My Lords, the Bill is a vital first step in delivering legislation to underpin our ambitious and far-reaching programme to create a modern, world-class courts and justice system that is swift, straightforward and works for everyone. Our programme of reform will also foster innovation and cement our reputation for global legal excellence.
In our manifesto, and in last year’s Queen’s Speech, the Government committed to modernising our courts and tribunals so they are fit for the 21st century. The way justice is administered and delivered in our courts and tribunals cannot stand still while the world changes around them. The justice system must embrace new technologies and seize the opportunities of the digital revolution. It must work for, and fit in with, the way people live their lives today. But modernisation must also ensure that the judiciary and staff who work in our courts and tribunals are empowered to deliver smooth and efficient justice. We have a world-class
judiciary, and through the Bill we want to enable it to continue to deploy its time and expertise where and when it is most needed.
The Bill will assist in a number of different ways. It will allow suitably qualified and experienced staff to be authorised to handle uncontroversial, straightforward matters under judicial supervision. This will free up judges’ time to focus on more complex matters and will improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the courts and tribunal system. The independent procedure rule committees will determine which functions staff may exercise in each jurisdiction. These judicially led committees are the right bodies to take these decisions, and this will ensure that the powers are properly scrutinised by judges, practitioners and other interested parties.
The Bill will make it possible for staff to carry out judicial functions in the Crown Court, where the activities of court officers are currently restricted to “formal and administrative matters” only. The Crown Court judiciary currently spends far too much time on routine tasks which could be delegated, such as changes to the starting time of a hearing, or changing the pretrial preparation hearing date, even if the parties are all in agreement about these matters. The Bill also removes the post of justices’ clerk, to enable the creation of a more flexible, cross-jurisdictional leadership role for authorised staff.
All this is subject to a robust framework of authorisation that affords the court and tribunal staff who exercise these functions the right protections and safeguards. Most significantly, the Bill makes such staff independent of the Lord Chancellor but accountable to the judiciary. Courts and tribunal staff will be able to exercise judicial functions only once authorised to do so by the Lord Chief Justice or his nominee, or the Senior President of Tribunals or his delegate. The judiciary will grant such authorisation only when satisfied that the relevant staff have the necessary competence and experience to exercise these functions. The Bill also applies to authorised staff the same protections that currently apply to justices’ clerks and assistants to justices’ clerks carrying out judicial functions in the magistrates’ and family courts. This includes protecting them from costs in legal proceedings and indemnification in respect of anything they do, or do not do, when exercising judicial functions in good faith.
Alongside these changes, the Bill includes measures to ensure that the system of judicial deployment is as flexible as possible. It will give the Lord Chief Justice and the Senior President of Tribunals greater flexibility to make the best use of our judges’ experience, expertise and time. The judicial measures in the Bill include enabling recorders to sit in the Upper Tribunal and senior employment judges to sit as judges in the First-tier Tribunal and Upper Tribunal. This will broaden the pool of expertise that the tribunals can draw from to help them meet business needs. They also include extending the range of High Court judges to act as arbitrators. This will help meet the growth in demand in recent years for arbitration—for example, to resolve cases in the Chancery Division of the High Court. They will also remove the restriction on a judge being the president of more than one chamber of the First-tier
Tribunal or Upper Tribunal. This will give the Senior President of Tribunals greater flexibility to manage the leadership of the tribunals without having to recruit and appoint a new chamber president immediately that there is a vacancy. Taken together, these measures will enable the judiciary to respond to the changing demands of the case loads of different jurisdictions and will make the best use of the existing cohort of judges to benefit all users of our courts and tribunals.
We are delivering the court reform programme in partnership with the senior judiciary. I am pleased that the Lord Chief Justice and the Senior President of Tribunals have welcomed the Bill, commenting that its introduction is,
“a positive first step in legislation to deliver reform”.
Most of the measures have already been before Parliament as part of the Prisons and Courts Bill, which fell when the general election was called. The Courts and Tribunals (Judiciary and Functions of Staff) Bill is very much a first step, and we will bring forward further courts legislation as soon as parliamentary time allows.
We have not stood still waiting for this Bill; we have been pressing on with reform in areas where primary legislation is not required and we are making significant progress in enabling access to justice through online and digital means. In May, we rolled out nationally an online divorce service, allowing couples to apply for uncontested divorce digitally for the first time. People can also now make pleas online for low-level offences, such as traffic offences, and they can respond to jury summonses, track social security appeals, and issue and respond to civil money claims, all online. Over 16,000 people have already engaged with these pilots and are getting straightforward, digital access to the courts for the first time. The Bill supports that wider reform by making sure that we make best use of our judiciary and courts staff as we develop these new approaches to delivering justice.
The Bill, and our wider package of reforms, will ensure that our courts and tribunals system is fit for the 21st century and the digital age. It will help to ensure that both the judges and staff of our courts and tribunals are able to respond to the changing demands of a reformed system and, ultimately, to deliver better services for court users. The Bill marks an important first step in delivering a reformed courts and tribunals system and I commend it to the House. I beg to move.
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