Clause 17 - Chairman and deputy chairmen: selection
Courts Bill [Lords]
10:45 am
Mr Christopher Leslie (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Constitutional Affairs; Shipley, Labour)
I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman's amendments, although I may not want them to be accepted. However, they are part of my own education about current processes, and it has been quite interesting to consider some of the points that his amendments have prompted.
On amendment No. 122, the clause provides for the magistrates of local justice areas to elect from their number a chairman and one or more deputy chairmen, and confers a rule-making power on the Lord Chancellor as to how that will operate. Subsection (3) makes provision for the Lord Chancellor, or a person nominated by him, to authorise a lay justice to
continue to hold office as chairman or deputy chairman to hear specified proceedings. That would enable the chairman or deputy chairman to continue to preside over the court to hear a specified, partly heard case.
Amendment No. 122 would remove the express provision that ensures that the Lord Chancellor may delegate his power under the clause. There may be a need for such a power to be exercised at short notice. For example, if it suddenly becomes clear that a case will overrun, there can be no guarantees in such circumstances that the Lord Chancellor will personally be available. Therefore, arrangements for delegation clearly need to be in place to ensure that the administration of justice is not undermined.
The hon. Member for Somerton and Frome asked an interesting question about the powers and which person they are delegated to. The secretary of commissions has delegated powers from the Lord Chancellor—there is a civil servant to whom much of these powers can be delegated. As a matter of law, specific statutory authority is not generally required for a Minister to delegate his function to a civil servant in his own Department. That is known as the Carltona principle, after the case in which it was established. However, clarification of the provision is necessary to put the matter beyond doubt because it relates to the appointment of magistrates. The people who drafted it felt that it was worth while explicitly to state that it was possible to delegate on these particular matters.
Amendment No. 123 would amend the provision in clause 17(5)(c). It would remove the possibility of providing in rules that only magistrates with experience in a local justice area can vote in a contested election for a chairman.
The clause re-enacts those parts of the Justices of the Peace Act that relate to bench elections. It could be used to prevent someone from voting in a contested election if they have been assigned to the area only the day before and are not au fait with its local dynamics—at least that is what it says in my note. However, I have subsequently scribbled that the current rules do not restrict the right to vote on the ground of experience. We do not enact the rules at present, so we do not have the set of regulations in place, and I can tell the Committee that we have no intention at the moment of changing the rules to insert such an experience qualification.