Part of Judicial Review and Courts Bill - Committee (2nd Day) – in the House of Lords at 2:00 pm on 24 February 2022.
My Lords, I will make two separate points. First, Amendment 54, tabled by my noble friend Lord Ponsonby, relates to Clause 43, which abolishes local justice areas. It says that the Lord Chancellor must,
“by regulations, make consequential or supplementary provision in relation to the abolition of local justice areas.”
I assume that the thinking behind this is that it would be convenient if all justices were appointed, say, for England and Wales and not to a local justice area, and training, deployment and other issues should be dealt with on a national basis.
I do not know what is planned, but I do know from my experience as Lord Chancellor that being a Justice of the Peace in a particular area is of very considerable importance. I also know that people are appointed as magistrates because they are committed to their local community, and that people being trained and deployed together over a period of time in a particular area is also incredibly important to local justice.
This looks to be a very wide-ranging provision which may well have been thought out in full, but I should be grateful if the Minister explained the thinking, and what is being done about recruitment, deployment and training.
I see merit in the proposal of my noble friend Lord Ponsonby that there be an inquiry or investigation of some sort into what is going to happen. I do not know what form that might take, but it is well worth looking into. I imagine that his is a probing amendment, in order to see that this issue is best thought out. There may be other methods by which one can ensure that, before this wide-ranging proposal is made and implemented, we know where we are going and it does not demoralise the magistracy, where morale is not necessarily that high at the moment. I should declare an interest, in that my wife is a judge who is responsible for training and, in part, deployment in Bedfordshire.
Secondly, and separately, I strongly support the proposition from my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti. She has tabled a probing amendment to give the Minister the opportunity to put the Government’s position: what are they doing about the lack of confidence in the criminal justice system, particularly but not only in relation to the prosecution of sexual offences? Everybody in this Chamber knows that the figures for prosecutions of serious sexual offences against women are lamentable and have got worse. A few days ago, the Director of Public Prosecutions said that reforms have been made and things are going to be much better. People are doubtful about this. As with local justice, it is really important that the Government set out what they are doing. If there is a widespread sense that this is not enough, even though my noble friend says that hers is simply a probing amendment, a proper, across-the-board inquiry into how crimes against women are dealt with may well be appropriate.