Court Closures: Access to Justice

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Thursday 20th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

I declare my interests as a non-practising barrister and the fifth member of the Justice Committee to speak in the debate, albeit the most junior and recently elevated to that position.

I am sure it is a coincidence, but like me other Members will have found in their inboxes this morning a press release from the Ministry of Justice telling them that £15 million of extra Government funding will be spent to improve more than 200 courts. I am sure the fact that that came out on the morning of this debate is just happenstance. When I read it in more detail and found that revolutionary things are being done such as a new roof on Chester Crown court, a new lift at Swansea civil justice centre and plumbing upgrades in Newton Abbot, I wondered whether it was really something that needs to feature in the popular press at the moment. Is it really so revolutionary that these things are happening? It is £15 million for what is actually basic maintenance.

Perhaps I can contrast all that with the £43 million that the Department made from the sale of Hammersmith magistrates court last year—that is three times the entire budget that the Department has committed to the repairs. If the tales of toilets and buckets from the Chair of the Justice Committee are to be believed, it may be that even that £15 million will be inadequate for the task. The sad thing is that at the time Hammersmith court was closed, it was a fully functioning, well-used, fully accessible building in a convenient location. It had the first ever domestic violence court in the country. Sadly, as nothing has yet happened to it, it is now used only for the filming of crime dramas. The most recent time I was there, I was down in a cell with an entire film crew.

I do not want to share private grief, but I shall briefly outline our experience in west London, because it is emblematic of what is happening across the board. The modern court in Hammersmith was built around 20 years ago, and our old, lovely but ageing Victorian magistrates court later moved into it, followed later by our lovely but ageing Edwardian county court. So be it. Over the past 10 years, the county court work was moved over to Wandsworth to allow work from other closed magistrates courts in London to move into the building. We were then told that all the magistrates court work would go to places as convenient to my constituents as Hendon. Then, last year, we were told that Wandsworth county court was to close and that the county court work would go across London to Clerkenwell. It is difficult to keep up with this: there have been four changes in respect of county court work over a period of around 10 years.

The farce then turns to tragedy. This information has been given to me by court users, and not just users of our own courts. My hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Bambos Charalambous) referred to what is happening at Clerkenwell and Shoreditch county court. I am told that files are being lost there, hearings have not taken place more than a year after work was transferred, telephones are not answered, paperwork has been lost, and bailiffs warrants are being executed despite warrants being suspended. My source says:

“The court is essentially in chaos”,

with 70% of staff being agency workers. This is the court, right on the other side of London, that my constituents are being directed to.

Possession work now forms a substantial part of county courts’ work, because without early legal advice people can often end up homeless when they should have received it at an earlier stage. Most cases relate to benefit problems and defects in the benefits system and therefore involve very poor people. Lots of people now walk to court. My excellent law centre, under director Sue James, co-locates its advice services with food banks and will now have to travel across London to provide those emergency services. This is a very unsatisfactory state of affairs, particularly as nearby Brentford county court has five courtrooms, only two of which are used because only two judges sit there. That in turn makes me suspicious about the utilisation figures that we are given.

[Robert Neill]

The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point. He will have heard, as I have, the concerning reports on a number of occasions from the Criminal Bar Association about under-utilisation sometimes being caused by courtrooms left sitting empty while recorders—part-time judges who classically could be used to fill out the slack—are not offered enough slots in which to sit by the Ministry of Justice. It seems a completely false economy.

[Andy Slaughter]

That is absolutely right. It is the combination of cuts in service that is causing the problems, and one problem is being referenced to another. Under-utilisation is a problem of not having judges to sit in court rather than a problem of not having the cases to refer to that court, as in the example that I have given. That makes me suspicious about the longer hours—the 7.30 to 7.30 window and the flexibility, with warned lists, that means that advocates and clients could be there all day. If there are not enough judges to sit in the courts in the first place, what is the point of courts sitting from early in the morning until late at night? To put it mildly, this has not been very well thought through.

To turn from the particular to the general, it has been mentioned that half the magistrates courts in the country have closed since 2010. One of the first things I did when I was appointed shadow Justice Minister back in 2010 was to respond to that first statement. Little did I know where we were going—that there would be perhaps one cull a year of courts across the country from then onwards. There must come a point when matters have gone too far. One reason for the wholesale, untrammelled closure of courts was obviously austerity. We are not just talking about capital receipts for closed buildings; we are also talking about thousands of staff going—I think another 5,000 staff are due to go over the next two years.

There is no denying that, but the justification given was the now more than £1 billion digitisation programme that was being introduced. The Association of Her Majesty’s District Judges says that half the money has been spent but only a limited benefit has yet been seen or realised. We have seen the sale and closure of courts and the restriction of access to justice before any of the benefits. We are taking a leap in the dark and being asked to trust that the Government have got it right. Frankly, judging by most Governments’ IT programmes and success, I always think we ought to be very sceptical about whether they have got it right. The only consistent thing is the amount spent on management consultants—I see that about £61 million has been spent on them as part of this programme. None of this bodes well.

Some people will say that we can get too attached to our local courts, but local justice is important. It is a cumulative process. The cuts to legal aid, the introduction of fees and the closure of courts are having a detrimental effect on people’s rights to access justice, and to do so speedily, conveniently and fairly. It therefore seems entirely reasonable to ask, as the Labour party does, for a moratorium on closures. It is also reasonable to ask for more evidence of the justifications for any closures and of the benefits that are allegedly going to be gained from the money released by those closures. There is a new Minister in post, who I am sure is looking at the issue with a fresh pair of eyes. I hope we are going to hear very shortly that he will look at these matters again and perhaps come to some different conclusions from those of his predecessors.