Court Charges (Access to Justice) Debate
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Wayne David
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Court Charges (Access to Justice)
Wayne David Excerpts(9 years ago)
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Tulip Siddiq
To pick up where I left off, the Government are attacking the principles of Magna Carta. I am relatively new to the House, but other Members will have been concerned about previous legal reforms by this Government. The focus of the debate is criminal court charges, which have attracted widespread criticism from all parts of the legal world, from magistrates to the Lord Chief Justice.
Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)
My hon. Friend has mentioned magistrates; does she share my concern about the fact that at least 50 magistrates have resigned since the implementation of the charges?
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.
Tulip Siddiq
I will touch on that later, but there is a lot of anecdotal evidence, as I have said. The Howard League and other organisations have highlighted that people on benefits or people who rely on social security are being expected to pay fines that we know they will not be able to pay. It is unrealistic to expect those people to pay these charges, and administratively, it probably costs taxpayers more.
Wayne David
The figures I have seen underline the point my hon. Friend just made. My understanding is that some £5 million in court charges has been issued, but less than £300,000 has been collected. Does that huge gap not show how ridiculous this policy is?
Tulip Siddiq
Absolutely. If we look at the money we have managed to claw back, it shows why this policy should be scrapped. It should not take three years to review it, because we have the evidence, as my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) said.
I rarely agree with Conservative Members of the House, but I agree with the Chair of the Select Committee on Justice, the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), who said on Radio 4 that the charge
“does seem to be distorting the way in which people behave in court…defendants might plead guilty to save the cost of the charge when otherwise they would not have done”.
That is from a member of the Conservative party. I could not agree more with him.
In 21st-century Britain, we should be appalled by the miscarriage of justice, especially when defendants are foregoing their freedom due to financial constraints. To pick up on a point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen, in some magistrates courts about 80% of defendants are dependent on state support to meet basic living costs, which makes this issue even more pressing. The charge means that poorer defendants are likely to make a different decision from the one they would have ordinarily made. That means we risk their voice being at best constrained, and at worst shut out from our justice system.