Courts and Tribunal Services (England and Wales)

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Thursday 17th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Member for Bath (Ben Howlett) and my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright) for bringing this matter before the House, as well as other Members who have spoken: my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey), the hon. Members for High Peak (Andrew Bingham) and for Newbury (Richard Benyon), my hon. Friend the Member for St Helens South and Whiston (Marie Rimmer), the hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd (Dr Davies), my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin) and the hon. Members for Torbay (Kevin Foster) and for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy).

I will not repeat what hon. Members have said as they have already expressed forensically and eloquently the concerns of their constituents. These debates are remarkable for showing that Members can be consensual, cross-party and precise in identifying problems, and no doubt the Minister will wish to address those raised today, although he might want to pay particular attention to the comments from the hon. Member for High Peak about the consultation being riddled with errors, slapdash and lazy. I know that the Minister, who has been praised by both sides for his care and concern in these matters, will be concerned to hear that. There is evidence to back it up as well.

It is not only hon. Members today, or indeed other hon. Members, who have raised concerns; the Conservative police and crime commissioner for Suffolk said about the proposals for his county:

“It is completely unacceptable. The people at the Ministry of Justice have got to understand Suffolk is a very big rural area and access to justice should not be the preserve of those who are well-off, privileged or the comfortable. The victims need to be at the centre of this. Not some accountant’s pen stuck in Whitehall. These people need to get in the real world.”

The slightly more circumspect chairman of the Shropshire branch of the Magistrates Association said about the Shropshire courts:

“In recent years five small courthouses have been closed in Shropshire market towns. Since these closures took place, the two remaining magistrates’ courts – one in Shrewsbury, one in Telford – have continued to provide an effective service for the whole county. The Association will wish to be convinced that that can continue with only a single magistrates’ court.”

I must bear in mind the spirit in which the hon. Member for Bath introduced this debate. His speech was all the better for being balanced and noting that closures and reorganisation should not always be resisted. I endorse that. Particularly at a time when public money is short, if savings can be made, they should be made, and of course we should look at usage and rationalise where there is chronic under-usage. There are inefficiencies and improvements to be made in the system, and no doubt the Minister will talk about the improvements that he wishes to see or which are happening in digital services. I would add one caveat, however: although technology improves all the time, too great a reliance on it can often lead to more delay than it cures.

We have some historic court buildings, and a certain nostalgia is felt towards many of the older sites and other buildings—going beyond the 19th century to the 18th century—but they are not always fit for purpose in the modern age and some have become obsolete. However, I do not wish to throw the baby out with the bathwater. My right hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan), when shadow Lord Chancellor in the run-up to the last election, talked, as some Members have today, about ways of rationalising the court estate. We have heard about pop-up courts, about using public buildings for judicial and non-judicial functions combined and even about using community buildings, but there is an important caveat: as hon. Members have said, we have to preserve and enhance local justice within communities through the constructive use of courts.

I fear, however, that the Government’s approach tends, sadly, towards mass culls of courts. I have been in this job for more than five years now, and I clearly remember the last major cull in 2010. Then there was a proposal to close 103 magistrates courts and 54 county courts. After the consultation, the closure of 93 magistrates courts and 49 county courts went ahead—in other words, about 90% of the original target. Members should perhaps not get their hopes up too much, but there could at least be a window of opportunity.

If the majority of the proposed closures go ahead, 40% of this country’s courts will close over not much more than five years. That suggests to me that this is more about making savings than about balancing decisions with service. The best way to illustrate that point is to look at the issue of travel times, with which some Members have dealt. I note in passing that during the last closure programme five years ago, Ministers were referring to public transport travel times, whereas now they refer principally to travel times by car. However, many court users will not have access to a car and will be entirely reliant on public transport.

Let me provide, with the help of the Law Society, one or two illustrations of what that will mean in respect of public transport times. I looked at the Courts Service in Wales. Holyhead magistrates court is due to close, and work will be transferred to Caernarfon criminal justice centre, but no public transport users will be able to reach it within an hour. It is the same with Dolgellau magistrates court, as users will be sent to Caernarfon criminal justice centre and none will be able to get there within an hour. Users of the Carmarthen civil, family, tribunal and probate hearing centre will move to a variety of courts, but even so, only 7% will be able to reach their new court within 60 minutes. I do not think that that is satisfactory. Another example, which several Members have mentioned, is that according to the Law Society and the Government’s own figures, closing Scunthorpe magistrates, county and family court would mean that not one user could reach the new court within one hour by public transport. That is not good enough.

