Criminal Justice and Courts Bill

Robert Neill Excerpts

Monday 1st December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

Indeed. I am genuinely baffled as to why the Opposition are so set against many of these reforms when many of their predecessors as shadow Ministers or in government raised many of the same concerns. I will challenge them over one or two of the issues later, because I find their position inexplicable.

Whoever wins the general election will have to take some very difficult decisions in the next Parliament. Those decisions are not ones that any of us would wish to have to take, any more than we in government wanted to take some of the difficult decisions that we have faced in this Parliament, but tough times mean tough decisions—decisions in the interests of this country. And yet, whichever party is in government after next May will face a wave of pressure groups trying to use judicial review to delay decisions, to avoid spending reductions, and to generate publicity for their own cause.

If a group can find a clever enough lawyer, almost any Government decision can be judicially reviewed, and very many are, not necessarily on the basis of specific breaches of specific laws, but far too often on a loose argument that something was not quite right with the consultation paper, that there should have been a bit more consultation, or that a tough decision seen in isolation was irrational. Without undermining the essential core of judicial review, we need to restore common sense to the way in which the judicial review system works, and that is what we are working to do.

[Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree with the important point made by Lord Horam that there is a difference between a balance to protect the rights of the citizen in specific cases and a situation where, sadly, judicial review can be moved through pressure groups to what is effectively a review of the merits, rather than of the procedures, often contrary to the wishes of the communities that are most directly affected?

[Chris Grayling]

My hon. Friend is right. Judicial review has become a vehicle that is used as one of the tools to campaign, to delay and to challenge, not necessarily in the interests of the broader society or the broader community, but because it provides a vehicle to make a point or to delay something for financial reasons. It makes no sense to have a system that can be abused in the way it often is.

We listened carefully to the debate in the House of Lords, and as hon. Members will see from the amendment paper, we have suggested some modifications to ensure that we avoid unintended consequences of what we are working to do. I hope that the House will say clearly today that having agreed those safeguards, we want to see this package of reforms pass into law.

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[Mr Elfyn Llwyd (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

Lords amendments 97 to 102 were carried in the other place to ensure that courts maintained their discretion in determining whether to grant a judicial review by making use of the “highly likely” test. Groups such as Justice have rightly concluded that if these amendments are defeated, it will change the role of judges by inviting them to second-guess how decisions might otherwise have been taken. From his experience, the hon. and learned Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr Cox) has detailed some very potent arguments why the amendments should be upheld. Parliament should never seek to undermine the courts’ discretion; courts should be free to determine whether to apply the “no difference” test, and to legislate otherwise would impede the integrity of our legal system. I therefore support these amendments.

Lords amendments 105 and 106 would allow the courts to consider the circumstances of individual cases in determining whether to grant an application for judicial review, even in cases where third-party information is not readily available. In clause 66, the Government have tried to find yet another means of limiting the circumstances where applications for judicial review can be heard. The amendments seek to ensure that applications can be heard in cases where third-party information is not easily available.

Judicial review is often the only means by which individuals can hold the Executive responsible for wrong -doing, yet the Government are trying to shut down that avenue for redress. The Joint Committee on Human Rights has said it sees no evidence to support the Government’s reforms, and neither does Justice, Liberty, JustRights, Human Rights Watch, the Howard League, Redress, Inquest, Mencap, Amnesty International—the list goes on. Can anyone report which groups actually support the Government in these changes? [Hon. Members: “The Whips.”] Yes, the Whips.

On clause 67, Lords amendment 107 would maintain courts’ discretion over whether to order an intervener to pay the costs of relevant parties and vice versa. As drafted, the Bill would compel the court to order interveners to pay such costs, other than in exceptional circumstances, as we have heard from the hon. and learned Member for Torridge and West Devon. The provisions in clause 67 are among the most disturbing in the Bill. Unamended, the clause would ensure that charitable organisations and individuals with expertise could no longer enrich the opinion of the courts by intervening in cases where their expertise would be of use because they could not justify the risk to their trustees, funders or members of supporting litigation. As the noble Lord Carlile asked in the other place:

“How could trustees reasonably agree to support an intervention when it could result in losing tens of thousands of pounds or more in costs, jeopardising, in some cases, the existence of small charities?”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 30 June 2014; Vol. 754, c. 1607.]

Yet the plans would still allow Departments and corporations with huge funds to intervene and hence play a pivotal part in the development of public law.

I ask the House to reconsider the Government’s proposals in the context of the various and—I am trying to avoid vitriol—crippling reforms to access to justice in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012. As a result of the significant cuts in that Act, more individuals will be looking to charitable organisations for support in getting justice. It seems to me that clause 67 will take away this last resort. I am afraid the Government seem intent on restricting access to justice so that only those with the least to lose can gain redress. Why do they think it necessary to pursue this agenda, which will throw the baby out with the bathwater, despite the perceived misuses of the law relating to judicial review? The hon. and learned Gentleman, a far more experienced lawyer than me, has referred to the time-honoured practice of judicial review—the Wednesbury principles and so on—and the practices in place to ensure that Departments act reasonably in all circumstances. Why should we not uphold the individual’s rights to ensure that Departments act reasonably?

In conclusion, Justice said:

“Punitive and disproportionate, these measures are designed to deter any organisation with limited funds acting as an intervener. In practice, this means that – even in important cases with a constitutional impact which reaches far beyond the immediate interests of the parties - the court will no longer benefit from expert advice and information provided from cash-poor and experience rich charities and NGOs.”

I think that says it all. As we heard earlier, senior judges themselves are on the record as saying that the courts are enriched by the interventions of these people, who know exactly what they are talking about.

[Robert Neill]

I commend to this House the words of the former Lord Chancellor, the noble Lord Mackay of Clashfern, in the other House. He supported the Bill and set out a sensible balance, as did the Minister, Lord Faulks, himself no slouch as a Minister. It is right that those who come to the Queen’s courts in a public hearing should not shield their true identity or who truly funds them. The Government are right to insist on that point.

It is legitimate for Parliament to set the parameters within which the undoubtedly important system of judicial review works. That is what the Bill seeks to do: it strives to strike a fair balance. I hope the House will support the proposals of my right hon. Friend the Lord Chancellor. It is absolutely critical that we have a comprehensible and credible system of judicial review. I want to see that as much as anyone else, but the mission creep of some areas of judicial review, very often for politically motivated purposes, undermines the true purpose of judicial review as a legitimate and important remedy for the individual. I believe that the Government’s proposal, despite the rather hyperbolic—

Criminal Justice and Courts Bill

Robert Neill Excerpts

Tuesday 17th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Champion]

I wish to speak broadly to amendments 23 to 32 to clause 55 in part 4 of the Bill, and to the “highly likely” test on judicial review. I also wish to share my thoughts on the specific proposals for judicial review, based on the recent experiences of the Liverpool City and South Yorkshire regions, which directly affects my constituents. As a precursor, I should say that I accept that the number of judicial review cases has risen in recent years, but I am not certain that the proposed revision of judicial review would give a fair outcome to those parties seeking review, or tackle the reasons why instances of judicial review have increased.

In particular, I wish to address the idea that the likely outcome would be assessed as part of the process leading to the granting of a judicial review, rather than the legality of the process leading to the said outcome. On 7 February the South Yorkshire and Liverpool regions won a joint High Court action that ruled that cuts in European funding were unlawful. Lawyers bringing that action argued that the significant reduction in funding of 65% was disproportionate compared with other areas.

Evidence presented to the Court at the time showed that Ministers allocated €150 million less to Liverpool City region, and almost €90 million less to South Yorkshire, than they had estimated their share to be. Obviously, that could not be fair. It meant that over the next seven years, funding to Liverpool City region worked out at €147 per head, compared with €380 in the previous funding round from 2007 to 2013. A judicial review case was filed in September 2013, and the process, rather than the outcome, was deemed out of order. The judge requested the High Court to order the Government to adjust their allocation of funding from Europe because of the flawed calculation method used to distribute €10 billion from the European regional development and European social funds. Had that decision not been challenged, the funding that would have been allocated to Liverpool City region and South Yorkshire would have been spread across other regions.

Under the judicial review process as it stands, South Yorkshire and Liverpool were right to file for judicial review, as they believed that the process by which the decision was made was flawed. Logic would suggest that if the process behind the decision was flawed, the likelihood is that the decision itself would be flawed. Unsurprisingly, the judge ordered the Government to reconsider the funding arrangement.

The difficulty is that we will never know what would have happened if the Government’s proposals on judicial review had been in place at the time of that specific case. I suspect that the Government, already having a series of funding arrangements in mind, would have granted the same levels of funding to South Yorkshire and Liverpool, regardless of the process under which the funding allocation was decided. If, at the application stage, it was deemed that South Yorkshire and Liverpool would have been likely to receive the same amount of funding, their application would have been taken no further. To be clear: in South Yorkshire and Liverpool, I suspect that the likely outcome would have been assessed as the same in this case, regardless of the flawed process. Therefore, at the beginning of this process, the case may have been unable to proceed—a case in which 3.6 million people living in those regions would have not been able to access €10 billion-worth of funding.

Such considerations—those predictions of likely outcomes—will now become law under the Government’s plans. I have no doubt that in some areas judicial reviews may be seen as wasteful, but at the same time I strongly believe that the case I have referred to would not have made it to court under the new proposals.

