and lavatory facilities in many prisons are filthy and dilapidated.

What will the Government do to address our concerns about the quality of the ageing estate? What are they doing about the current programme of reform and estate modernisation? What impact is the uncertainty about closures having both on the prisons themselves and on the lives of prisoners? Those are the three most relevant questions.

Family Justice Reform

John Howell Excerpts

Wednesday 15th November 2017 Westminster Hall

[Suella Fernandes (Fareham) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered family justice reform.

There are not many more challenging areas where the law intervenes than the safety of vulnerable children and family breakdown. Judgments about such things as whether a child should be removed from their parents’ care or how a separating couple share parenting reflect our values as individuals and as a society. They go to the heart of how we see family life and how we wish our children to be raised. A nation is only as strong as the families that create it. A strong family unit of whatever form is where strong citizens are nurtured. That is why it is vital that the family justice system works as well as possible. I am grateful to be able to call this debate. Since I introduced my ten-minute rule Bill on this subject back in March, I have seen how we need to have a constructive debate on the future of the family justice system. I thank the Minister for being here on behalf of the Government.

Let me say at the outset: there has been significant progress in this field under the Conservative Government. The Children and Families Act 2014 marked a sea change in how our family justice system operated. It introduced a new family court in England and Wales that made it easier for the public to navigate the system and reduced delays. The 2014 Act introduced a new 26-week time limit for care proceedings. New child arrangement orders were enacted with the aim of encouraging parents to focus on a child’s needs, rather than on what they saw as their own rights.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is talking passionately about the changes that have been made. Will she accept—I speak as the chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on alternative dispute resolution—that a great contribution has been made by mediation? We should seriously encourage the use of mediation services in this area because they have a positive impact.

[Suella Fernandes]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising mediation. Compulsory family mediation information meetings were one of the measures introduced in the 2014 Act. They have had the benefit of diverting conflict and cases out of the adversarial system.

The Conservatives and the Government should be proud of a record that leaves family justice in a better place than where we found it in 2010. Why did I call this debate? I called it because there is further to go.

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[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

I did not intend to speak today, but I feel I ought to comment on the mediation aspect, which has numerous advantages. Of course, any mediation is only as good as the mediator. If we acknowledge that, we can take the collaborative approach of mediation to put together something that is in the interests of the parties involved. There are a couple of other aspects of mediation that I want to bring up. First, it saves a considerable amount of time in dealing with the problems, rather than taking them, perhaps on several occasions, before a judge and expanding on them there. Secondly, it saves a considerable amount of money. I have been trying to get to the bottom of how much money mediation saves, and I think it is a considerable sum.

There is an important overriding aspect, which is that mediation is the best way of ensuring that we deal with the emotions involved. There is no doubt that a divorce is a very emotional time for both parties and for third parties such as children. Mediation can deal with matters in a non-emotional way.

[Andrew Bridgen]

My hon. Friend makes a good point about mediation, but how can it work without guidelines for parents, depending on the age of the children, on what contact might be reasonable and what they might expect? One of the main reasons why conflict over contact with children is so intense is because there are no guidelines on what parents might expect on separation. It is basically the all or nothing rule, so people go into battle and they could come out with nothing or they could come out with complete contact. That is the crux of the problem.

[John Howell]

My hon. Friend makes a valid point. However, there is much more to be gained out of mediation in terms of working out what the arrangements for contact are. I fully accept that that is a major difficulty, but there are many more opportunities for getting it right in a non-emotional way and by trying to take those raw emotions out of the situation than there are in a formal legal battle. That is why I emphasise taking away the difficult emotional aspects through mediation.

Above all, mediation leaves control of the situation in the hands of the parties. It does not take it away and give it to a judge. The parties do not lose control of the process or of how to deal with the children and with access. They retain control. Anyone who sits through a mediation will experience the enormous amount of power that that gives people to be able to decide for themselves, rather than passing it off to a third party. In the session that the all-party group on alternative dispute resolution had on family mediation, that came across strongly as one of the things that should be valued.

[Andrew Bridgen]

I hear what my hon. Friend is saying and I absolutely agree about the parties keeping control over the contact levels they have with their children. Normally in a court that is farmed out to the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service, which came out of the family court welfare service. In correspondence with CAFCASS, we have established that in all the time that CAFCASS has been set up, there has never been any training for its main function, which is making recommendations to a court on the allocation of contact time for various parents. How can it be that it has such power, yet it admits to me in correspondence that it has never had any formal guidance, and it does not record the contact that it recommends at various stages? There is no record of the contacts awarded and whether they are right. Also, CAFCASS’s statements are not sworn, so it cannot even be held to account for the recommendations it gives in court.

[John Howell]

My hon. Friend makes the very point that I was making about the difference between that system and the mediation system. Mediators are not people who have no knowledge. They are not appointed off the street. They have spent a large part of their time in office going through training to make sure that they understand the process and the sensitivities of the issues, particularly the emotional sensitivities, and can deal with those in a professional way. Certainly if there any examples of mediators who do not do that, I would like to hear about them, because that is contrary to the whole mediation process, which provides enormous benefits to couples. I say that as a final comment and contribution to the excellent debate that my hon. Friend the Member for Fareham (Suella Fernandes) secured.

Sentencing

John Howell Excerpts

Thursday 2nd November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

We are not proposing any change in the law, as I have already said. The commitment to stay within the European convention on human rights, which includes the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights, was in the party manifesto on which both my hon. Friend and I stood earlier this year. I do, however, agree with him that it is important to look for ways in which to respect and enlarge the margin of appreciation allowed to individual member states in interpreting the duties under the convention in the light of their national constitutional and legal traditions. We made a significant step forward when the UK held the chair of the Council of Europe and with the Brighton declaration negotiated by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke). In taking the Brighton declaration forward and seeking to implement protocol 15, I would hope that we can count on the support of my hon. Friend.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

I unreservedly welcome the statement and the decision made, which comply with our obligations to the European Court of Human Rights. While we are on that subject, will my right hon. Friend confirm that we win most of the cases that we take to it? Will he also consider producing a more detailed briefing for members of the Council of Europe who are also Members of this Chamber, because it would be useful to have that when we go back to Strasbourg for the next Council of Europe meeting?

[Mr Lidington]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his support, and I am happy to offer the briefing that he requests for members of the delegation from this Parliament to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. He is right about cases brought against the United Kingdom: well over 90%—from memory, 96% or 97%—of cases brought against the United Kingdom do not even get to a judgment. They are rejected by the Court as inadmissible, and by no means all of that tiny minority of cases that go through to a judgment are found against us. We have a good track record.