What the Government should have done is carry out a pre-consultation to allow a much better-informed document to be produced. Should that sound overly bureaucratic, it is exactly what the Government are doing with their consultation on fixed fees for medical negligence cases. That proposal is out for consultation at the moment, allowing the Government to publish a document next month, I believe. I regard the proposal as completely misconceived, but at least I can hope for a sensible document to debate. If Members and the local justice system had had an opportunity to give their input, we would not have seen some of the howlers or some of the more far-fetched proposals that are in the report.

Let me exemplify the point by looking at the closure of Hammersmith county court. I do so not as special pleading, but because I have a particular knowledge of it. If Hammersmith county court closes, most users will be told to go to Wandsworth county court. For some of my constituents in the south part of the constituency, that will not be too troublesome, but it will be for those in other parts of it. I note particularly that Lambeth county court is also closing. Lambeth is where I spent most of my life when I was in legal practice. It was and is a very busy court. Southwark and Lambeth local authorities could probably keep it going permanently on the basis of housing cases alone. It is closing, however, and most users are likely to be referred to Wandsworth, so Wandsworth will have to be extended and money will need to be spent on building it up.

Another knock-on effect of the closure is that space will be freed up at Hammersmith county court and if Feltham magistrates court is closed, users will be sent to Hammersmith. My hon. Friend the Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra) intervened earlier in the debate, and I know that she has serious concerns about that. Feltham is a poor area and users of that magistrates court will no longer have the local justice to which they are accustomed. I use these cases as an example of what can happen in a built-up urban area, to show that there are many ramifications of these closures that might not always be apparent to a civil servant sitting in Whitehall. I am in no doubt, however, that problems in remote rural areas are in many cases worse.

We know what the negative effects are, or the potential negative effects. For instance, a very good briefing prepared for the debate by the Public and Commercial Services Union raises—not surprisingly—the issue of jobs. I wonder whether the Minister can tell us how many jobs he expects to be lost as a consequence of these reorganisations. The PCS also raises, on behalf of the family court unions, the issue of access to justice, the issue of accessibility, the issue of delay and the issue of additional costs, all of which have been raised by Members today.

However, it also concerns me that the positive effects of the closures, at least in financial terms, are often not realised. As I am sure the Minister knows, I am alluding to the answer that he gave me earlier in the week in relation to the courts that were closed in the previous round, which are still sitting on the Government estate without having been sold. It is costing nearly half a million pounds a year to keep them empty and mothballed. I am thinking especially of the courts at Knutsford and Alton, which account for £9,274 and £9,828 per month respectively. The total cost, currently, of the 13 courts that have been closed and are just sitting there—including the costs of rates, fuel and utilities, facilities management and security, and other property costs—is £478,146 a year. I do not think that that is a particularly good use of public money.

I ask the Minister to look specifically at the points made by the Magistrates Association, which asks him to ensure that there is access for vulnerable people, as well as security for staff and court users, parking facilities for staff and court users, space and resources for various agencies such as the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service and the youth offending teams, childcare arrangements, secure wi-fi, and proper provision for upkeep and renovation costs. I think that without those assurances, the position would be even worse.

This is not the only issue that is currently affecting the magistracy and magistrates courts in particular, those being the bulk of the courts that are facing closure. Not unrelated, I suspect, to the decline in the number of courts is the fact that delays are increasing: it currently takes a week longer for cases to be completed than it did four years ago. Moreover, as a consequence of the disastrous court charge, magistrates are resigning every day and every week because they do not feel that they have the discretion and the ability to do their job properly. I know that that issue is to be debated soon in the other place.

In its briefing, the PCS says:

“We are concerned that the justice system is in danger of becoming so divorced from the people who require access to it, that it can no longer be considered to be true justice.”

I suspect that that resonates with a number of Members who have to explain or justify to their constituents the fact that something that has been taken for granted for centuries in this country—local justice which can be seen and heard in local communities—is now fading fast.