Court Closures

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Robert Neill

Thursday 24th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Robert Neill]

I understand the point that the hon. Lady is making, but I will not go into individual cases, because that is not the job that the Select Committee has sought to take on.

In October 2015, following the 2010 to 2014 closure programme—the court estate reform programme, as it was described—during the previous Parliament, the Committee took evidence from Natalie Ceeney, chief executive of HM Courts and Tribunals Service. We asked, in particular, what progress had been made—[Interruption.] I hope that that is not my clerk or someone ringing me up. I think it is worse when it happens in court, Madam Deputy Speaker. I can only apologise.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. Let me say, for the avoidance of doubt, that it is worse when it happens here. For the moment, however, we will ignore it, and allow the hon. Gentleman to continue his excellent speech.

[Robert Neill]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. The honest truth is that it is worse anyway.

As I was saying, we wanted to know what progress had been made in the selling off of the courts that had been closed as part of the 2010 to 2014 programme. We were told that, as of 23 October last year, 10 court buildings remained unsold. It would be helpful if the Minister could update us. If courts are to be closed, it is important for them to be disposed of in a timely manner, given that one of the prime arguments for closures is the need to secure economies and value for money. There is certainly no virtue in continuing to spend money on mothballing unused buildings.

I agree with other Members that the issue of physical proximity and journey times is not unique to rural areas. When the last Labour Government were conducting court closure and amalgamation programmes in London, I made the point, as a London Assembly Member, that a journey in peak time from south-east London to, say, Wells Street—where a great deal of family court work was, at the time, being centralised—was likely to take an hour or an hour and a half, and that, if care or family cases were involved, that would impose an onerous and probably unfair burden on people who were in a difficult, perhaps vulnerable, state. Such issues do apply to urban areas as well.

The issue of longer travel times has been raised with the Committee, particularly in the context of our current inquiry into the role of the magistracy. There is a balance to be struck between the efficiency of the system and the localness of justice. Earlier this week we took evidence from the National Bench Chairmen’s Forum, which does what it says: it is the body representing the chairs of benches. The forum expressed concern about the issue. Interestingly, a representative of one of the benches in north Wales made exactly the same point as the hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) about the difficulty of getting mobile and other coverage in very rural areas. In fairness, it was not suggested that the problem was insuperable, but the point was made that if courts were to be amalgamated in such areas, it was important to get the technology right and in place first.

The magistrates expressed a fear—not only in oral evidence but in written evidence, which is available on the Committee’s website—that courts would inevitably be concentrated in more urban areas, that there would inevitably be a temptation for magistrates to be drawn from areas in the immediate proximity of the courts, and that rural areas would consequently be under-represented areas on the benches. I think that that is an important and legitimate point. It was also pointed out to us that larger benches—and some benches now contain up to 1,000 magistrates, or thereabouts—placed much greater burdens on the chairs of those benches. It was suggested that we should think about what support could be given to those chairing very large benches with considerable workloads in administrative matters that were not previously envisaged. Again, I do not think that the problem is insuperable, but we must ensure that that support is provided.

On the basis of the evidence that we heard, it is fair to say that members of the senior judiciary are much more positive about the opportunities that arise from the use of digital and other modern technology, and consider that it can alleviate some of the pressures that arise from court processes. On 23 February, the Lord Chief Justice gave evidence to us about digitisation in the courts service. He praised the approach taken by HM Courts and Tribunals in building its digital case system unit by unit rather than on a monolithic single contract—and I think it right to give praise where it is due—but he was also alert to the need to deal with digital exclusion.

The Master of the Rolls, Lord Dyson, while recognising that there was much value to be gained from the use of IT to overcome some of the access-to-court issues, also made the point—with which I think we would all agree—that the Government’s track record on IT projects was “not exactly shining”. Sir James Munby, president of the Family Division, said that a digitised divorce service would provide real opportunities to reduce the burdens on people at a difficult time in their lives, but he was “disappointed” by the lack of progress so far. The Senior President of Tribunals, Sir Ernest Ryder, had “reservations” about the Department’s capacity to deliver the modernisation programme, and that is a point that I particularly wanted to make today.

I think it worries many of us that, while a number of fairly senior practitioners in the field say that they have no problem with the modernisation programme and— in some instances—accept the rationale for estates rationalisation, a greater move towards digitisation, the use of video conferencing and so on, there is doubt about whether either the Ministry of Justice or HM Courts and Tribunals Service has the necessary technical and professional capacity to deliver on those issues. That concerns me as much in relation to the estates disposal programme as in relation to the digitisation programme.

There is now a very good family law centre in east London, which is part of the combined family court that we now have at Canary Wharf. It opened in December 2014 and is working well, but its opening was delayed. It was apparent to us that the delay was partly due to the fact that the estate managers who were dealing with the project on behalf of the Government, in house, had spent the better part of a year pursuing a site in the Canary Wharf area that was never realistically going to be available at an acceptable rent or on acceptable terms. The commercial property operators with whom they were dealing were understandably running rings around them.

Government Departments and agencies often do not have the level of direct commercial expertise in tough, hard money negotiations that they need if they are to deliver the courts rationalisation, disposal and, subsequently, renewal programme. I hope that the Minister will tell us what is being done to strengthen the technical, managerial and professional expertise that is available to the Government. I hope he will also concede that the process need not be carried out in house, and that, in some circumstances, it is very proper to buy in specialist advice from the legal and property sector to ensure that the Government get the best possible deal and the changes are made in a timely manner.

The Magistrates Association and the judiciary have drawn our attention to the possibility of overcoming some of the pressures caused by a loss of local connection, which are of legitimate and genuine concern, by using satellite courts to hear cases that may require less security than those that are heard at a main magistrates court. It might be possible to use a public building, closer to the locality where the offence had been committed. I can think of circumstances in which it would not be too difficult to make use of, say, a town hall or a civic centre. Intelligent listing can be done now that more digital listing is being used, and it could be used in cases that were unlikely to have custody requirements or a large number of witnesses. In cases involving a summary-only offence and in which the witnesses were likely to be local, it should be possible, with sensible management and support for the bench, to get magistrates from that locality to hear the case. We ought to explore more ways of doing that.

We have also suggested to magistrates and to the bench forums that we should look at some of the existing learning in the local government world. Some of the issues that confront magistrates servicing rural petty sessional divisions are not dissimilar to those confronting district councillors in rural areas. Some local authorities have done significant work on online decision making and on finding ways of setting up delegated local area committees. Those would not be dissimilar to the satellite courts that I have mentioned. There is experience in other areas that the judicial world could learn from, and I urge the Minister to encourage his Department as well as those in the judiciary and the magistrates to take that on board. This applies to the legal profession as well. The Committee has received the representations that other Members have referred to, and there is scope for sensible co-working between lawyers on some of these issues.

I am grateful for your indulgence, Madam Deputy Speaker, and, I hope, for your forgiveness. I hope that when the Minister replies to this important debate he will be able to respond to these points, which have struck a chord across the board among members of the Select Committee.