Courts and Tribunal Services (England and Wales)

Andrew Bingham Excerpts

Thursday 17th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Bingham (High Peak) (Con)]

I shall endeavour to grant your wish, Madam Deputy Speaker.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bath (Ben Howlett) on securing the debate on this important subject, which is a matter of great concern to my constituents and, I am sure, to those of all hon. Members. I am particularly pleased to follow the hon. Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey), for reasons that will become apparent as I go through my speech.

I want to start by talking about the consultation document, and I am going to be very critical of it. I have witnessed many consultations in my 12 years as a borough councillor in the High Peak, and in my five years as a Member of Parliament, and I am sorry to say that I cannot remember seeing one as poorly written and riddled with errors and inaccuracies as this one. It contains basic mistakes regarding the High Peak magistrates court in Buxton. For example, it claims that it has no public lift, when in fact it has one. That is a basic error, and I shall talk about other such errors in the document later.

Many people take a dim view of consultations, which are often seen as window dressing, while the result of the process is inevitable. I am sorry to say that the mistakes that have been made in this consultation will only feed that view among the general public. I very much welcome the assurance from the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for North West Cambridgeshire (Mr Vara), in his letter to me last month that this is a genuine exercise and that no final decisions will be made until the consultation is complete. I was pleased to see that, and I believe it.

I want to return to the content of the consultation. It is a slapdash piece of work, and I have to ask whether its author has actually been to Buxton and visited the court, or whether it is merely a regurgitation of a consultation undertaken about 10 years ago. Has someone simply dusted off that document, changed a few of the names and dates and decided that that would do? Whichever it is, it is not acceptable. At best it is inaccurate; at worst it is misleading. It has been pointed out to me by somebody with a far more qualified legal brain than mine that so great are the inaccuracies in this consultation that any decision based on it could be open to legal challenge, and I would hate to see that. I want to run through one or two of the inaccuracies.

The document says there is no public lift, but there is. In fairness, a letter was sent out subsequently saying, “This was an error and we are very sorry.” I got a copy of that letter, but many people I know did not; that is another mistake. The document states the Buxton court is not compliant with the Equality Act 2010. That is wrong; it is fully compliant with the disability legislation under that Act. The document states that there are two consultation rooms and that they are in poor condition. That is again wrong; there are three, and they are of a high standard because they were refurbished in 2010.

The document also claims that there is one waiting room available, thereby preventing the “desired segregation” of parties. Yet again, that is wrong. In 2010 the waiting areas were reorganised so now there is a separate entrance and room in the courthouse for witnesses, and the “desired segregation”, as it is termed, is therefore now in place; witnesses are segregated from defendants at all times and can be taken into the court without any communication with others waiting in the court waiting room.

I am sorry to labour this point, but the errors are multiple. The document claims that vulnerable witnesses have to use a waiting room across the road. There is a room across the road from the court; it is used for vulnerable witnesses giving evidence via video link. That has proved to be a valuable asset and is one not offered by all courts. It reassures vulnerable witnesses to know that they do not even have to enter the court building where, despite the segregation offered, they would fear bumping into the defendants. That gives huge reassurance to those who need it most.

The document goes on to talk about using Chesterfield as an alternative, claiming it is fully compliant with health and safety regulations. By omitting the fact that Buxton is also compliant, there is implication by omission, and yet again in my view that could be seen as misleading.

I will now turn to the proposals to use Chesterfield court as an alternative. Yet again, if someone had bothered to visit Buxton and do their homework they would realise that Chesterfield is just not practical. It may look a good solution on a map but in reality it does not work. The consultation talks about travel times from Buxton to Chesterfield. It completely ignores the fact that the court serves not just Buxton but the whole of the High Peak, including Glossop, which has a larger population than Buxton. Getting to Chesterfield from Glossop is just not practical by public transport. If someone had to get to Chesterfield court by public transport for 9.30 am, they would have to leave Glossop at 6.45am. We have heard talk about the journey time from Brinnington at one hour and four minutes; a move to Chesterfield would see 73% of my constituents facing a journey by public transport of over two hours. From that perspective, Brinnington is practically next door.