Was the process flawed? Yes. Is the outcome likely to be similar? Perhaps, yes. Does that mean that the people of the Liverpool City and South Yorkshire regions should not have been afforded the opportunity to challenge? No. On the slim chance that the outcome would change for them, taking the case to the courts would have seen the two regions immeasurably better off. It is only right that the people of those regions be allowed to challenge that decision.

A faulty process often leads to a flawed decision, and even if the outcome might be the same, we need to consider those rare cases in which the outcome is predicted to stay the same so judicial review is not granted, but the outcome is then prevented from being different. In their current form, these plans would prevent case law from forming based on the one in 100 cases in which the outcome might have been predicted to stay the same but in fact did not stay the same. We are taking the power of the formation of case law away from judges, and we are instead putting the power of decision making into the hands of people less experienced in making such decisions.

I implore the Minister to look at the case of the Liverpool City and South Yorkshire regions as an example of why judicial review should be granted not on the basis of the likely outcome, but on the basis of the process of decision-making. We must allow flawed processes to be challenged, so that for the cases in which an outcome is different, the people involved are granted that outcome, rather than having it snatched away from them before it goes to court.

[Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

I thank the Minister for the constructive way in which he has engaged with me and others on the planning amendments. I welcome the stance that the Government have taken on these matters and I know that welcome is shared by the legal profession and planning professionals. The Minister is right to say that these are not necessarily the most headline catching of measures in the Bill, but they are important and valuable because they are consistent with the approach that the Government have adopted—in this instance, also supported by the Opposition, I am glad to say—towards the rationalisation of the planning process and the speeding up of the process of development.

These measures are significant, because a successful and smooth planning process, including the judicial element of potential challenges, is critical, not only to the legal process but to environmental protection and the economy. One of the problems that has been encountered in the past is that some of the duplications and delays in the system were a disincentive to bringing forward the sort of development that we all want to see. This is an opportunity to rationalise the process, and I am glad that the Government have taken it.

I also thank the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) for his approach in Committee, as well as the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles). I also thank officials in the Ministry of Justice and the Department for Communities and Local Government—some of whom are in earshot—who took my Lazarus-like reappearance on the scene of planning law in good grace and engaged most constructively with me. I also want to thank Richard Harwood QC and other members of the planning and environment Bar who did a lot of work in the drafting of the detail of the amendments.

My hon. Friend the Minister has given me the bulk of the cherry that I asked for in Committee, but the Government have not been able to make progress on a couple of issues. I invite him to be mindful of the need to keep a careful eye on the operation of the planning court, because some matters may be picked up through the civil procedure rules and may provide a constructive means of taking forward further reforms.

[Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

Before my hon. Friend’s fascinating speech terminates too soon, I wonder how much difference he thinks the proposals will make to smoothing planning processes and getting sensible development under way.

[Robert Neill]

My right hon. Friend takes a particular interest in these matters, and we are ad idem—as lawyers would say—on the subject. I think we can achieve a significant saving in time. For example, it will no longer be necessary to bring parallel applications for judicial review and costs, and that will save time and costs, because it is clearly a disincentive to have to bring two separate sets of legal proceedings. Even if they are later consolidated for the purpose of the hearing, costs are involved.

My right hon. Friend makes the important point that there will be a saving in terms of costs to the litigants—the potential proponent of a scheme and those who might have cause to object—and a hidden opportunity-cost saving to the Courts and Tribunals Service. Even if the hearings are ultimately consolidated, there is an administrative burden on the courts in processing the parallel matters. Significant sums—reckoned to be in the millions of pounds—can be saved. That may not seem like a massive amount in the overall scheme of things, but it will be valuable.

I also hope that the proposals will help to change the culture. That is an important point that my right hon. Friend and I have talked about in the past. Litigants in planning matters will be encouraged to resolve matters at the earliest possible opportunity and bring forward cases that have been sensibly brought together.

The setting up of the planning court has been warmly welcomed by the profession, but it has one concern that my hon. Friend the Minister might take back to the Lord Chancellor—and, through him, to the Lord Chief Justice—about the supply of judicial material, if I may put it that way, for the courts. There are a limited number of experienced judges and deputy judges in planning work. Now that we have this new, improved and streamlined structure, it is important that we have sufficient judicial personnel to man the court to carry out the process adequately. It is a rarefied and specialist sphere, although I regret to say that it is not one that I practised at the Bar—probably to my disbenefit, and certainly to the disbenefit of my bank manager. The pupillage in criminal chambers came through before the pupillage in planning chambers that I had also applied for, so I ended up in the same boat as the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Jeremy Wright)—as a criminal practitioner.

One further point on planning may be a deliberate or passing omission. I wish to check with the Minister whether he intends to look, in due course, at the time frame for proceedings under section 113 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004. It would seem logical to try to deal with those matters at the same time, and I hope that it will be possible. That does not appear in the new clause and schedule, which encompass most of the other matters, but perhaps it can be considered in the other place. It relates generally to development plan challenges, which we have not discussed, and I accept that it would raise broader issues, but it may be appropriate to return to the subject at a future point.

The unanimity across the House on planning matters may end when we come to the issue of judicial review. I am afraid that I cannot accept the overblown and overstated arguments made by the Opposition spokesman on that issue. Of course judicial review is important, but it is worth putting it into context. Before I unwisely took the criminal pupillage instead of the planning pupillage, I was a young law student at the London School of Economics in the days of the great John Griffith, who was professor of public law. Judicial review was a virtually unheard-of concept. Although the prerogative orders of mandamus and certiorari go back to the common law, judicial review was scarcely ever used.

It is interesting, and ironic given the stance taken by the Labour party, that the growth of judicial review in its modern form is sometimes dated to the judicial activism of the late Lord Denning at the tail end of the Wilson Government in the ’70s. It was a Labour Attorney-General, the late Sam Silkin, to whom Lord Denning addressed the famous words:

“Be you never so high, the law is above you.”

There were legitimate grounds for extending the jurisdiction. It is ironic, therefore, that the Labour party now seeks to pose itself as the proponent and supporter of unrestricted judicial review. That was certainly not the view of the Labour Government in the 1970s.

None the less, things have moved on. Judicial review is essentially an issue of proportion. I very much doubt that Lord Denning envisaged the concept of judicial review developing from the way he had in mind in that very famous case. There is a real concern—I have seen it as a lawyer, in my time as local government Minister and, before that, as a local councillor—that the growth of judicial review has become an inhibitor to good decision making, rather than, as suggested by the hon. Member for Hammersmith, being a tool to ensure good decision making. I suggest that the reverse has been the case. A number of examples of that can be given.

Let me start at the decision-making level within Government and local authorities. The growth of judicial review has encouraged a culture of risk-aversion in decision taking. All too often, good and honest civil servants and local government officers are restricted in taking what can sometimes be bold courses of action. Ministers can sometimes be counselled against taking bold and radical action because of the risk of judicial review. That harms the governmental process, rather than improving it.

[Mr Slaughter]

I am enjoying all the autobiographical stuff, but I would love to hear why the hon. Gentleman thinks that a remedy that promotes good decision making and careful consideration by civil servants is a bad thing. Should we be having civil servants taking risky and outlandish decisions because they know that they can no longer be challenged? That seems to be what the Bill proposes.

[Robert Neill]

I am sorry to say—perhaps not for the first time—gently, and with the affection of one legal professional to another, that the hon. Gentleman rather misses the point. We all want good decision making and nobody is saying that there is not a role for judicial review. When I listen to some of the rhetoric from the Labour Benches, I am tempted to think that my right hon. Friend the Lord Chancellor is proposing to abolish judicial review. No such thing is proposed and it is nonsense to say so. But there has been a significant degree of mission creep, to use a popular term, in judicial review. It is reasonable to say that that now needs to be rolled back. That is what the Bill seeks to do.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

Does not the hon. Gentleman agree that the real risk here is that those people who are least able to access justice—people with the least means to pay for advice—are the most likely to be squeezed? I hope later to give examples of where judicial review has really helped the little people. The problem with these clauses is that we risk giving ordinary people less access to justice.

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[Robert Neill]

I cannot say that that has been my experience. If we were removing the process of judicial review and challenge, that would be a legitimate criticism. But we are not. To change a threshold around, for example, the “highly likely” test does not exclude a deserving case from seeking remedy. To deal with the issue of interveners does not remove a deserving case from the prospect of remedy through judicial review. If it imposes a degree of discipline in the thinking behind the bringing of such challenges, that is a good thing and we should not apologise for it.

[Julie Hilling]

But the issue is who will pay for the interveners for those people who have least access to finance and justice. Interveners will be allowed but who will foot the bill for people who do not have the means to pay?

[Robert Neill]

With respect to the hon. Lady, it is seldom persons in that category who are the interveners; they are much more likely to be the bringers of the review. I will come to the role of interveners in a moment, but let me finish the point about the way in which there has been mission creep in judicial review and the sometimes damaging effect that that has on the decision-making process.

