Court Closures

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Thursday 24th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House acknowledges the need for some underused courts and tribunals to close; notes the detrimental effect that too many court closures will have on access to justice for vulnerable families and individuals particularly in rural areas where public transport is less reliable; further notes with concern the effect these closures will have on the experienced and dedicated staff working in the 86 courts and tribunals; and calls on the Government to acknowledge the concerns of staff, magistrates and third sector organisations who highlighted numerous flaws in the consultation document, to think again on some of these closures and acknowledge the importance of access to local justice.

I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for allocating time for this debate. I requested such a debate, with the hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts) and other Members from across the House, for a number of reasons: first, because of the scale of the court closure programme, with 86 courts and tribunals closing, compounded by the closures during the last Parliament, when 146 courts closed; secondly, because of the level of concern expressed by colleagues across the House about the implications of the closure programme for access to justice, and a number of flaws within the consultation process that provided the basis for the closure programme; and thirdly, because the closures were announced in a written ministerial statement on the last sitting day before the February recess. I feel strongly that both the scale of the closure programme and its implications mean that the announcement should have been made in the House, and that colleagues should have had the opportunity to raise issues on behalf of their constituents, and ask questions about the planned closures and their impact at the time that the announcement was made. I am pleased that we will have the opportunity to do so today.

Courts have a very wide range of different users. If we consider the hierarchy of Crown courts, county courts, magistrates courts, youth courts, family courts and tribunals, we can see that the people who need to access the courts include jurors, magistrates, victims and witnesses, families in the process of breaking up, a range of public sector staff—those working directly at the courts, but also those bringing cases and acting as witnesses—members of the judiciary, and individuals facing trial. It is easy to think of those accessing our courts primarily as suspected criminals, but our courts are in reality a vital public service, reaching a very wide range of people in their scope, and it is important that we remember that as we debate the closure programme.

[Richard Benyon (Newbury) (Con)]

If civic areas are to lose their courts as a result of this decision, does the hon. Lady agree that proper provision needs to be made, not least for video conferencing for people giving evidence? For example, local newspapers should be able to send a journalist on a particular day so that its readers cannot only be told where crimes take place, but hear about convictions, because justice must be seen to be done as much as actually done.

--- Later in debate ---

[Helen Hayes]

I will come on to talk about the role of new technology and other forms of provision in addressing some of the issues presented by the closure programme.

[Dawn Butler (Brent Central) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. Although the court in my constituency will not close, it will take on the burden of the work of courts that are closing. On the Government’s own assessment, people will have to travel for over an hour to reach Willesden magistrates court. I think that is a barrier to justice.

[Helen Hayes]

My hon. Friend makes valid points about both the additional burden on courts that will have to absorb the workload of courts that are closing, and the very important issue of travel times, particularly for many vulnerable constituents. I will come on to talk about those things.

I do not have a court or tribunal in my constituency of Dulwich and West Norwood, but my constituents will be very much affected by the planned closure of Lambeth county court. Almost half the postcode areas covered by Lambeth county court fall within my constituency. I am grateful to the Minister for taking the time to meet me during the consultation process, and subsequently for taking part in a Westminster Hall debate about Lambeth county court, but despite that engagement, my concerns remain. In justifying the closures, the Minister refers a great deal to the modernisation of the justice system and the use of new technology, but there is great concern that the closure plans appear to put the cart before the horse—closing courts and tribunals without a clear plan for replacing the capacity that will be lost with new technology.

The Government should have brought to the House a comprehensive strategy for modernising our courts and tribunals to make them fit for the 21st century. We need a plan that sets out clearly what new technology can deliver for our justice system, the investment that must be made to deliver it and the savings that can be made in physical infrastructure as a consequence of the introduction of technology. But there is no such plan. What the Government have announced is a very significant closure programme with a promise that, after courts and tribunals have closed, pilots will take place and investment will be made to introduce new technology. This is a very risky way to treat our justice system.

Access to justice is a vital principle in the UK’s unwritten constitution. It was argued by Lord Bingham of Cornhill, when he was the senior Lord of Appeal in Ordinary, that access to justice is one of the eight sub-rules that make up the rule of law. He said:

“My fifth sub-rule is that means must be provided for resolving, without prohibitive cost or inordinate delay, bona fide civil disputes which the parties themselves are unable to resolve…What it does is to recognise the right of unimpeded access to a court as a basic right, protected by our own domestic law, and in my view comprised within the principle of the rule of law.”

