Court Charges (Access to Justice)

Nick Thomas-Symonds Excerpts

Tuesday 17th November 2015 Westminster Hall

[Tulip Siddiq]

My hon. Friend has anticipated a point I will come on to. As he said, 50 magistrates have resigned, and in one case highlighted by the Howard League, a magistrate felt inclined to pay the court fee from his own pocket because of his sense of injustice.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray, and I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate at a very timely moment. Does she agree that a major risk of the charges is that they will have a disproportionate effect on the poorest defendants, which is unfair?

[Tulip Siddiq]

Absolutely. I secured the debate because I am worried about access to justice for people from poor socioeconomic backgrounds. I will touch on that later.

The court charges were introduced by the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012. They have had a dramatic impact on the number of cases going to court. I am particularly worried about tribunal numbers, which have plummeted, and the number of discrimination and unfair dismissal cases, which seems to be going down. I am concerned that the charges are in effect an attack on the most vulnerable in our society. I say the most vulnerable, because statistics show that sex discrimination cases brought by women have gone down by 80%. Similarly, if we compare the first few months of 2014 with the same period in 2013, the number of race discrimination cases has gone down by 60%.

Access to the court system is not, as the Government have put it, part of the welfare state. I prefer to agree with the Law Society, which said that the court system should be seen as

“part of the…rights and duties that give…resilience”

to the society that we live in. I do not doubt that our centuries-old court system needs some reform, but we need to think carefully before proposing those reforms. The Government would do well to remember their responsibility to enable every citizen to be treated equally before the law, whether they are a defendant, a victim or another party.

It is important to consider the effect that the criminal courts charge is having on poor defendants, as my hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds) mentioned. Despite the lack of quantitative data at my disposal, a lot of anecdotal evidence has been brought to light, especially by organisations such as the Howard League, revealing that this charge is not only intolerable in its consequences but will in no way recover the money that the Government talk about.