The situation is a little like what we found with local government finance at one time, when officials tended to play tick the box so that someone qualified for the right number of grants. There is an element of that sometimes in the decision-making process, where decisions are always taken with an eye over the shoulder at the risk of judicial review rather than getting to the merits of the matter. If these clauses help, as I think they will, to move away from that culture, that is a good thing, as it will then encourage imaginative and radical, but always fact-based, decision making. It will always have to be fact-based because, after all, the Wednesbury reasonableness test is unchanged; it remains in any event. There will always be scope for challenge of irrational decisions, or of decisions that are genuinely not based on evidence. But removing the threat of judicial review to the extent that it now hangs over decision makers is sensible and proportionate.

[James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a good point about the impact of the threat of judicial review on local authority decision making. It has almost become the expectation before a decision is taken that it is liable to be judicially reviewed, adding a layer of bureaucracy and a length of time to decisions that sometimes need to be taken in a more timely fashion.

[Robert Neill]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who leads me neatly on to the next point I wanted to make. It is suggested somehow that this is the state seeking to prevent challenge. Very often, those on the receiving end of unmerited judicial reviews are local authorities—democratically elected bodies who find their decision challenged by some vested interests. Very often, that vested interest is propped up by an intervener. That is why the proposed changes are legitimate and proportionate. My hon. Friend is quite right. That is an impediment not only in areas such as development and planning matters, but in relation to other forms of decision making such as housing and other types of policy.

[Sarah Champion]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that good and honourable local authority people sometimes get it wrong and that having relatively straightforward access to judicial review is a good thing?

[Robert Neill]

I am not sure whether you would agree, Mr Speaker. I take the hon. Lady’s point, but I do not think that she follows it through logically. It comes back to this: the basic tests of Wednesbury reasonableness remain. The opportunity for judicial review remains and putting some balance or check in the process to say, “Before you intervene, you have to consider the costs” is not unreasonable.

Any decision maker can, of course, get things wrong, which is why we have judicial review. That remains. But equally, it is not unreasonable to say that when a challenge is brought, those who litigate ought to bear in mind the costs of their doing so. I understand the hon. Lady’s points, which she made eloquently in Committee. I have some sympathy with her, but the Bill does not do what she believes it does. I do not believe it undermines the scope for meritorious judicial review. It is not in the interests of anyone that the courts be clogged up with unmeritorious judicial review cases. There is no doubt that there have been a number of those.

On local government, let me suggest two instances of such cases. It is suggested that those who bring judicial review are often the aggrieved small people. That is not always so. When I was a Minister at the Department for Communities and Local Government, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and I suffered at the hands of CALA Homes in a very famous judicial review decision when we were attempting to carry out the will of the House and, clearly, of the electorate and remove the regional spatial strategies, which were discredited. A judicial review was brought against the Secretary of State and against the democratically elected planning authority, Winchester city council, which had gone through the process of standing up for its residents who did not wish to have a particular piece of land developed. What happened was that judicial review was used by, in effect, a predatory developer. There are many cases around the country where it is the big battalions who will use judicial review against elected local authorities. Redressing the balance is fair in that instance, too.

[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)]

I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s giving way on this point. In Northern Ireland, we have the ludicrous situation whereby one Minister, namely the Attorney-General for Northern Ireland, will take on other Departments to prevent them from implementing decisions that have been taken democratically. Does he agree that we are now in a terrible situation, whereby before a Department takes a decision, it seems to need to have lined up behind it the right person to fight the judicial review, which will inevitably come in any case once the decision is taken?

[Robert Neill]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. As an ex-Minister, I break no confidence in saying that when decisions are being taken, part of the advice will regularly be about the judicial review risks. Anyone who serves in an English local authority will know that part of the significant conversation nowadays is, “Okay, we think this is the right thing to do. How do we defend it against judicial review? We know, even though we have done the right thing, consistent with our democratic mandates, that a judicial review will be coming.” That cannot be in the public interest.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. It is always a delight to enjoy the free-flowing eloquence of the hon. Gentleman as he develops his tutorial, but may I gently ask him to bear in mind that a number of others wish to speak, notably his right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) and the Chairman of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, the hon. Member for Aberavon (Dr Francis), and time is not limitless? Although we are savouring the hon. Gentleman’s delights, all good things must eventually come to an end.

[Robert Neill]

I rather suspect, Mr Speaker, that you have anticipated how my ministerial career came to an end as well, delightful though it was at the time. I am happy to draw my remarks to a close, because I know that my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) has a great deal of expertise on this matter. I will also welcome the contribution of the hon. Member for Aberavon (Dr Francis), not least because his predecessor was a member of my chambers who led me on a number of cases, including some judicial review matters with which he dealt expertly. [Interruption.] I am sorry to have driven you from the Chair, Mr Speaker.

Let me conclude with these thoughts. The judicial process is important for its checks and balances. That position is not being changed by the Government’s proposals; what they are providing is a reality check on the process of judicial review. On the issue of interveners, if someone chooses to intervene in litigation, they should not do so without being aware of the costs that their intervention can bring. That is what we are seeking to do. It is often the intervener, rather than the initial parties, who takes up the bulk of the time in the case. It is logical for someone who seeks to intervene in a case—no one is obliged to do so, after all—to face the discipline of the potential costs.

[Heather Wheeler (South Derbyshire) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making an important point. When constituents write to me about planning inquiries and the like, they want to know the true cost, because ultimately, one way or the other, the taxpayer is paying for all this. The facts must be clearly put out there. I thank my hon. Friend for the argument he is proposing.

[Robert Neill]

I am grateful, and that provides a suitable point for me to conclude. The costs apply not just to individual litigants and therefore to companies and local authorities, because the cost to a local authority is ultimately a cost to the taxpayer, and then there is the opportunity cost to the planning system and the court system that comes from bringing needless judicial reviews. There is nothing in the Bill to prevent a meritorious claim from coming forward and being heard, but it provides some checks and balances in the matter—a reminder that the common law does not exist independently of the House. Ultimately, accountability lies here through Parliament. The judiciary has an important role to play in interpreting the will of Parliament.

Occasionally, I look at judgments in judicial review cases and gain the impression that one or two of the senior judiciary have rather concluded that the common law somehow exists in isolation. The development of case law is important, as suggested, but it should happen within the framework set by this democratically accountable House. We need to redress the balance to ensure that while the House is accountable, a democratically elected local authority is the right primary accountable body in its sphere of competence. I thus commend both the planning and the judicial review provisions.

[Dr Hywel Francis (Aberavon) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), not so much for the content of his contribution as for its tone and humour. I am afraid that I will not be able to match his humour. He beat me to the punch by telling us about his friendship and legal partnership with my distinguished predecessor, Lord Morris of Aberavon. I suspect from the tone of the hon. Gentleman’s contribution that he must have learned it at the feet of my predecessor. The general tone of this debate has been very constructive, so I hope the Minister will respond positively to the constructive contributions.

I particularly commend the contributions of my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) and of the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert)—I was about to call him my hon. Friend—who contributed progressively and constructively to the work of my Joint Committee on Human Rights earlier in this Parliament.

I shall propose my own amendments 42 and 44 and speak in support of amendments 24 to 32 and 36, tabled in the names of my hon. Friends the Members for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) and for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) and recommended by the Joint Committee on Human Rights, which I chair. Let me remind everyone that the Joint Committee is made up of members of all parties and that the majority of its members are from the coalition parties. When a report from our Committee is unanimous, it means that it was supported by Government Members.

My Committee has done a lot of work on the implications for access to justice of the Government’s proposals to reform both legal aid and judicial review, and we continue to take evidence on these important matters. Earlier this year, we concluded a detailed inquiry into the Government’s judicial review reforms. Our report, which came out in April, pointed out—as did my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith in this debate—the crucial importance of judicial review to upholding the rule of law in this country. It is, I believe, one of the fundamentals that seems to be in everyone’s list of “British values”—much discussed of late.

Amendments 42 and 44 were recommended in my Joint Committee’s report. They are necessary to ensure that the Bill does not go too far in curtailing one of the most important developments in recent years, which has increased effective access to judicial review to hold the Government to account. The courts have carefully developed costs capping orders, which are also known as protective costs orders, to ensure that meritorious challenges to the legality of Government action are not prevented by the fear of a crippling bill for costs. In appropriate cases, they remove the disincentive to litigation of the ordinary “winner takes all” costs rules.

Corner House Research, a non-governmental organisation with expertise in countering bribery and corruption, brought judicial review proceedings against the Department of Trade and Industry for not doing enough to counter bribery and corruption through its export credits guarantee scheme. The courts believed that the legal challenge raised important issues of public interest that needed to be decided. The case was, however, brought only because of a costs capping order limiting the costs exposure of this important NGO.

The Government are concerned that the test for providing such costs protection has become increasingly flexible, as a result of which costs capping orders are being granted too frequently. The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice said that they seem to have

“become the norm rather than the exception”.

According to his way of thinking, a lot of well-off campaign groups are bringing cases safe in the knowledge that their costs exposure will be kept down by a costs capping order. My Committee looked into this issue in detail and found the Lord Chancellor’s concern to be exaggerated. The senior judiciary, in its response to the consultation, also doubted the Lord Chancellor’s claim. Other than in environmental cases, where a special cost regime applies because of the UK’s EU obligations, the judges’ experience is that the use of costs capping orders is not widespread.