He went on to explain that the common law right of access to justice is composed of three rights, one of which is the right of access to a court. Lord Justice Laws has said:

“Access to the courts is a constitutional right”.

In relation to the planned courts and tribunals closure programme, the Government argued that

“effective access to justice does not…necessarily mean providing physical access to a building or require us to have a purpose-built court or tribunal in every local area.”

My contention is that this statement can only possibly be valid if the Government demonstrate that access is provided in a fail-safe way by other means, and that they simply cannot do that without setting out a clear strategy for how it will be delivered.

The Minister has spoken about various things, some of which are indeed already happening in some locations, that may be possible—video links for witnesses to provide evidence, facilities for filing court papers online, making a plea by mobile phone—but there is no national standard and no plan for delivery. No assessment has been made of which court and tribunal services and facilities should be available to everyone in every area, which of these can reasonably be provided digitally and which should be provided in dedicated facilities. Although I do not think there is much disagreement about the kinds of things that might be done, it is impossible to make an assessment of the extent to which access to justice will be provided at an appropriate level with the help of digital technology until the Government lay out a comprehensive plan.

[Albert Owen (Ynys Môn) (Lab)]

In addition to the plan for which my hon. Friend is calling, we also need a plan to extend mobile coverage to many areas. We just do not have that coverage in some of the rural areas where closures are planned.

[Helen Hayes]

My hon. Friend makes a valuable point. It reinforces my argument that without a plan—a proven and tested plan—the Government simply cannot rely on advances in technology to substitute for the closure of physical facilities.

[Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this debate. Does she agree that the whole point of a system of magistrates courts is that local people make decisions about local crimes? Fundamentally, without a proper plan, magistrates may be drawn from areas surrounding the surviving courts, while many communities will provide no magistrates whatsoever.

[Helen Hayes]

The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point about the long tradition in this country involving the justice system and the locality it serves.

I will turn to some of the specific concerns that have been raised about the consequences of the closures. The first is the straightforward issue of physical access to a court building for those who need to attend court either for a court hearing or to instigate an administrative procedure, such as applying in person for a stay of eviction. The Government response to the consultation says:

“It will still be the case that…97% of citizens will be able to reach their required court within an hour by car.”

This statement is simply not true. The data on which the Government response is based relate to the travel time between court buildings, not the travel time from residents’ homes to what will now be their closest court. On the basis of these data, residents who currently live within an hour of an existing court may now have to travel a further hour beyond that court to access their nearest court. It is time for the Government to undertake and publish an analysis of the physical accessibility of courts in terms of the journey times faced by residents on a postcode basis, not from court to court, so that the impact of the closures plan can be properly understood and scrutinised.

The second problem with the travel time data is that they rely too much on the private car as a mode of transport. Only half of households on low incomes own a car. Many of my constituents who have to attend court in relation to issues such as housing evictions are on low incomes, and the same is true across the country. The response to the consultation does not consider in any detail the accessibility of courts and tribunals by public transport, or accessibility by bus, which is often the only mode of transport that residents on lower incomes can afford, even where faster routes are available. I have looked at the travel times that residents from parts of my constituency—for example, a victim of domestic violence—will experience after Lambeth county court closes and they have to travel to Wandsworth, where some of the services will be provided. Many of those residents will face a journey of at least an hour each way by bus, and in the worst-case scenario, a four-hour round trip. That is in London, which has the best public transport network of any city in the UK. Colleagues who represent rural constituencies tell me that in some cases the journey times that their constituents will face are such that it will not be possible to travel to court and back in a single day, further adding to the costs of accessing justice.

[Richard Benyon]

The hon. Lady makes a powerful point that will resonate with people in a lot of villages in my constituency. The Library document states that just 15% of people in my constituency will be able to reach court by public transport in one hour, and that is of great concern for those who have the trauma of having to give evidence after a crime has been committed against them.

[Helen Hayes]

The hon. Gentleman’s powerful point illustrates my argument.

The Law Society has raised serious concerns about the effects that longer, more expensive journey times will have on the justice system for jurors. They will be more likely to find justifiable reasons to postpone their jury service, and Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunal Service will have to pay additional costs to compensate them for additional travel costs. The changes will also affect witnesses, many of whom already require a good deal of persuasion and support to attend court, and vulnerable residents who are being taken to court in circumstances where life is already stressful. Such people might find it extremely difficult to make it to court and, as a consequence, to have a fair hearing, because they are not there in person to explain their circumstances.