The hon. Member for Stockport talked about Macclesfield. As we both know, the transport links between the High Peak and Stockport are a lot better than those between High Peak and Chesterfield. If there are going to be closures in the High Peak, has any thought been given to sending people to Stockport? We have talked of Tameside, Macclesfield and Stockport closing. My geographical knowledge of the area is pretty good, and although I want High Peak retained, if there had to be just one site other than that, I would choose Stockport. It could feed Macclesfield, Tameside and High Peak because the transport links are a lot better. Has that not been looked at because Stockport happens to be in a different county or region from the High Peak—or could no one really be bothered?

Members will probably have got the impression by now that I am very unimpressed with the consultation and its contents. To compound the felony I wrote to Amanda Lowndes at Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service on 28 July and I have yet to receive a direct response to my points other than the generic apology regarding the public lift. I do not know why; I do not know whether it is an unwillingness to engage or embarrassment at such an appalling document.

I want to say at this point that this contrasts greatly with the response of the Minister, to whom I have spoken personally and who has responded to my letters. I applaud and thank him for that.

I understand the need to look at issues such as the cost to the public purse and whether we can do things differently, as has been eloquently described by my hon. Friend the Member for Bath. The savings for the courts on the High Peak, however, are projected at about £46,000, but the moving to Chesterfield will incur extra costs elsewhere, such as the travelling costs of defendants and, indeed, the magistrates. Does a magistrate who is living and serving in High Peak really want to be going over to Chesterfield? Those who know the area will be aware that it gets a touch cold in the winter and we have quite a bit of snow, and people who try to drive from High Peak to Chesterfield in February sometimes do not have the best of chances. This move will discourage people from High Peak from becoming magistrates, and I would not like to see that. The magistrates do a great job and I support them in everything they do.

People will face additional travelling costs, leaving aside the inconvenience, but we also have to consider the costs for other organisations, such as the police. Officers of High Peak Borough Council have to go to court for various things and at the moment they have only to go across the road from the town hall. They can go across, do what they have to do and be back behind their desks fairly quickly. Moving the court to Chesterfield will mean that council officers will be taken out for at least half a day, if not more, and then we have to add on the travel costs and so on. Given the lack of feasible public transport between High Peak and Chesterfield, I can see money being spent on taxis to get people to and from the court. That would be an expensive and unacceptable outcome; I seem to remember someone from the other side of the House going on about people in taxis scuttling around cities—that came to my mind a long time ago.

I have had discussions with constituents who work in and around the courts about this matter, and there are other ways that savings can be made. Previous speakers have highlighted the people who work in and around this area. We should speak to them, because I am sure they can find ways. A lot of cases of Crown Prosecution Service inefficiency have come across my desk. I have known of cases adjourned a dozen times because they are not ready and of the double listing of cases. If we speak to the experts, they could find such savings without the court in Buxton necessarily having to close.

I could talk for much longer, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I am mindful of your eight-minute ruling and so I will keep my remarks as succinct as I can. I wish to conclude by saying that High Peak is sandwiched between large towns and cities, and we get pulled one way and then the other, and we often used to be forgotten. As with everybody in this House, part of my responsibility is to represent my constituency, make sure that it is not forgotten and make sure that we get our fair share. The Minister should think long and hard about this decision. He should not base it on this woeful and sloppy piece of work masquerading as a consultation. He should look carefully at the submissions from people in High Peak, mine included. They will give him an accurate picture of High Peak, not the one put out in the consultation. If he is determined to reconfigure the court services in High Peak, I ask him to find a way of doing so that does not force my constituents into long unsustainable journeys. He should examine innovative ways of doing things, such as the pop-up courts. If we have to travel, he should make this realistic and do-able, but I urge him to find a way to preserve a court in High Peak, as that makes sense. If this consultation document had been properly researched and presented, it would have led one to that conclusion. Instead, it is a biased, inaccurate and lazy piece of work.