We welcome much of what is in the Bill on costs capping, including the Government’s decision to put costs capping orders on a statutory footing and to enshrine the common law principles into a statutory code. This seemed to my Committee to be a welcome recognition in principle of the importance of costs capping orders as a way to ensure practical and effective access to justice. We also found that the new statutory code in clauses 59 and 60 is a broadly accurate reflection of the principles developed by the courts, and for the most part merely reflects the restrictions on the availability of costs capping orders that are already applied by the courts.

In one very important aspect, however, the Bill includes a restriction that has the potential to limit very severely the practical effectiveness of costs capping orders. Clause 59(3) provides that a costs capping order may be made by the courts

“only if leave to apply for judicial review has been granted.”

The Government’s justification for this restriction is that only cases with merit should benefit from cost capping orders, and the test of whether a case has merit is whether it is granted permission to proceed by the court. In practice, however, this provision seriously undermines the utility of costs capping orders and may lead to meritorious judicial reviews not being brought because the cost risk is too great.

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[Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)]

The Government tell us that they want to make changes to the judicial review process because too much money is being spent in court and people are making frivolous, vexatious or irrelevant claims, but the statistics do not bear that out. It is true that there has recently been an increase in the number of judicial review cases, most of which have involved immigration. However, under the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, immigration cases now go to the upper tribunal to be resolved. In reality, the number of cases dealt with by judicial review is no greater than it was some years ago. I must therefore tell the Government, with all due respect, that the cost-based argument is complete hogwash. Something else is motivating the Government and, in particular, the Secretary of State, who has made the telling comment that judicial review is generally

“a promotional tool for countless Left-wing campaigners.”

In his speech, the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) listed a number of organisations that were not of the “loony leftie” variety. The Government’s motivation has become clear, and I think that it is very sad for our judicial system that they are curtailing the basic right of judicial review for the sake of their own political agenda.

The hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) seemed to suggest that virtually all judicial review cases were frivolous and a waste of time, and that we did not need the process. He even made what I would describe as the rather irrelevant political point that in the 1970s the Labour Government had not been particularly pro-judicial review. Governments of all complexions make wrong decisions, but that does not mean that 40 years later a political party cannot change its mind about a matter such as judicial review. I know that the hon. Gentleman is a lawyer, although I do not know whether he still practises.

[Robert Neill]

Does the hon. Lady not understand the point that I was making? It is erroneous to suggest, as the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) did, that placing a restriction or limitation on judicial review undermines fundamental freedoms, Magna Carta and so forth. In fact, it is a fairly recent innovation in our public and administrative law.

--- Later in debate ---

[Yasmin Qureshi]

Walter Bagehot talked about the fact that in our system we needed the three separate bodies—the Executive, the judiciary and obviously Parliament—and that all three must be strong to be able to act as a check on each other.

The fact that we in Parliament are elected does not mean that we do not make mistakes. In the history of Parliament, some appalling pieces of legislation have been passed which have turned out to be wrong. It is only because we have a strong judiciary and a proper judicial review system that those pieces of legislation have been found to be wrong. It is because of that that ordinary people have been able to get justice—the people of this country, the people we are supposed to be representing.

[Robert Neill]

Does the hon. Lady not accept that in a democracy the remedy for bad legislation is at an election, through removing the legislators? That is democracy.

[Yasmin Qureshi]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Neill]

To have the courts second-guessing the legislature undermines democracy.

[Yasmin Qureshi]

rose—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. Both hon. Members cannot be on their feet at the same time. If the hon. Lady gives way to the hon. Gentleman, she must let him make his point before jumping back up. Bob Neill, have you finished?

[Robert Neill]

Yes.

[Yasmin Qureshi]

Although we talk about democracy, bad laws have been created, and we cannot wait five years until the next election for such laws to be changed. I say with respect to the hon. Gentleman that that would be completely wrong. If an election takes place tomorrow and a bad law gets passed, are you really saying our people should have to wait five years and change the Government?

[Yasmin Qureshi]

I entirely agree with that. Those of us who have been practitioners of law—a few such Members are present—will know that since coming into existence judicial review has been revolutionary for our country. We do not have a written constitution, and Lord Woolf has said:

“In our system, without its written constitution embedded in our law so it can’t be changed, judicial review is critical”

and the Ministry of Justice is showing a

“remarkable lack of concern for the precision of the facts”.

You might say, “Well, maybe Lord Woolf has an agenda here because he’s a lawyer and perhaps he wants money to be available,” but I am sure that highly respected individuals such as Lord Dyson and Lord Woolf, who understand the issue about the public purse as well legal matters, would not be saying these things if they did not believe that these parts of the Bill are fundamentally wrong.

In the 21st century, when we have now got a society that is fairer and kinder to its people, it is sad to have a go at people who are challenging the might of the state. Local authorities, institutions and Departments are still more powerful than the individual litigant or even pressure groups. You may not agree with a pressure group’s policy, but they are not as strong as the might of the state, and we should always have equality of arms. That is one of the fundamental principles of our law. You cannot have one side—local authorities and Departments—with all the money at its disposal and the best legal brains available against the ordinary person on the other side who has none of those benefits, or even pressure groups, who often do not have enough money to be able to spend hundreds and thousands of pounds on top barristers. They therefore cannot afford to lose.

We have to have parity of arms, instead of the state effectively using this opportunity to strangulate and stop the individual—the little person—or even the pressure group, many of which represent a group of our people who are interested in an issue. Pressure groups do not exist just for themselves: they are there because a whole lot of people in the country object to something or feel that there is a problem with an issue. They do not have the resources and they are being strangulated, yet the hand of the state is being strengthened.

I am surprised that a Conservative Government are trying to do this, as they have always taken pride in protecting liberties. What you are doing through all the various provisions and the changes being made to the judicial review, however, is effectively preventing the ordinary person from challenging the decision.

We say that judicial review will somehow make civil servants or public officials think, and wonder whether they might be challenged. Well, I think that is right. In a proper democratic system, local authority or state civil servants should be thinking about the effects of their actions. They should not be above the rule of law. They should be thinking about whether everything is right or not.

As a lawyer who has done some judicial review cases in my life and as somebody who worked in the Crown Prosecution Service as an in-house lawyer, I think it is right that a decision made by a prosecutor should be subject to challenge. When I am making my decision on whether a case should or should not proceed, it is right that that should be able to be challenged, because that would make sure I did my job properly as well as holding me to account. That is very important in our system. Civil servants and local authority officials absolutely should have to look over their shoulder to see whether they are making the right decision, because at the end of the day they are paid by the state and they are supposed to represent and govern our country in a proper way. If they are acting properly, professionally and honestly, they have nothing to worry about from judicial review. Only people who are not acting properly should be worried about judicial review.

[Robert Neill]

What would the hon. Lady say to the residents of Wickford near the Dale farm estate whose local council was found by the courts to have acted entirely properly, but removal of a Gypsy Traveller site was delayed for years by the abuse of the judicial review process? What defence does she have for those people?

[Yasmin Qureshi]

I am not going to talk about individual constituents in particular constituencies, and I cannot comment on their issues, but your using that example as a reason to constrain judicial review is not very credible. In doing so, you are detracting from the seriousness and importance of judicial review. By introducing this provision, you are effectively reducing the number of cases in which judicial review can take place. It is very easy to say, “The local authority got involved but the Traveller sites could not be removed and there were delays”, but that is just one small aspect of judicial review. You and I know—

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[James Morris]

Nobody is arguing that there is not an important balance to be struck, taking into account, as others have pointed out, the importance of democratic accountability for decisions taken. Nobody is arguing that judicial review has no role to play in this context, but there is a strong argument to be made about where the culture that has developed is leading. I speak regularly to local authority chief executives, and it is having a very detrimental impact on local authorities’ ability to make long-term decisions.

[Robert Neill]

My hon. Friend is making a very important point. Does he agree that the concern about the growth of judicial review, rather than the concept, is shared by all parties in local government—I have spoken to local authority leaders, of all parties—and by many experienced chief executives and senior officers?

[James Morris]

I agree with my hon. Friend. We need to take measures such as those in the Bill, which I support, to get the balance right in respect of the culture that has developed over the past few years.

As has been mentioned, there is the question of the public perception of what judicial review actually is. As a result of the culture that has built up, there is a public perception that if a judicial review goes ahead, the decision will somehow be overturned. It is felt that the review is to do with the decision rather than with a discussion about the process. For example, a group of residents in my constituency approached me about a judicial review of a fire authority’s decision, which I did not think had been great, to close a local fire station. They raised funds to take the matter to the first stage, but even if they had successfully demonstrated that the authority had not followed due process—I am not a lawyer, but on the face of it there were some grounds for saying so—the likely outcome of their spending something north of £100,000 on a judicial review would have been the authority simply re-presenting the same proposal. That example shows that we must be careful about raising public expectations about what a judicial review can achieve.

Criminal Justice and Courts Bill

Robert Neill Excerpts

Monday 12th May 2014 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Wright]

My hon. Friend makes an interesting point. He has a good record of campaigning on these issues, in which he takes considerable interest and has significant expertise, and we will certainly consider what he said. The review will allow new ideas such as his to be considered in the context of the sentencing framework.

[Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

I agree with my hon. Friend that the development of the arguments we have heard in respect of other clauses reinforces the need for a more comprehensive look at the issue. In the light of the reassurance he has given to my hon. Friend the Member for Rochford and Southend East (James Duddridge), will he also ensure that the review looks not only at the basic sentencing powers but at the operation of the penalty points system, which we know is complex and sometimes itself creates incongruities?