[Dawn Butler]

As a magistrate, I can attest to witnesses, sufferers of domestic violence or people with chaotic lifestyles who are completely put off by the extra travel needed to access justice.

[Helen Hayes]

My hon. Friend makes a valuable point.

Resolution, which represents 6,500 family lawyers and other professionals who are committed to a non-adversarial approach to family law and the resolution of family disputes, says that the court closures will have a huge impact on the ability of families to access the justice system, and it emphasises that those who will be most affected are vulnerable people such as victims of domestic abuse. Requiring a victim of domestic abuse to travel further on public transport in order to apply for an injunction will increase risk and act as a further disincentive for people seeking protection, on top of the issues already presented by the lack of access to legal aid.

Let me highlight three examples from my constituency caseload that illustrate the vulnerability of many people who have to access the court system. The first is a man who came to this country as an asylum seeker having been a child soldier in Nigeria. He is doing his utmost to find work, and currently has a zero-hours contract. Sometimes his employer has work for him, and sometimes it does not. That is not within his control, but as a consequence he has a fluctuating income, which means that intermittently he has to apply for jobseeker’s allowance and housing benefit. Delays in processing his JSA claim sometimes mean that his housing benefit is frozen. That causes rent arrears, and at times he has been served with a notice seeking possession. None of that is his fault. He is a man with a traumatic past who is doing everything that he can to make the best of life, in a country that he had never imagined finding himself in. In my view, we should not be asking him to bear the additional expense and stress of having to travel long distances to access a court and engage in a difficult process that is not of his making.

Another constituent is recently widowed. Her husband was a social housing tenant, and for her to succeed to the tenancy, she needed to provide proof of his death. However, an administrative error with the death certificate caused a delay and meant that her landlord commenced eviction proceedings. She lives in the farthest flung part of my constituency in terms of access to a court. Is it right for her to face a four-hour round trip by bus to explain why the registrar made a mistake in recording her husband’s death?

The third case highlights some of the wider problems with a justice system that is already very stretched. This constituent is in his 80s. He suffered antisocial behaviour from his upstairs neighbour for many years, causing him and his wife great distress, and sometimes leading to him sleeping in his car to escape the noise. His council landlord did everything possible to gather evidence and commence eviction proceedings against the neighbour, but it took months for the case to come to court. When it did, the police failed to turn up to give evidence, and the case had to be adjourned. That situation would have been compounded even further by a longer journey time, or by moving proceedings to a court that did not have the capacity to absorb additional work.

Very often the circumstances that lead to someone attending court involve personal sadness, and many people who attend court are vulnerable. Fulfilling the obligation to make our justice system accessible must involve thinking about the considerable challenges that our most vulnerable residents face, and designing a system around those challenges, not around residents who have the most capacity.

The closure programme has the potential for significant hidden costs for the wider public sector, and those were not considered or scrutinised during the consultation process or in the Government’s response to it. The Law Society has highlighted the additional costs associated with prison and probation staff having to transport defendants for longer distances. Additional transportation costs may be incurred by the police, as increased numbers of people choose not to attend court and subsequently end up being transported there by the police. There will be increased costs for councils, as social workers and housing officers are forced to travel longer distances and spend more time away from their day-to-day duties to provide evidence in court.

There are already frustrations within the justice system. Many lawyers I have spoken to who work in London decry the experience of using the Central London county court since it moved to share premises with the Royal Courts of Justice. They describe a court that is so completely overwhelmed with the volume of work that it is beginning to resemble the chancery court in Dickens’s “Bleak House”, such is the lack of confidence that effective judgments will emerge from it. The Law Society and others have raised concerns about the impact of the closure programme on court staff, in a context where there are already frustrations about administrative problems and delays within the system. Such problems would be exacerbated if busy courts are closed and their workload transferred to other courts that are already operating at high capacity.

Many magistrates regard their work as a very local form of public service. There is a strong connection between the community they know and their role in ensuring justice for that community. There are serious concerns that having far fewer courts and requiring magistrates to travel long distances in order to serve will break this country’s strong tradition of a justice system that is rooted in the individual spatial communities it serves.

