Public Legal Education

Debate between Ranil Jayawardena and Helen Grant

Tuesday 15th May 2018 Westminster Hall

[Mr Jayawardena]

My hon. Friend makes an important point on how the justice system continues to evolve and how young people must be taught about all facets of the legal system, some of which I will deal with later. Indeed, in today’s increasingly complex society it is more vital than ever to equip as many people as possible—young and old—with at least some basic knowledge about our legal system and their legal responsibilities as well as their rights.

[Mrs Helen Grant (Maidstone and The Weald) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on obtaining this important debate. As a former family lawyer for 23 years—that takes me back—I recognise the arguments he is making and will make. Does he agree that a public legal education programme should also focus on our diverse communities up and down the country, where language can often be an issue and a barrier?

[Mr Jayawardena]

I thank my hon. Friend for that point. She has been a champion of greater diversity, and she is of course right that we should not exclude any community from the legal system. I will deal with those points later also. PLE, where it is implemented, provides people of all ages and backgrounds with awareness, knowledge and understanding. As a Conservative, I believe in people—the duty, desire and ability of people to look after themselves, their families and one another. PLE helps people do just that. It gives them the confidence to do it, and to gain the skills they need to deal with disputes and gain access to justice, in consequence improving the accuracy, efficacy and fairness of our justice system.

Equally important, however, is that PLE helps people to recognise when they may need support, what sort of advice is available and how to go about getting it, giving people their independence. In other words, I believe it can create less Government intervention in people’s lives, allowing them to get on with living their own good lives where they cause no harm to others.

Above all, PLE enables people to become fully participating citizens in our big society, whether through jury service or by serving as a magistrate, which I am proud to say my father has done for around 15 years, instilling in me the same example of those values of public service and participation in the legal system as colleagues here in Parliament do. PLE increases citizens’ knowledge of this mother of all Parliaments, the birthplace of parliamentary democracy, where we make the laws that others implement. It increases political engagement and, I hope, will increase representation.

Without understanding how our legal system works—without understanding actions and their consequences—people cannot live John Stuart Mill’s harm principle or understand the realist decisions that politicians must make. Without proper PLE, people vote for—dare I say—wishful thinking policies, borrowing potentially trillions of pounds more on our country’s credit card without thinking through what it really means. PLE and public financial education are similar and equally important, but I fear that PLE is often the forgotten half of that important paradigm.

One of the most important groups for us to reach with PLE is young people. Good PLE in schools will develop, by extension, fully participating citizens, who have the tools to confidently engage in our democratic parliamentary system under the rule of law, and therefore citizens who do not respond to views different from their own with violence such as we saw in the 2011 London riots, or by potentially no-platforming public speech as others do, or indeed by demanding a second referendum to overthrow the democratically expressed will of the British people without any consideration for the other side of the argument. Who knows? Some might even be encouraged to pursue law as a career—I should say that my wife is a non-practising solicitor—helping to expand the capacity of the UK’s world-leading services industry and, consequently, our economy.

Organisations such as the Citizenship Foundation have been working in hundreds of schools and colleges for almost 30 years to help deliver an important part of citizenship education. By helping legal professionals to partner with schools and young people and helping teachers to deliver engaging citizenship education, they aim to help

“young people to understand their rights and responsibilities as active citizens”.

Pupils at schools in my North East Hampshire constituency benefit, too. One of the Citizenship Foundation’s PLE initiatives is an annual mock trial competition, run in conjunction with Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service, with Hampshire heats, including a magistrates mock trial at Winchester Crown court, a Southampton heat and Bar mock trials at nearby Reading and Guildford. Thousands of pupils take on the various roles involved in criminal cases, such as prosecutors, witnesses, defendants, court clerks and jurors, and learn skills such as advocacy, public speaking, cross-examination and critical thinking, as well as understanding how the court system works.