[Jeremy Wright]

I think I am in danger of conducting the review this afternoon, but I agree with my hon. Friend, and all these things are worth considering for inclusion in the review. I simply sound this note of caution: if we review everything, we will exceed the proposed time scale and perhaps not deal with the concerns raised earlier by my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert). None the less, I am sure that there is a great deal that can sensibly be considered.

I return to amendment 8 and point out that proposed new section 16C of our provisions already provides for cases in which the single justice proposes to disqualify a driver. The single justice must give the accused an opportunity to make representations about the proposed disqualification. If the offender fails to take up the opportunity to make representations, they may be disqualified in their absence. That is, of course, no different from what may occur under the magistrates court process. At present, offenders are disqualified in their absence when, having been warned about the purpose of the hearing, they do not attend court. When the defendant wishes to make representations, however, and that would include representations about exceptional hardship, the single justice must issue a summons to the defendant requiring them to appear at a traditional magistrates court. Any exceptional hardship plea may therefore be dealt with in open court, and the court would have the opportunity to investigate the defendant’s driving history. The Bill therefore already makes appropriate provision for the situation that the hon. Member for Bolton West is concerned about.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Slaughter]

If the Minister waits, all will become clear.

We do not quarrel with the seriousness of any of the matters under discussion on Report. My hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) will raise our concerns about offences against armed forces personnel—matters that we, unlike the Government, flagged up in Committee. This is a sloppy way of making law and nowhere was that more clear than with last week’s announcement that new offences and new sentences for existing offences on some driving matters would be tabled today. At the same time, as the Minister has conceded, the Secretary of State announced that a full review of all driving offences and penalties would be carried out over the next few months.

Let us pause there for a moment. If the Government are reviewing all offences over the next few months, why do they need to change the law for one offence and introduce a brand-new offence in the Bill? I suspect that my curiosity is shared by the Minister, who replied to the debate on 27 January. We heard nine compelling and moving speeches on that day from Members on both sides of the House explaining how their constituents had been victims of dangerous, careless, drunken or disqualified drivers but how the culprits had escaped with what appeared to be lenient penalties. He carefully and courteously, as is his wont, lowered expectations, saying:

“Having emerged blinking into the daylight from the usual channels into my current job, I know better than to commit parliamentary time for any purpose”.

He added sagely:

“It is important for us to consider these matters in the round, and to do so in a way that does not create discrepancies in the sentencing system.”—[Official Report, 27 January 2014; Vol. 574, c. 731.]

Four months later, time has been found to do exactly what the Minister warned against.

The Minister might ask whether that matters if we are moving in the right direction. The groundswell of opinion expressed in that debate and outside the House is that the two-year maximum sentence for causing death by disqualified driving is inadequate, as it leads to an average sentence of about nine months in custody. We agree and we will not oppose the new clause, but is 10 years the correct figure? It is double the maximum for causing death by careless driving, arguably a more serious offence as the quality of driving is an issue. Equally, it seems anomalous to create an offence of causing serious injury by disqualified driving when no equivalent is proposed of causing serious injury by careless driving or even causing serious injury by careless driving while under the influence of drink and drugs—an offence with a maximum sentence of 14 years when it causes death.

Why has causing death by disqualified driving been singled out? As the Minister said, the current offence brackets causing disqualified driving with driving without insurance and driving without a licence. Will causing death by driving in those two circumstances remain punishable with a two-year maximum sentence? I am afraid that this bears all the hallmarks of the Secretary of State’s penchant for plucking new offences out of the air and pushing them forward to show what a tough guy he is. There were only 13 convictions in the last year for which figures are available for all offences of causing death while disqualified, uninsured or without a licence. How many cases will the change in the law affect?

Perhaps the Secretary of State will say that the change is intended as a deterrent to others, but how many disqualified drivers will be put off by the thought that they might kill or cause serious injury? There is no evidence of careless or dangerous driving in their cases, because they would then be charged with those offences. That brings me to new clause 22, tabled in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley Central, which we believe is a more effective way of tackling the problem that the Secretary of State and the Minister have rightly identified.

More than 7,000 people were convicted of driving while disqualified in 2012, a substantial reduction since 10 years previously but still a great number of people who wilfully defied an order of the court and carried on driving while banned. Our answer is to make the offence of driving while disqualified triable either way, with a maximum penalty of two years’ imprisonment for conviction on indictment, which the Magistrates Association has been calling for for some time. Currently, the maximum penalty for driving while disqualified is six months and it is a summary only offence. Although that might be sufficient for a first or even second-time offender, it does not address the minority of recidivist offenders who have multiple disqualifications on their record and carry on driving oblivious to the courts.

[Robert Neill]

I understand the point the hon. Gentleman is making, although I do not totally agree with it. Limiting the penalty to two years might reflect some aggravation that arises in instances of disqualified driving which give rise to injury. Does he not concede, however, that even if we allow for aggravation in respect of sentencing, a two-year sentence probably would not be enough to reflect justice for an injury that might be life-changing but which stops short of involving the offence of causing death by dangerous driving? The person’s life would be ruined for keeps, which would not be captured adequately by a two-year sentence, as under his proposal—four years might be nearer the mark.

Oral Answers to Questions

Robert Neill Excerpts

Tuesday 18th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that unmeritorious judicial reviews not only bring the judicial system into public disrepute but are frequently a significant financial burden on democratically elected local authorities, which might find their attempts to carry out the wishes of their electorate frustrated?

[Mr Vara]

That is absolutely the case. Some local authorities are trying to help the economy through projects, only for them to be frustrated by unmeritorious claims. The taxpayer loses out because of the extra costs, the efforts of those who wish the projects to make progress or to have employment in them are stifled and, ultimately, the economy does not recover in the way that it ought to. That is what we are trying to achieve, to put right the consequences of the Opposition’s time in government.

--- Later in debate ---

[Damian Green]

I will, of course, look at that individual case. However, I hope that the hon. Lady and the House will acknowledge that the Government are committed to funding 15 new rape crisis centres; that the 14th and 15th new centres will come on stream this year; and that we have provided an extra £4 million to allow that to happen. Inevitably, there are bids that cannot be met for perfectly valid reasons, but I will take a look at that case.

[Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend look again at the adequacy of the terms of reference and working practices of the Office for Judicial Complaints to deal properly with redress in the very rare cases in which our judiciary do not come up to the proper standards of behaviour?

[Chris Grayling]

I am happy to do so. Perhaps my hon. Friend will give me a bit more information on the detail of his concerns. I think that the office does a good job. My experience from my 18 months as Lord Chancellor is that it makes sensible decisions and takes a sensible approach when such issues arise. One hopes that they will not arise often, but I will look at his concerns.

Criminal Justice and Courts Bill

Robert Neill Excerpts

Monday 24th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

Typically, these will be uncontested cases. A contested case in which the defendant wished to plead not guilty would not be dealt with outside the courtroom. These are simple cases in which there is no doubt about the defendant’s guilt because the defendant has pleaded guilty, and which can be dealt with out of court by magistrates, without the formality of a court hearing.

[Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend not agree that in most instances not only is the case uncontested, but the defendant does not even turn up, and there is then the rigmarole of a prosecutor reading out the facts to an empty courtroom? In those circumstances, it is obviously sensible to adopt the proposed reform.

[Chris Grayling]

I would say to my hon. Friend, and indeed to the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), that if someone wishes to contest a charge, it is probably a good idea for him to turn up in court to do so.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Grayling]

We assess carefully each immigration case that comes before the Border Agency and there is then the opportunity to challenge in the courts, but just how many times are we going to give people the right to appeal? There have been many cases, and indeed occasions when our judges have said, “This is not good enough”, where the case has simply been brought as a delaying tactic to stop people being asked to leave the UK—that is in nobody’s interest.

[Robert Neill]

Will my right hon. Friend take on board the fact that, unfortunately, previous interventions have highlighted the error that has crept into many people’s thinking? They believe that rather than being a process of procedural review—an administration of the propriety of decision making—judicial review should be used as a re-run of the merits. That is not what it was ever intended to be.

[Chris Grayling]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right about that, which is one reason why we have sought to ensure that cases where there is no material likelihood of a different decision having been taken cannot simply be brought on a technicality relating to the process. If a minor error of procedure has been made, the decision should not be able to be delayed for months and months when there is no realistic prospect of a different decision being reached.

The Government have consulted extensively on this package of reform, and we did so with an open mind. Concerns were raised, both practical and principled, about proposals to reform “standing”, which determines who can bring a judicial review, and I have decided not to pursue those. Judicial review must continue in its role as a check on the powers that be. It is an important tool for our society which allows people to challenge genuinely wrong decisions by public authorities. These reforms do not change that, and I would not want them to do so. They make it more difficult for pressure groups simply to use judicial review as a campaigning tool and for those with a financial vested interest—for example, one developer judicially reviewing another—to delay a process of investment, to derail a competitor or to derail a major project that is strategically and economically in the interests of this country.