Concerns have also been raised with me about the sustainability of many duty solicitor schemes, which have already been stretched to the limit by cuts in legal aid and changes to the contract. Solicitors in my local area have said that many of them would be forced to give up duty solicitor work if they had to travel further to attend court, such is the marginal viability of the scheme already.

Finally, let me turn to the detail of the closure proposals and highlight just a few ways in which I believe the programme to be flawed. The proposed closure of Birmingham youth court would have a significant impact on young defendants, who would have to appear in an adult court, in breach of the Government’s statutory and international obligations. How was that proposal ever brought forward, and why were those issues not anticipated and addressed?

The proposal to close a brand-new, fit-for-purpose court in Rotherham, which contains a magistrates court, county court and family court, at a time, and in a town, in which child protection issues are at the forefront of everybody’s mind, is difficult to comprehend. In Bicester, the proposed closure of the court in a rural area with poor public transport services at a time when the local population is about to expand significantly, due to the Government’s designation of Bicester as a “garden town”, is simply short-termist.

In my local area, the closure of Lambeth county court remains deeply problematic. It is leased to Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service, with nine years left to run on the lease, and as such, there is no large capital sum to be derived from the sale of the site. The lawyers I have spoken to who use Lambeth county court say that it functions extremely well as a specialist housing court.

I appreciate that, as a consequence of the representations that I and others made during the consultation process, housing possession hearings will not now move six miles away to Wandsworth but to Camberwell, which is much closer. That is welcome news, but there remain concerns about the victims of domestic violence who will still have to travel to Wandsworth, and about how the move to Camberwell will actually work in practice. There is time, within the current lease, to make a proper plan for Lambeth: to work out the role new technology can play in making our justice system more accessible; to work out the physical space necessary to accommodate an efficient court; and to plan properly for the transition. There is no evidence in the closure programme that any detailed feasibility work has been undertaken to explore lower-cost ways of accommodating court services locally—for example, in other public buildings or community centres. Although such options are mentioned, they really should have been explored in detail before the closure programme was finalised.

The accessibility of our justice system and the way it treats our most vulnerable residents is a mark of our civilisation. Too many people across the country have raised concerns that the Government’s proposed closures will have an unacceptable impact on vulnerable people, present additional costs for other parts of the public sector which have not been properly accounted for, and make our justice system less accessible.

I fully accept that new technology may have a role to play in creating a justice system that is fit for purpose for the 21st century, as well as saving costs, but we have no plan from the Government as to how that will be achieved. I urge the Government to rethink their approach. I urge them to come back to the House with a plan that addresses the concerns that have been raised and that balances savings to be made from the physical court estate with investment in technology to mitigate the impact of these changes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Helen Hayes]

I thank every Member who has contributed to this debate. The level of concern about the decision to close 86 courts and tribunals is clear.

We have heard from across the Chamber concerns about the physical accessibility of courts as a consequence of the closures and about serious problems with the assumptions about the use of digital technology, especially in areas with poor broadband. Several hon. Members spoke about sensible and creative alternative proposals that were more responsive to local geography and demographics but which were rejected. We also heard about the overreliance on travel by private car and the flawed travel-time data underpinning the decision and about the interrelationship with other public sector cuts. How can police stations provide video links, when in my area so many have closed that the remaining ones are bursting at the seams? We have heard about many hidden impacts from the decision, including on the micro-economy of town and city centres.

I brought this debate before the House because I was concerned that the decision to close 86 courts and tribunals without a coherent, joined-up plan for ensuring access to justice would impact most on the most vulnerable victims, witnesses and defendants, would bring additional costs to several other areas of the public sector and would have a serious impact on the efficiency and effectiveness of our justice system. I am grateful to the Minister for his response, but I urge him to rethink these proposals and come back to the House with a comprehensive plan that addresses the many concerns raised.

Question put and agreed to,

Resolved,

That this House acknowledges the need for some underused courts and tribunals to close; notes the detrimental effect that too many court closures will have on access to justice for vulnerable families and individuals particularly in rural areas where public transport is less reliable; further notes with concern the effect these closures will have on the experienced and dedicated staff working in the 86 courts and tribunals; and calls on the Government to acknowledge the concerns of staff, magistrates and third sector organisations who highlighted numerous flaws in the consultation document, to think again on some of these closures and acknowledge the importance of access to local justice.