Clause 12 - The supplemental list
Courts Bill [Lords]
10:30 am
Mr Christopher Leslie (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Constitutional Affairs; Shipley, Labour)
To answer the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome, my understanding is that the current Clerk of the Crown in Chancery is, indeed, one and the same person as the permanent secretary in the Department for Constitutional Affairs. Indeed, I spoke about the amendments with him yesterday, and he was most interested to know that we were going to discuss them.
The hon. Member for Surrey Heath wanted to make a short and interesting point, but it now means that I must describe the supplemental list and elaborate on some of the existing arrangements. Section 7 of the Justices of the Peace Act 1997 provides that the names of lay justices who have retired, or stood down due to age or ill health, can be entered on a record known as the supplemental list, which many former justices of the peace regard as a roll of honour. The list is kept by the Clerk of the Crown in Chancery at the headquarters of the Department for Constitutional Affairs. Each commission area has a keeper of the rolls, who holds a record of all serving and supplemental justices resident in their jurisdiction. The Bill maintains the office of keeper of the rolls, but defines its responsibilities in terms of groups of local justice areas, because commission areas will no longer apply.
I am afraid that the amendment is unnecessary and slightly impractical. It is the responsibility of keepers of the rolls to inform the secretary of commissions when a person on the supplemental list dies. Unfortunately, keepers must rely on the deceased's relatives to notify them, and many deaths go unrecorded. Understandably, even relatives who know of the procedure often overlook what is a relatively minor matter in comparison with the more pressing issues that they face. With the best will in the world, therefore, it would be slightly difficult to keep a completely up-to-date copy of the supplemental list available. That would negate one of the main intentions behind the amendment.
Furthermore, we consider it inappropriate and unnecessary for Parliament to hold a copy of the list, because it is essentially a record of local appointments. We do not retain lists of comparable voluntary
workers in, for example, the Territorial Army or the Royal Naval Reserve. Nor do we retain lists of school governors, special constables or lifeboat crews, and I can see no valid reason to make an exception for former lay justices. Given the sheer scale of the task, the length of the list and the difficulty in ensuring that it is regularly updated, the amendments would be particularly burdensome. Few hon. Members may have looked at the supplemental list, but I am sure that it will be accessible, under normal freedom of information arrangements, to those who want to see it in the bowels of the Department for Constitutional Affairs building. I hope that Committee members will not require it to be put in the House of Commons Library.