Crime and Courts Bill [HL]

Baroness Seccombe Excerpts

Tuesday 4th December 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Seccombe]

My Lords, as a former magistrate, I support all the sentiments of the noble Lord, Lord Beecham. He has expressed the great fears of the magistracy that it is gradually becoming more and more centralised and that the point of local justice is disappearing. The thing that I have a little trouble with is how that fits into this Bill at this time, and I should be very interested to hear what the Minister has to say on this.

[Lord McNally]

My Lords, I am grateful for the contributions from the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, and the noble Baroness, Lady Seccombe. Both have made important points about the concept of local justice and the massive boon that comes from a magistracy rooted in its locality and with a knowledge of the problems of an area and, indeed, of the people of an area. In previous debates I have given a run-out to the names Tommy Croft and Billy Quinn. They both worked in the local ICI works near to where I was born and they were both local magistrates. Everybody knew them and everyone, particularly the youth of the locality, dreaded appearing before them. That is the kind of benefit that we get from a magistracy which is rooted in its locality. But, alas, that was 50 years ago. Both my noble friend Lady Seccombe and the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, are right to say that, in our drive for various efficiencies and for uniform high quality, we must ensure that we do not squeeze out the benefit that we get from a lay magistracy. The magistracy performs a vital role in our justice system and the Government are highly supportive of both lay magistrates and full-time district judges sitting in magistrates’ courts.

In our White Paper, Swift and Sure Justice, we restated our view that the lay magistracy is one of our most important assets. The White Paper also sets out proposals to give magistrates new roles and responsibilities. We are currently working through the responses that we received and we will confirm our plans in due course.

I fully understand the request by the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, for information on the composition of this crucial element of our judicial system. I am delighted to confirm that official data from the Judicial Office are already publicly available on the judiciary website. That includes not only information on the number of lay magistrates in each of the 47 advisory committee areas and the name and number of district judges sitting in magistrates’ courts but also detailed information on gender, age, ethnicity and disability. Those data are published annually on 1 April. The number of lay magistrates in post as of 1 April 2012 was 25,155; the number of district judges sitting in magistrates’ courts was 141, with 134 deputy district judges. Perhaps I can illustrate the level of detail to which this information goes: 51.3% of lay magistrates and 29.1% of district judges were female; 53.9% of lay magistrates and 35.4% of district judges were 60 or over; 4.5% of lay magistrates identified themselves as having a disability; and 8.1% of lay magistrates and 2.8% of district judges were from black and minority ethnic groups. There is even more detail on the website, should noble Lords wish to visit the relevant links.

Given the extensive amount of official information on the composition of the magistracy already in the public domain, I suggest that a requirement for the Lord Chancellor to lay a periodic report before Parliament is unnecessary. On that basis, I ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.