Courts and Tribunal Services (England and Wales)

Richard Fuller Excerpts

Thursday 17th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Iain Wright (Hartlepool) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Bath (Ben Howlett) on his 100% record in securing Backbench Business Committee debates.

I want to focus my remarks on the proposed closure of Hartlepool magistrates court and county court, as I have a number of serious reservations about that. The first is that there is nothing lacking or missing from the magistrates facilities in Hartlepool. I understand that magistrates courts in other parts of England or Wales are earmarked for closure in part because they fail to comply with the Equality Act 2010 or are lacking in security. Hartlepool has a prison video link, separate waiting facilities for prosecution and defence witnesses, and interview rooms for confidential consultation. By contrast, the consultation itself concedes that if the proposed closure of Hartlepool’s courts goes ahead, a reconfiguration of the hearing space at Teesside magistrates courts will be required to accommodate a further waiting room and create a disabled access door. No figures are provided as to the costs of this work.

That brings me on to an additional point: the costs saved by the proposal. I understand that, as the hon. Gentleman has said, this consultation is being driven by a desire to reduce costs. The Minister has said that the courts estate costs about half a billion pounds a year. I would question how much will be saved if Hartlepool magistrates court is closed. There is a lack of transparency as to what will be saved. I understand that the court in Hartlepool has operating costs of about £345,000 a year. Does the Minister expect to save all or part of that figure? If it is the latter, how much does he expect to save?

I suspect that a large proportion of those operating costs will be staff expenditure. Eight members of staff work at the magistrates court and seven full-time members work at Hartlepool county court. Will they be made redundant as a result of the proposed closure? Unfortunately, Hartlepool still has a high unemployment problem, like the rest of the north-east. At double the national average, our level is the 40th highest among all constituencies.

Any redundancy in Hartlepool, especially that initiated by the state, does not help that unemployment problem, but if staff are not being made redundant will they be transferred to Middlesbrough, and how much does that save?

The building from which the magistrates and county courts operate is not freehold, so the Government will not be able to realise any value by selling it. According to the consultation, the Government’s wishes are:

“To maximise the capital receipts from surplus estate for reinvestment in HM Courts & Tribunals Service.”

That aim will not be met by closing Hartlepool magistrates courts, a leasehold property on a 99-year lease that currently has 60 years left to run. The building is owned by Hartlepool borough council. How much will it cost to break the lease? If the Minister is considering whole of Government efficiencies rather than a narrow, silo-based approach to achieving cuts for his own Department, what impact does that have? Does he realise that, by closing Hartlepool magistrates court, he is not saving the taxpayer anything, but is merely moving financial pressures to the local authority, which has already had cuts totalling 40% to its budget in recent years.

The criteria by which the courts will be closed seem opaque. I have asked a series of parliamentary questions on this matter. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey), I asked about the cost per case across magistrates courts in England and Wales. That seemed to be a reasonable dashboard metric to evaluate relative efficiencies across different operating units. It is what business does all the time. However, the answer I received from the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for North West Cambridgeshire (Mr Vara), who is a genuinely lovely and decent man and whom I am proud to call my friend, stated:

“The information is not available centrally and can only be provided at disproportionate cost.”

If this metric is not being used, what is? How can relative performance and effectiveness across the estate be evaluated consistently?

I understand that one of the central considerations of this proposed closure is the utilisation of the estate. Those 91 courts are used, on average, a third of the time. What is the magic utilisation figure that makes some courts safe and others not? I have seen the Minister quoted as saying that a third of all courts and tribunals were empty for more than 50% of the time.

Hartlepool has a utilisation rate of 49%. In an answer to a parliamentary question that I received this morning, the Minister revealed that Hartlepool’s utilisation rate is actually higher than the England and Wales average. With the exception of Wakefield, Hartlepool has the highest utilisation of any court proposed for closure in the whole north-east. Will the Minister take that context into consideration when deciding which courts to close, or should Hartlepool resign itself to closure simply because it has missed, by 1 percentage point, the magic 50% utilisation rate?

[Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman cites the lack of information. My hon. Friend the Member for High Peak (Andrew Bingham) says that the Department has provided inaccurate information. Given that we are talking about unavailable information, inaccurate information and consultations where things are ignored, does he think that this is an example of the Ministry of Justice going rogue?

[Mr Wright]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. Given what is coming out in this debate, the Ministry of Justice needs to scrap this consultation and start again on the basis of meaningful and accurate information.

I have mentioned costs and utilisation rates, but my central concern is access to local justice for my constituents.