The Bill contains a vital set of proposals as we work to deliver a justice system in which people can have confidence—a justice system that deals robustly with those who repeatedly commit crimes. The Bill toughens sentencing for some of the most serious crimes and ensures that serious offenders will be released only if they can show that they are no longer a threat to society. The Bill requires offenders to contribute to the cost of the criminal courts, and allows us to test a new approach to youth custody and to reduce the delays and expense involved in unmeritorious judicial reviews. The Bill draws a line under Labour’s soft justice culture, provides hard-working families with greater safety and security in their communities, and removes barriers to economic growth. I commend it to the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sadiq Khan]

I do not subscribe to the view that citizens have a role to play only once every five years. They have a role to play in an active democracy between elections as well. That is the difference between the hon. Gentleman’s majoritarian view and mine. The irony is that the Foreign Secretary gets it. If the hon. Gentleman had listened to the Foreign Secretary in the statement on Ukraine and Syria, he would have heard what he had to say. It is a shame that the Justice Secretary and the hon. Gentleman did not listen to what the Foreign Secretary said about the importance of the rule of law.

[Robert Neill]

rose—

[Sadiq Khan]

I shall make some progress, but I shall come back to the hon. Gentleman.

I hold up my hands up as a former Minister and admit that for someone who is part of the Executive the threat of being judicially reviewed can sometimes feel like a nuisance. Judicial review can be a pain for decision makers, but that is the point. It is about making sure that decisions are taken properly, follow due process and are within the laws of the land. If we expect our citizens to abide by the rule of law, the Government should be no different, which means acting lawfully, not scaring off opponents before the game has begun, or imposing huge consequences on the team that loses. To stretch the sporting analogy further, under their proposals, the Government would be playing down a steep slope for the full 90 minutes, defending a much smaller goal than the one into which they would be trying to score. Their opponents would be running uphill for the whole game, and have a much smaller set of goalposts to aim at. That is not fair, and it is not justice.

It is worth noting what is not in the Bill. Despite all the Government’s recent talk about victims, there is nothing about a victims law—what a missed opportunity—which will disappoint not just victims and potential victims but no doubt the hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel), who has been vocal in her support for the victims law proposed by Labour. Instead, victims and witnesses will have to wait for a Labour Government to serve that law to stop them being ignored and trampled by the justice system. There is also little in the Bill to address the specific problems faced by women, those with mental health problems and ethnic minority communities in our justice system.

I have to congratulate the Lord Chancellor. He has achieved something in his short time in the job that few of his predecessors could ever have dreamed of: he has managed to alienate every part of the justice system. Prison staff are more under pressure and threatened in their day-to-day work environment than ever. Probation staff feel betrayed. They have done all that has been asked of them, then been sold off to the likes of those serial under-performers, G4S, Serco and A4E. Legal professionals are horrified at the erosion of access to justice and the insulation of the powerful from challenge that has happened under the Lord Chancellor’s watch. Charities and community groups are demoralised at the ignorance shown towards the European convention on human rights and the Human Rights Act. Things are so bad that there is even the threat that the legal profession might boycott the Justice Secretary’s planned celebrations for the 800th birthday of Magna Carta next year. What is more, he has managed to deliver the first ever industrial action by barristers.

The Bill is all about trying to create some work for rebellious, bored and troublesome Back Benchers, some of whom we will hear from later. The Bill may well succeed in doing that, but the idea that it will do anything substantive to reduce crime, help victims to be at the centre of the justice system, improve our courts system or keep our communities significantly safer is a joke, a bit like the office of Lord Chancellor has become with this incumbent.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Huppert]

No, they do not.

[Robert Neill]

Their vehicle excise duty.

[Philip Davies]

Their vehicle excise duty. I am afraid that the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) has reinforced his reputation for concentrating on the things that are not important, and not concentrating on the things that are.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Angie Bray), an old colleague on the London Assembly where we attempted, among other things, to scrutinise the Metropolitan Police Authority in its early days. I strongly agree with the sentiments she expressed.

I am delighted to see the shadow Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan), back in his place. With respect, his was very much a speech of two parts. When I listened to the first part, I thought, “Well, he clearly wants to stand for Mayor of London because he is doing a south London knockabout comic turn.” I was glad that he turned serious in the second part, although I do not agree with all of his analysis. I gently say this to him: keep the day job going because potential Mayors of London are now expected to be various turns, comic or otherwise, from north of the river rather than south. Leaving aside our political disagreement, I say with respect that the one thing that did trouble me—I hope it was perhaps a slip of the tongue—was his saying, as it certainly appeared to a number of Government Members, that judicial review should be capable of challenging primary legislation. I cannot believe that is what he meant to convey.

[Sadiq Khan]

indicated dissent.

[Robert Neill]

Given how the right hon. Gentleman shakes his head, I will take his word on that. I think we all accept that judicial review was not and never should be intended to challenge the will of Parliament. It does, though, have a legitimate role in relation to secondary legislation and the Executive, and I will return to that later. I am grateful that he has clarified his view on that point, which troubled me because it was surprising, if I may put it that way.

I warmly welcome the thrust of the Bill and congratulate my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State on introducing it. I will not touch on all parts of the Bill, but I want to discuss some areas that remind me of my past life—although that may be a dangerous thing to talk about at too much length in this House—and professional experience, namely the 25 years or more that I spent at the criminal Bar. I am delighted with some of the changes to make sentencing more realistic. I do not take the view that sentencing must always be draconian and that all those convicted in the courts are beyond a degree of redemption. That is clearly not the case. It is important, however, that sentencing has the confidence of the public, the victims and the majority law-abiding community. It is also worth remembering that sometimes the families of offenders are themselves victims to a degree. It is very important to have confidence in sentencing, so the greater transparency proposed by the Bill with regard to the amount of time served and the consequences of bad behaviour is a valuable step forward.

The same applies to the use of cautions. I have sympathy with the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) and the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner), who is another former practising barrister and to whom I apologise because I was not present to hear his speech. It degrades the value of cautions to use them for serious offences for which any ordinary, right-thinking member of the public—in other words, to use the famous lawyer’s test, any man or woman on the Clapham omnibus—will conclude that they were never intended to be used. Cautions were intended to be used for trivial matters, so using them for more serious offences degrades their value in those areas where they have a legitimate role. I hope there will be no suggestion that there has been any pressure in terms of targets or resources. The Government have taken a step in the right direction.

A logical step on from that is recognising the importance of making best use, at all levels, of the available judicial resources. Just as it is important to use such resources to prosecute really serious crimes before the court, rather than use cautions, it is entirely sensible for the Bill to free up resources to deal with what are not regulatory, but essentially non-contentious—in so far as anything can be in the criminal justice system—matters. Many of us with experience of the criminal Bar will have been instructed as young, junior advocates on behalf of the prosecution—no doubt happily for us and our fortunately moderate bank balances—to read through and prove a whole list of traffic offences, even in instances of non-appearance. The empty courtroom could have been used for other cases, but time and again we would read out section 9 statements and produce various certificates of conviction that the traffic lights were working properly and heaven knows what, just to prove a case that nobody was arguing about. Removing that anomaly is an important, valuable and major step forward. I will not repeat the point that there are sensible safeguards built into the system for those who want to argue their case.

By way of digression, once upon a time there was—I think there still is—an offence of failing to provide a statutory statement of ownership. In those days, my earnings at the Bar were greatly boosted by being standing counsel to Croydon council and invariably turning up to prosecute such matters without anyone turning up to contest them. That is an extreme example, because sometimes cases got appealed and nobody turned up at the Crown court to prosecute the appeal either. Removing that sort of nonsense from the system has to be in everybody’s interest.

Ensuring that there is an open and publicly accessible record of the system is sensible, because it means that we need not clog up a fully equipped courtroom with witness facilities and other valuable resources that could be used for a contested hearing. It could be done in an anteroom and the press could be provided with access to the results. That is an entirely sensible and proportionate response, for which the Government are to be commended.

A number of the other changes are very useful and sensible. I will not go into the details, but I welcome the changes in relation to rape. Pornographic depiction of rape does seem an obvious matter to deal with—Rape Crisis South London in my constituency has done a lot of work on it—and I am glad that that has been recognised. I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Central and Acton would agree with me that there may still be gaps in the adequacy of sentencing for other sexual offences, particularly in relation to videos and DVDs of various kinds—we might be able to look at that in due course—but the change is a valuable step forward that we should all welcome.

I am pleased about the arrangements for costs. I was very often instructed to apply for costs against a convicted defendant. That was fine as far as it went—effectively, only the prosecution costs could be awarded, and whatever legal aid contribution was made—but it is legitimate to go further. After all, we are talking about only those who have been convicted. It is currently regarded as a legitimate and proper means of sentencing to give a discount for a guilty plea to reflect, first, remorse; secondly, the potential avoidance of trauma for witnesses; and thirdly, the saving to court time. Those are all legitimate factors, and if we regard the saving of court time as a legitimate factor in the equation for a penalty in the broadest sense, it is not unreasonable to calculate costs more realistically in terms of the totality of court time, rather than just of prosecution costs or an amount towards legal aid. The very sensible change will add to the transparency of the arrangements being put in place.

