I am grateful to the Chair of the Justice Committee; he has saved me some time, because my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi) asked me to clarify that matter in my speech.
I also acknowledge the contribution from the hon. Member for Henley (John Howell), who rightly made the point about a consistency in approach across the judiciary and did so very well. The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton) spoke passionately about making our justice system the best in the world—which it already is, although we can improve it through further and better technology.
When the Government brought the Prisons and Courts Bill to the House, they declared an intention to reform our courts and judicial system. When that Bill fell because of the Prime Minister’s ill-fated decision to call a general election, they restated their intention for reform and brought this Bill before us. In opening the debate today, the Lord Chancellor spoke about court reform, new and innovative technology, and sweeping modernisation, yet the content of the Bill does not match his words. It is devoid of any substantial change
that will encourage greater access to justice, and it wilfully omits—and even seeks to avoid—debate on the huge, pressing concerns present in our courts system. When seen in the wider context of the Government’s austerity agenda and cuts to the justice system, it seems to be less about reform and more about squeezing as much money as possible from the courts.
Even at first glance, this is a minimal, even empty, Bill—a view that is vindicated upon reading it in more detail. It contains provisions to extend the redeployment of judges, to rename some of the judiciary and to allow an increased use of the delegation of judicial functions to non-judicial staff. While all those measures have value, in no way do they capture all that is needed to reform our courts and judiciary. They are measures taken by a Government intent on introducing a drip-feed of legislation in the absence of their parliamentary majority, avoiding scrutiny. Not only have they omitted anything substantial, but they have drafted the Bill to avoid some of the most pressing issues facing the justice system. It makes no mention of measures to address legal aid cuts, court closures, judicial vacancies or the protection of domestic abuse victims. It is here where the real failures of reform lie.
On legal aid cuts, access to justice has been decimated. Spending has fallen by one third from £2.5 billion to £1.6 billion per year, and the number of civil legal aid cases has fallen from more than 500,000 in the year to April 2013 to just under 150,000 in the year to April 2017. Vulnerable people are being left unable to defend themselves in areas as fundamental as housing, employment, immigration and welfare benefits, and unnecessary costs are being created for the taxpayer as cases are going to court that could have been resolved earlier. Further costs for the public purse arising from cuts are causing issues such as poor health, homelessness and debt. When people lack the money or knowledge to enforce their rights, those rights are worth nothing more than the paper they are written on, yet the Bill fails to mention legal aid or the urgent need to reverse the changes imposed by the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012.
On court closures, the Bill is silent and has closed down discussion on this equally vital issue for people’s access to justice. It fails to address the significant £1 billion-plus courts reform programme that is being pushed through, as the Lord Chancellor stated earlier—but without any proper scrutiny. Since 2010, the courts and tribunals estate has changed significantly, with hundreds of courts having been closed in the name of austerity, and that has hampered people’s ability to access justice.
Many claimants and defendants must now travel miles to access justice and uphold their rights, the Government having closed their local courts, but many lack either the transport or the finances needed to do so and as a result have lost what should be their guaranteed right to justice. The Government argue that their modernisation programme reduces the need for an expansive courts estate, but we are clear that courts reform should increase access to justice, not ignore its erosion, and that any modernisation of our courts system must not be a smokescreen for cuts and closures that will cause long-term damage to access to justice.
As mentioned earlier, the Bill should have done much more to address the appalling situation of victims of domestic violence being subjected to questioning by those who assaulted them. Women’s Aid found that almost one in four of survey respondents had been cross-examined in this way. That unacceptable situation puts the victims of abuse through yet more torment and hardship, for no conceivable reason. It is cruel and barbaric. Measures to prevent it from happening and protect victims are supported by campaign groups on women’s rights and domestic violence, including Women’s Aid, but yet again such measures are absent from the Bill, despite having been in the Prisons and Courts Bill. There is no excuse for the Government’s not having included such measures in the Bill: that should shame them. I hope they can explain when such measures will be introduced to rectify the situation.
Where there is change, it is change that the Government have failed to impose with sufficient protection, and it is here that we will seek to amend the Bill. On a point of clarification, I should say that my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton South East did not mean to say earlier that we opposed the Bill: we will be abstaining today and tabling amendments in Committee. We are determined to deliver change and reform to the courts and judiciary, even if through the Government’s piecemeal efforts, but we are equally determined that it not be done at the expense of the judiciary, legal protections or judicial independence.
As the Government seek to delegate judicial functions to non-judicial staff, they must be careful of their use; they must not overuse non-judicial staff or use them as substitute judges to fill the significant number of judicial vacancies, which have risen to critical levels on their watch. Judges must absolutely remain at the top of their hierarchy in the courts, and their position must not be undermined by non-judicial staff assuming more and more of their functions. Granting further powers to non-judicial staff not only risks undermining the judiciary, but runs the even more dangerous risk of delegating serious judicial functions to unqualified staff.
It is important for the Bill to contain provisions that prevent excessive delegation, protect the reputation of the judiciary, and protect claimants, prosecutors and defendants from unqualified decisions. The Government ceded amendments to impose in primary legislation some restrictions on the type of judicial functions that authorised staff can discharge, but we need a strong further commitment; I hope that the Lord Chancellor and the Minister will strengthen their stance in that regard.
There are also insufficient protections for the expertise of our judiciary. Those would be provided through the imposition of a minimum standard on staff to whom decisions are delegated. The Government argue that authorised staff will not be making substantial decisions, but in his review of efficiency in criminal proceedings Sir Brian Leveson states that even non-contested elements of cases require experience, and Lord Briggs has said in his report that even if authorised staff are legally trained and qualified, they will not benefit from years of judicial experience in delivering the quality of services that is currently delivered by judges.
It is therefore extremely important that the decisions being delegated to authorised staff are appropriate to their experience and qualifications, as the prospect of
non-qualified, inexperienced staff carrying out judicial functions is all too real and worrisome. When such staff make decisions, it is also vital for those decisions to be subject to a statutory right to judicial reconsideration.
The Government state in their factsheet that the functions and responsibilities delegated to authorised staff will be uncontested, but it is easy to see how that could shift in the future to authorised staff making contested decisions, particularly in the absence of a clear definition of what delegation can be given. Justice has said that some of the functions anticipated for authorised staff, such as extending time for service and taking pleas, may well give rise to contested matters and have consequences for cases. It is therefore essential for the Government to impose a statutory right to reconsideration for decisions taken by authorised staff—a view supported by the Bar Council. In not imposing such measures when the public have a real and reasonable expectation that significant contested decisions in a court will be made by a judge—or, if not, that there will at least be a right of appeal or review before a judge—the Government are also playing fast and loose with the public’s trust in the judiciary and the rule of law.
The Government may claim that the procedure rules committees could and would impose similar safeguards in any rules that they produce, but that is simply not good enough, given that their amendments fail to offer sufficient guarantees of a right of review. We think that, and so does the Bar Council, which believes that a further amendment is necessary to abate its concern that the Government could exert pressure on the PRCs to reduce the right of reconsideration to increase the turnover of cases and clear the backlog. We are adamant that any backlog must not be cleared through the removal of a fundamental legal right of reconsideration.
Let me end by confirming that we will abstain today, but look forward to the Government’s seriously considering our amendments in Committee. The Lord Chancellor opened the debate in a spirit of collaboration. I assure him that all our amendments are very reasonable, and I am sure that he is an amiable chap who will view them in the same light. If the Government want to deliver a worthwhile Bill, they must listen to these arguments, not throw them aside. They must consider them in Committee before returning the Bill to the House.
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