Community Justice Centre: North Liverpool

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Wednesday 30th November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord McNally]

My Lords, it is always dangerous to give even vague dates, like “summer”, in making commitments. The study is still going on. I am confident of the integrity of the research, which is being carried out by Ministry of Justice analysts under the Government social research code. The research will be published by the Ministry of Justice. I think the safest commitment I could make now would be “as soon as possible”

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

My Lords, before that research is published, will the noble Lord be wary of comparing oranges with apples? What this North Liverpool Community Justice Centre does is very different from other existing systems elsewhere in the country. This is a pioneering scheme. It was introduced on the advice of my noble and learned friend, Lord Woolf, and was opened by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Scotland. Will the noble Lord ensure that their advice is taken into account and that a genuinely independent assessment is made, and that it will be not be abandoned simply for cost-cutting reasons, which may appear prudent at the time, but in the long term might not save anything at all?

[Lord McNally]

I hear the “hear, hears”, but of course cost does have to come into all these things. I do genuinely believe that this is being looked at. It is a freestanding experiment, as the noble Lord said, based upon the Red Hook Community Justice Center in New York. The truth is that we are looking at various experiments across the piece, some of which were started by the previous Administration, to find out about the effective administration of justice. I can promise that we are looking for legislative time for a justice reform Bill and that we are also looking at justice delivery in the north-west. The inquiry that the noble Lord, Lord Storey, asked about will be seen as a freestanding contribution without prejudice to the decisions that we have to make in that area.