The change in relation to jurors is valuable. I am particularly pleased about that because my constituent Mr Graham Pound from Bromley specifically raised that matter with me. I received a very sympathetic response from the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, who was of course not able to indicate exactly what he had in mind, but I know that Mr Pound is delighted with the outcome, which reflects reality. Although I accept that there are differences, I have a measure of sympathy with the suggestion that we might go further. My only query with the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley is that there is a difference between the burden of jury service that we expect someone to undertake, which is generally for a comparatively limited period, and the burden of being a busy member of the bench in a busy magistrates court or of sitting full time as a circuit judge.

In relation to the judiciary—I suspect that such matters could be dealt with by regulation—there might be an advantage in bringing back some recently retired senior circuit judges to sit in the Court of Appeal, as they perhaps did before they retired, while sparing them the burden of presiding over their home courts as resident judges. That might be a very modest first step in maintaining a degree of judicial independence, particularly in the criminal system, because by no means all High Court judges will have the degree of experience of criminal cases at first instance and of regularly sentencing heavy crime that those recently retired circuit judges have. I commend that thought to the Minister as a means of building on the welcome proposals about juries.

I also welcome the changes on the whole question of judicial review. A different part of my experience kicks in on that—as a local councillor and a Minister. I accept the proposition made by the shadow Secretary of State and other Opposition Members that there is a role for judicial review, which can have the salutary effect of concentrating the mind of decision makers and those who advise them. After all, it is not proposed to abolish judicial review, but, equally, it must be approached with a degree of proportion. One difficulty has been a lack of balance and proportion in its use. That is a shame, because there is a risk that a valuable tool, which can be a safeguard for individuals, may become discredited by overuse and exploitation by individuals or groups for what are often seen as partisan, if not party political, means or entirely self-serving ones. The Bill rightly seeks to rectify that.

I am perhaps even older than my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly), who talked about being a young Bar student in the ’80s and learning about administrative law. When I did my law exams in the 1970s, judicial review was a very recent concept. It was coming back into existence, thanks largely to Lord Denning. Nowadays, we do not consider him to have been a judge with the most liberal of sentiments, but he was seen as rather radical in those days.

Until the late ’60s and early ’70s, there was virtually no administrative law in this country. It is therefore slightly over-egging the case for judicial review to say, as even some distinguished judges do, that it has been an inherent part of our system since Magna Carta. That is not correct. It has grown up from a root that was in the common law. Through the various prerogative orders, such as mandamus and certiorari, it was constructed by judges into a judicial tool as society and government action became more complex in the ’50s and ’60s. It is a fairly recent feature of our system and it fulfils a valuable role.

Judicial review came into existence because the system needed to be flexible. Perhaps Members will remember Lord Denning telling a former Labour Attorney-General,

“Be you never so high, the law is above you.”

That was in reference to a Labour Government behaving in a peremptory fashion. If the system needed to be flexible at that time, it is equally reasonable to say now, when the industry that has grown up around judicial review has become so oppressive that it has overbalanced the system, that we should pull it back into proportion. That puts what the Secretary of State is seeking to do into its proper context.

Some of the proposals are sensible and straightforward. I do not think that anyone disputes that it is sensible to have the same time limit for a judicial review as for a statutory challenge under the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. Nobody has argued with the reduction in the time limit, because anybody who has dealt with planning matters knows that, particularly now that there has to be so much pre-application disclosure and there can be written representations from objectors and so on, the issues are very well crystallised in people’s minds. I suspect that that is not the most contentious issue.

There are issues with clause 50, although I do not share the criticism of it. I approach it from a slightly different angle. It seems to me that it is not unreasonable to move from the current inevitability test to a test of whether the outcome is likely to have been affected. Ironically, the current inevitability test seems to import something rather like the criminal burden of proof of reasonable doubt—or perhaps an even greater burden of proof—into what is essentially a civil procedure. It is not unreasonable to move to something that is closer to the normal test in civil proceedings of the balance of probabilities.

It is argued that we must act almost punitively to be a constraint on bad decision makers. However, I would have thought that clause 50 contained enough flexibility to provide a more balanced approach, to prevent judicial review from falling into disrepute when somebody wins on a purely technical error by a decision maker that was under no circumstances taken in malice or made negligently, and that would under no circumstances make any difference to the outcome. It is not unreasonable to say that the costs of a judicial review should not be fully provided in those circumstances.

We generally expect much more transparency in decision making in this country. In relation to clause 51, I think that that ought to apply, to a degree, to judicial decision making and to the judicial process generally. Because more and more judicial reviews are, in reality, supported and funded by groups—sometimes lobby groups, sometimes commercial groups that may have an interest—it is legitimate for the taxpayer and law-abiding citizens to have an idea about the source of that funding and, to some degree, the real motive behind the judicial review. Clause 51 is a proportionate means for dealing with that. Similarly, interveners must be aware that a considerably greater cost will occur through a legitimate intervention, especially when—as we have all seen in some cases—the intervener may become the principal driver of the judicial review, and do much more to extend the length of the hearing than the initial parties. Under those circumstances, it is not unreasonable that they should bear the bulk of the risk, since they have driven the bulk of court time as a consequence of the way they pursued their intervention. I would argue that the Bill contains a balanced package on judicial review that should commend itself to the House.

I will not dwell on what might have been in the Bill as I think what it contains is good and valuable. I am, however, a little tempted by the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley on the accountability of judges. I do not think the Bill is necessarily the right vehicle for that, but we are talking generally about improving the accountability of decision making, and about accountability and transparency within the system. Given that judicial decisions—in judicial review or otherwise —sometimes affect not only large bodies or the state but can affect individuals, there is perhaps an argument to be had about whether our current arrangements to ensure consistency of professionalism in the judiciary are adequate.

There is a strong case for saying that Parliament must be wary of trespassing on the independence of the judiciary. However, I had in my casework a constituent who was seriously aggrieved in the national press because of an inaccurate judgment. In the obiter dicta of the case, the judge quoted wrongly from the papers before him, but released the judgment to the press, with considerable adverse publicity for the person concerned. There is, therefore, an argument for saying that when the Office for Judicial Complaints says, “Unfortunately that is not within our powers because he turned up and he wasn’t drunk and he wasn’t abusive in these terms. There is nothing we can do about this”, we might think that is not really fair. Would we not expect a professional judge to get the facts right and to have read the papers properly? That is an interesting area to consider.

That brings me to my final point, which is that, ultimately, the court system is about transparency and balance. Sometimes balance shifts one way or another, and it is the job of this House, and Parliament as a legislature, to decide on the appropriate balance in the circumstances in which we find it. I agree with the Secretary of State that the balance has moved too far one way, and the Bill seeks to redress that. I therefore commend it to the House.

Oral Answers to Questions

Robert Neill Excerpts

Tuesday 4th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

I sometimes find the Opposition’s attitude completely breathtaking. It is but two and a half years since they attacked our proposals to reform civil legal aid, saying that the savings should be found from criminal legal aid instead. Now they appear to have done a complete U-turn. Is the right hon. Gentleman prepared to commit in the House today that if a Labour Government are elected at the next election, they will reverse the cuts? I suspect that the answer is no.

[Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

2. What assessment he has made of the potential role of mediation in reducing the number of court cases.

[Dr Matthew Offord (Hendon) (Con)]

9. What assessment he has made of the potential role of mediation in reducing the number of court cases.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Simon Hughes)]

The Government have put in place an extensive awareness strategy, and we believe that the more people can attend mediation, the more significant the impact will be on reducing the number of applications made to court. We have increased the legal aid budget for family mediation. There are data about the amount of mediation that takes place, but we cannot tell specifically who has attended mediation rather than gone to court.

[Robert Neill]

I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on his appointment. Does he agree that mediation is well established in the commercial law field and growing in the family and matrimonial law field, but that we are perhaps missing a trick in two areas? The first is in ensuring that more use is made of mediation in land compensation and related planning disputes. Will he meet me to discuss whether the Bill on High Speed 2 gives the Government an opportunity to promote that and to create greater awareness among fellow Departments, and—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I say to the hon. Gentleman that if he was paid by the word when he was practising at the Bar, he must have become a very rich man indeed.

Legal Aid Reform

Robert Neill Excerpts

Thursday 27th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Karl Turner]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. As far as I know, it is very unusual for a partner in the firm to come out in the early hours of the morning. The important point is this: a solicitor who attends at a police station in the middle of the night is often dealing with extremely serious allegations—sometimes allegations of murder. I have been in that position on a number of occasions, representing clients who are alleged to have committed murder. The solicitor is there on his or her own, whereas the police have advice from the CPS and many officers to assist them. The solicitor is facing all that pressure and is not being paid properly, even under the current arrangements, for his or her expertise.

Of course we accept that in these straitened economic times, cuts have to be made to Departments across the board, but these plans are massively ill conceived. They will, in my respectful submission, irretrievably damage the criminal justice system. I will focus my remarks on price competitive tendering.

[Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

Can the hon. Gentleman help with this point, then? If irretrievable damage is done to the criminal justice system by any change to legal aid, why was it that the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), when Lord Chancellor, said:

“I hope that everyone…will accept that the growth of spending on legal aid seen in the early part of the decade and before is no longer sustainable”?

[Karl Turner]

It is very disappointing, but I suspect the hon. Gentleman has not read the consultation document.

