Oral Answers to Questions Debate

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Department: Ministry of Justice

Oral Answers to Questions

David Morris Excerpts
Tuesday 5th December 2017

(6 years, 4 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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John Bercow Portrait Mr Speaker
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Order. The hon. Lady continues to chunter from a sedentary position in evident disapproval of the thrust of the reply provided from the Treasury Bench, but the hon. Lady has a recourse: she can apply for an Adjournment debate and dilate on such matters at greater length, which I am sure will be of great satisfaction to her and, possibly, to others.

David Morris Portrait David Morris (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Con)
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19. What steps he is taking to modernise the court system.

Tom Tugendhat Portrait Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)
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20. What steps he is taking to modernise the court system.

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John Bercow Portrait Mr Speaker
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Order. The right hon. Gentleman had not asked in advance for my agreement to the grouping, but I am nevertheless happy to provide it. Presumably, the request was not made to my office on account of the expectation that we would not get this far, but Ministers ought to know better by now; we do tend to make quite quick progress. We will take supplementary questions from those who are here—I think at least one is not.

David Morris Portrait David Morris
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Part of the problem with the courts system is that the lay person does not understand the jargon. Will my right hon. Friend examine how we can improve communication within the system so that the ordinary man on the street can understand what is going on in court proceedings?

David Lidington Portrait Mr Lidington
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I apologise to you, Mr Speaker, if there was a mess-up in communications with your office.

In response to my hon. Friend, as we test and pilot the online court proposals it is important to ensure that the process is stripped of legal jargon so that our constituents—men and women who may have no particular knowledge or experience of the technicalities of law—are able easily to understand, follow and use the process.