Courts Service Estate

George Howarth Excerpts

Tuesday 14th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. As usual, there is much interest and little time, so brevity from Back-Bench and Front-Bench Members is vital if I am to accommodate the level of interest.

[Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)]

The Minister is well aware, not least from correspondence from me, that the data on which he based the Knowsley magistrates court decision were deeply flawed. He has not yet addressed that deeply flawed data. Why has he gone ahead with a proposal that he knows will not work? To make matters worse, why has he also decided that there will be no additional capacity in Liverpool by scrapping the capital investment programme? The Deputy Prime Minister refers to this as a progressive Government, but the past two days have proven that it is a wrecking-ball Government.

[Mr Djanogly]

It is not the case that we have not reinvested. As I said in the statement, we are reinvesting in the remaining courts. The right hon. Gentleman asked about errors in the consultation data. There were 16 area consultation documents. A small number of errors were found, but none was considered to be material to the consultation. In one area—north Wales—even though we were advised that the errors did not affect the consultation, I personally decided that the consultation documents should be sent out again, and that was done. However, we do not maintain that the figures were put out in error—quite the opposite. On the whole, they were accurate.