Prisons and Courts Bill (Second sitting)

Liz Saville Roberts Excerpts

Committee Debate: 2nd Sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 28th March 2017 Public Bill Committees

[Matt Warman]

Q But these are the greatest challenges for digital inclusion full stop, are they not? This is not a unique problem for justice.

Jenny Beck indicated assent.

[Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

Q What is very interesting about this discussion is that we seem to have become very polarised in favour and against. It strikes me that perhaps we need to take a step back and look at the other considerations that need to be brought in to make this effective and not a risk in terms of justice outcomes.

If I may, I will make this slight comparison. I used to be responsible for teaching through video non-traditional A-level subjects—through the medium of Welsh, as it happens—to widen their accessibility, to 15 secondary schools in Wales. Of course, we constantly had the check of the results and seeing how the students who were being taught by video performed in comparison with the conventional teaching method. There is great potential in technology, as is being discussed, but I think there are issues in relation to the vulnerable and there are age—generational—issues as well, without beginning to touch on the nature of technology in some of our rural areas.

What worries me, and what I would like your opinion on, is how we bring this in and have the checks and balances to assess the research—whether there are different outcomes to justice in terms of this—and that this is not a headlong rush into technology in which some participants will actually suffer or there will be unjust results because of it. This cannot be polarised; it has to be something that we discuss as we go along.

Professor Susskind: I accept that it cannot be polarised. You obviously invite people along who are likely to take a position, and my position is a position of change. I have been involved with this for 35 years, suggesting that technology should be used more in the court system. I cannot say for a second that anyone has ever been rushing in; it has been a very slow, arduous and sometimes painful process.

I travel the world, have spoken in more than 40 countries and visited courts. We are, in this country, falling behind other courts, so we cannot be accused of rushing in. I fully agree, however, that to jump ahead in a foolhardy way would be silly. I am simply pointing out, and will say again, that in the context of civil law the current system is inaccessible, unaffordable and unintelligible—full stop. It seems to me worth at least introducing some of these new procedures to offer access to people who would otherwise never have had it. I do not find that contentious; in fact, on civil, I do not think I have been hearing great opposition to it.

[Liz Saville Roberts]

Q Forgive me, but what would the checks be as we change from one very well established and familiar system to a new system? What will be the checks from day to day that they are operating properly?

Professor Susskind: Are we talking about the civil system or the criminal system? Because if we are talking about the civil system, I have to come back at you. You say that it is a very well established system, but my view is that it is a system that suffers from very serious difficulties.

The last research was shown to suggest that 1 million people every year have justiciable entitlements and do not, or cannot, pursue their rights in the civil justice system. We have vast numbers of litigants in person who really struggle to understand the system. If our system was great just now, I would be very hesitant about saying we should replace it with technology.

If this is taking a polar position, I am happy to take one—we have a civil justice system just now that is inaccessible for the overwhelming majority of citizens. I want to say to you that it is surely worth introducing, for some low-value claims, a new way of offering access to judges and then monitoring it very carefully—maybe that is the point you want a response on. I think it is vital that we do ongoing research. The point is well made that we need to understand the impact as we go along and we need be willing to change direction.

As for the evolution of technology in the private sector and the public sector, we are not architects. You cannot design the finished building and say, “Here is what it is going to look like.” It is a bit of a journey. If you are hesitant about starting the journey because we do not have the checks and balances in place—we need to have the checks in the place. I think you will find that most leaders, both in the public and private sector, have a sense of direction and say, “Let’s start this together, monitor carefully and ensure we are delivering the benefits.” It seems to me that the option of saying, “Let’s not change at all because we cannot be certain how it is going to unpack,” is not an attractive one. The discussion we should be having is how we ensure, with all these new technologies, that we are monitoring their impact, and that there is an appropriate hand on the tiller when it seems it is taking us in different directions.

[Liz Saville Roberts]

Q Could you recommend what form that should take?

Professor Susskind: I am bound to say this, because in part I am an academic by background, but I think we need to move beyond anecdote. I can tell you what I heard in the court room that I visited—it was nothing like what was heard over here—but actually, what each of us says as individuals is less important than engaging serious researchers to undertake attitudinal surveys and surveys of people who have been through the process. That is the kind of work that we have seen someone like Hazel Genn at UCL doing over the decades—understanding why people go to the law, how they feel when they have been through the process and whether they have confidence in the system.

I have been strongly advocating, even for the civil system that I have recommended we introduce, that we should not rush in. We should think big, but start small. We should start small, monitor, evaluate, undertake serious academic empirical research, report back, invest where things seem promising and be prepared to accept if developments do not work out. We do not have the evidence yet so we have got to kick-start it somewhere. This, for me, is a call for an incremental—the technology would say an agile—modular step-by-step approach. If I was getting the sense that the Government were advocating a big bang—one single system, architect in advance—I would be very critical of that, but that is not the approach being taken.

[Sir Oliver Heald]

Q I was hoping we might move on to clause 47—the cross-examination in family justice. I was hoping to ask Polly from Women’s Aid, who is sat very patiently, one or two questions about this. Polly, could you give us a sense of the harm caused by victims being cross-examined in person by alleged abusers in the family courts?

Polly Neate: It is hard to overstate how harmful it is, actually; it is genuinely traumatising. In particular, it makes it very difficult for the family courts to play the role they should play, which is to put the child’s best interests first, when usually the mother of the child is not able to advocate adequately because she is being questioned by somebody who has put her through abuse—sometimes, years of abuse.

The other thing that is really important to understand about this—this is what is worrying about judges’ understanding, if I may say so—is that domestic abuse is not all about incidents of physical violence; it is all about control, and coercive control. The family courts are being used, if you like, as an arena for perpetrators to continue to exert the control over their partner or former partner, and in particular they are using child contact proceedings as a way of continuing to exert that control.

So it is not only that the person might be overtly abusive towards the survivor in the court, although that happens unfortunately. It is also that there are like trigger words and almost code words that a perpetrator can use when talking to the victim, which will mean something to her that is extremely traumatic but to anyone listening it would not necessarily appear to be abusive, on the face of it. That is why we say that the practice just has to be banned, because as an onlooker you cannot necessarily tell the meaning of what is being said between those two people, particularly—this often happens—after years of abuse and coercive control of all kinds, and psychological control in particular.