I shall go on to deal with price competitive tendering, but first let me try to bust a myth. There seems to be a suggestion that the Labour Government were particularly generous to criminal lawyers. We were not. Criminal lawyers have sustained cuts to fees from successive Governments. The current proposals are far reaching and, if they go through, they will be horrifically damaging to the criminal justice system. PCT will inevitably lead to the market being dominated by the big multinationals—the usual suspects—G4S, Serco, Capita, and probably the new entrants to the market who have absolutely no experience, Stobart.

The plans are also unconstitutional. They dismiss the notion that an accused might have the right to choose a solicitor. The cavalier ignorance of the Lord Chancellor was exposed when he remarked:

“I don’t believe that most people who find themselves in our criminal justice system are great connoisseurs of legal skills.”

Not only does he dismiss everyone requiring legal advice as a criminal before they have even been charged or had a trial, but he apparently has the naiveté to think that those who come face to face with the criminal justice system are not capable of judging the competence of their own lawyers. This is the “too thick to pick” point. The notion is completely contrary to attitudes applied to, say, health services in this country or education, where choice is deemed essential.

The proposals look to implement yet another changing fee structure. Fees would be cut by 17.5%, on top of the 2011 reduction of 10%. Firms that successfully bid for PCT will have demonstrated that they can provide the services at the cheapest possible rate. This means that advice will probably be provided by less qualified people supervised, perhaps, by a single lawyer. The “stack it high, sell it cheap” mentality will reduce the criminal justice system to a sausage factory where the quantity of cases trumps the quality of the service provided every time.

The proposals specify this in paragraph 23, suggesting that there is no need to be concerned about the quality of provision because work shall not be

“above the acceptable level specified by the LAA”—

the Legal Aid Agency. The plans also perversely propose the same fee to be paid, whether the case is resolved by way of a guilty plea or contested at trial. There is strong concern that this will inevitably lead to undue pressure being put on a defendant to plead guilty when in fact they have a defence.

The proposals will change the sort of people coming into the profession. This is not a plea for so-called fat-cat lawyers, but as the eminent barrister John Cooper QC put it to me yesterday,

“This is recognition, before it’s too late, that if the proposals go through we will be complicit in excluding many young people from less advantaged backgrounds from becoming part of what can only be described as the National Health Service of the Law”.

I have only one minute left. The Lord Chancellor showed his ignorance and lack of understanding of the profession. He showed ignorance today by not attending this important debate, yet the civil servants Box is full to the gunwales. The Lord Chancellor should sit down and meet for the first time the chairman of the Criminal Bar Association, Michael Turner QC, and Bill Waddington, the chairman of the Criminal Law Solicitors Association, and discuss alternatives to these undemocratic, unconstitutional and worrying plans.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

I declare the interest that appears in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests that I am a member of the Bar, although I do not currently practise and have not done so since I have been in the House. For 25 years, I practised in criminal courts around London and the south-east. I defended almost invariably on legal aid rates and when I prosecuted, the remuneration was broadly the same. I have spent enough time at the sharp end to know and value the importance of legal aid in our justice system.

It is because I value legal aid that I find some of the responses to the Government’s consultation deeply disappointing. The criminal justice system and legal aid deserve better than the rather Panglossian view adopted by some Opposition Members and, I am sorry to say, some spokesmen of the profession that all is as well as it can be and that it would horrific to alter it.

More thoughtful Labour Front Benchers of the past have recognised that that view is not tenable. The former Lord Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), not only recognised that the growth in legal aid spending that we had seen over a decade or more was, to use his word, unsustainable, but observed that the profession needed to consider not just efficiencies, but structural change. He pointed out the opportunities that the Legal Services Act 2007 provided for such structural change. It is interesting that there is, yet again, collective amnesia on the Opposition Benches.

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

If we put aside the issues of cost for one moment, because there is agreement that we must always consider value for money, is the hon. Gentleman content that the Secretary of State has conducted the consultation in a timely and proper fashion? The rush in which this matter is being dealt with and the lack of a substantive vote in the House are of real concern, given the issues with which we are dealing.

[Robert Neill]

It seems to me that the Secretary of State has adopted a careful and measured approach. What the hon. Lady says is thoroughly misleading. I am sorry to say that she does herself no service by making such a thoroughly meretricious point.

This matter has been the subject of great public debate. I have referred to the former Lord Chancellor’s speech in 2009, in which he made specific proposals, including bringing in fixed fees and graduated fees as a precursor to best value tendering. He may not have delivered on those proposals, but the ideas have been out there for a long time.

The Lord Chancellor has met the chairman of the Bar Council and the president of the Law Society. It is right and wise that he chooses temperate interlocutors. He has been most willing to engage with Members of this House who are interested in legal matters. The hon. Lady therefore does herself a disservice to characterise the process as rushed.

[Mr Lammy]

The hon. Gentleman is doing a fair job of coming to the defence of the Government, but does he really believe, as a member of the criminal Bar, that it is right to withdraw choice from defendants? That is the fundamental question.

[Robert Neill]

The right hon. Gentleman had no difficulty serving in the Government of Tony Blair, who observed in 2003 that it was time

“to derail the gravy train of legal aid”.

He might like to think about his own background before he criticises anybody on the Government side of the Chamber.

Of course choice is important, but if we are to have a sensible and intelligent approach to choice, we must recognise that when choice is funded by the taxpayer, it should not come with a completely blank chequebook. It is legitimate to look at the way in which choice is delivered. We should link to the question of choice the important commitment to a proper quality standard. I hope that the Bar Council and the Law Society will work with the Ministry of Justice to develop a quality standard to ensure that the lawyers who come forward under this scheme are not just acceptable, but really good and able.

[Mr Raab]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Robert Neill]

I have given way twice, so my time is running out. I am sure that my hon. Friend will forgive me.

There might be different means by which the same objective can be achieved. It might be possible to have some form of panel system. It might be possible to have a different approach to police station work, where there is a strong argument for saying that firms need a guaranteed volume of work to make the business case sustainable, as opposed to the preparation of litigation and the ongoing court work in both the magistrates court and the Crown court. It is not unreasonable to say that choice has to be provided in the context of affordability. We must not be afraid to say that.

We must recognise that the number of people seeking work at the Bar and in the solicitors’ profession has grown greatly, frankly to an unsustainable level. The profession has to recognise that too many people are chasing a diminishing work load. The number of cases that go to court has reduced by broadly a third since I came to the Bar, whereas the independent Bar and the solicitors’ profession have become about three times as large. Something has to give. Let us sit down sensibly and find ways in which that can be achieved.

[Karl Turner]

rose—

[Robert Neill]

I have given way twice and am afraid that I cannot give way any more. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will find another opportunity to make his point.

We should not be sniffy about the development of alternative business models that might deliver the service properly. I recognise the points that have been made about accessibility in rural areas and about the particular types of expertise that may be needed. We could do more within the existing mechanisms to assist people with such issues.

I have come across such a situation in my constituency. Bromley council has set up an online platform in negotiation with reputable and well-established solicitors firms in the area that puts potential clients in contact with a solicitor, who provides the initial advice without any charge. There was difficulty in setting that up because, despite the willingness of the established solicitors firms to take part, the Solicitors Regulation Authority would not provide the necessary regulatory clearance. That is a needless bureaucratic obstacle to a practical solution to a genuine problem. That could sensibly be looked at and I hope the Minister will consider what might be done.

There are other ways in which we can make savings in criminal matters. My hon. Friend the Member for North West Norfolk (Mr Bellingham) has suggested using the independent Bar more within the Crown Prosecution Service. We should look at whether more efficiencies can be made in that body more generally. Perhaps we should look at the operation of the new centralised magistrates courts service. Again, there might be scope for savings.

We spend markedly more on legal aid than any comparable common law jurisdiction. We spend about £39 per head in the UK, compared with about £20 per head in the Republic of Ireland, about £10 per head in Canada and about £13 per head in New Zealand. Those are jurisdictions with the same system and trial processes as we have, but they do it markedly cheaper. I do not believe that a reduction of 10%, which is not out of line with other reductions, is unacceptable.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order.

Rehabilitation of Offenders

Robert Neill Excerpts

Thursday 9th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

My hon. Friend is right that basic skills are fundamental to helping somebody get a job. I hope and expect that we will now have a much greater connection between resettlement services and education courses post-prison. I want somebody who cannot read properly and might have started training in prison to come straight out of prison and into the local college to continue that work. With the kind of support we will be providing, that will be much more likely to happen.

[Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

I warmly welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement. From my 30 years’ experience as a practitioner at the Bar of the criminal courts of this country, I know that the disconnect to which he refers has existed for many years, but has not previously been acted on.

On the specific steps, can my right hon. Friend reassure me that the proposed local partnership arrangements will fully involve local authorities in that process and respect the work being done on community budgeting? Furthermore, does he agree that the work of those in the voluntary and charitable sector, which turns these people’s lives around, is one of the most powerful means of getting messages through to ex-offenders and that their work deserves rather more respect than it appears to be given by the cavalier comments from the Opposition Front Bench?

[Chris Grayling]

I rather agree with my hon. Friend. I can certainly reassure him that we will be looking for organisations that can demonstrate the ability to maintain partnerships where they are necessary. I am at a loss as to why the Labour party does not seem to think that using the expertise of the former offender gone straight to help turn around the life of a younger offender is anything but a very good idea. I ask them to get out of Westminster a bit and visit some of the charities where it is already happening to see the impact. It is substantial and we should make more of it.