Clause 4 - Establishment of courts boards
Courts Bill [Lords]
2:45 pm
Mr Christopher Leslie (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Constitutional Affairs; Shipley, Labour)
I shall speak to amendments Nos. 19 and 20 first. Others will speak to their amendments, and I want to hear the debate before I respond to them. I think that would be the most appropriate way to proceed.
Amendments Nos. 19 and 20 make drafting changes to an amendment made on Third Reading in another place. That amendment required the Lord Chancellor, when specifying the courts boards areas, to have regard to the desirability and coterminosity with the 42 criminal justice areas. The areas are based on the current police authority areas. There was a great deal of debate about that point and there may well be in Committee. We agree that the criminal justice areas are one of the factors that should be taken into account when deciding how the courts boards should be organised.
However, there are other factors, such as an effective fit with other agencies in the civil and family jurisdictions, the need and the nature of local
communities to be considered in the shape of those courts boards and the volume of work load in each area, the distribution of courthouses and even the shape of Government offices and region boundaries. If those factors are changed, there must be scope to alter the courts boards areas accordingly in consultation with the boards affected. The amendment in another place affords sufficient flexibility to take those factors into account. We therefore propose only minor drafting changes to that amendment to make sure that the degree of flexibility is retained, along the lines of the proceedings in another place.