Local Justice Area Reform

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Tuesday 15th July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

From March to June this year, the Ministry of Justice held a public consultation on proposed reform of local justice areas. The consultation sought responses on a range of proposed structural changes set to affect magistrates across England and Wales. Among those proposed changes is the merging of three magistrates benches into a single north Wales bench to serve six local authorities covering an area totalling 2,383 square miles. As the Member of Parliament for a significant portion of the north-west Wales magistrates bench area, this plan is of particular concern to me, and I am grateful for the opportunity to debate it today.

The local justice system in the north of Wales currently comprises three magistrates benches—north-east Wales, which serves Wrexham and Sir y Fflint; north-central Wales, representing Conwy and Sir Ddinbych; and north-west Wales, covering Gwynedd and Ynys Môn. The north-west Wales bench is based at the Caernarfon justice centre in the largest town in my constituency. Magistrates are familiar with this court, and with making the journey to that location to undertake their duties. Under Ministry of Justice plans, however, magistrates will be expected to sit at other courts outside their so-called home court between 20% and 40% of their time.

In some areas and in more urban constituencies, that may not result in significantly increased journey times and distances, but that will indubitably not be the case for individuals in the north-west of Wales. For example, if a magistrate lives in Pen Llŷn, a journey to the Caernarfon magistrates court would incur a drive of about 40 minutes. If the same magistrate is called to the next nearest court in Llandudno as part of the 20% to 40% requirement, their journey time would nearly double to an hour and 15 minutes, and if they were called to the north-eastern courts in Mold or Wrexham, the journey times would be one hour and 40 minutes or two hours, respectively—and I must say that that is on a good day.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd—I hope that is somewhere near the Welsh, but with an Ulster Scots accent—for bringing forward this debate and I congratulate her on it. I spoke to her beforehand just to ascertain the direction of travel. Does she agree that magistrates must know their communities and the characteristics of where they come from, so that they can best serve justice for the victims? In other words, the better they know where they come from, the better they know the people they serve, and then they can do their job.

[Liz Saville Roberts]

I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. Of course, this is what we talk about: the nature of justice serving those communities. It needs to know the people within those communities and to reflect their characteristics to best serve the victims, defendants, advocates and witnesses in the process by which justice is seen to be done.

The longer journeys I mentioned will inevitably create difficulties. We must remember that magistrates in this instance are volunteers. Many have other responsibilities, such as childcare and the care of elderly relatives. Some will also be in work—in other employment. It is foreseen that the changes are very likely to result in resignations, so my first question is this: has an impact assessment been made of the potential loss of experienced magistrates, the need to recruit and train new magistrates, and whether certain groups of people will be worse affected by changes in travelling time?

Cost is another factor. If an individual magistrate currently sits only in Caernarfon court, but is now directed to spend a minimum requirement of 20% at Llandudno, the annual travel expenses claim are likely to double. If they were allocated, as is theoretically possible, 40% of their time in the Mold-Yr Wyddgrug court, their annual travel claim would be likely to increase by 600%. Will the Minister confirm whether an assessment has been carried out into those substantially increased costs and the effect on value for public money?

I want to turn now to the impact on Welsh language services. While the present three local justice areas are easily grouped under the title of north Wales, it must be recognised that the communities they serve are not uniform. Indeed, the differences are most apparent in their use of Welsh. The Act of Union 1536 decreed that only English could be used in courts in Wales. That was repealed by the Welsh Courts Act 1942, the first piece of legislation to recognise the right to use the language. Of course, legislation has moved on considerably since then.

The north-west Wales bench serves the two local authority areas with the highest estimated percentage of Welsh speakers, Gwynedd and Ynys Môn, where the Welsh language is in daily use as a community, family and administrative language. The magistrates court will routinely hear defendants, victims, witnesses and advocates drawn from those communities and from the town of Caernarfon itself, where 85% of the population speak Welsh. That is just not true for the other two areas in the proposed grouping. That is made clear in the percentage of Welsh-speaking magistrates across the current local justice areas at present: 55% speak Welsh in the north-west Wales area, 16% in the central north area and only 8% in the north-east. We must remember that the purpose of local justice is exactly that: for members of a particular community to administer justice in and on behalf of that community. That means, of course, reflecting that local community.

For the north-west Wales bench, this has resulted in the Caernarfon magistrates court routinely operating in Welsh. Indeed, the Caernarfon justice centre is the home of His Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service’s Welsh language unit. There is considerable concern that the hard-fought-for offer of a bilingual service in English and Welsh for all court users will be ill-served by the UK Government’s proposals and that prospective Welsh-speaking magistrates will think twice before applying for roles, thus further reducing the number of Welsh-speaking magistrates serving communities across the whole of north Wales.

That issue was immediately raised by senior magistrates on the north-west Wales bench. They asked why a full assessment had not been made of the impact of the recommendations on the use of the language and the availability of Welsh language services. An addition was then made, I understand, to the equalities statement, outlining a potential impact on magistrates’ use of the Welsh language, phrased as “protected characteristics”. But framing an assessment in that way fails to consider the potential impacts on the rights of victims, witnesses, defendants and service users, and fails to engage with the duties enshrined in the Welsh Language Act 1993.

I am grateful to understand from the Minister, in her response to my letter on this subject, that she is “mindful of commitments” under the MOJ’s Welsh language scheme, noting that this includes responsibilities to

“assess the linguistic consequences of policies affecting services provided to the people in Wales”

and

“to undertake a Welsh Language Impact Test during consultation”.

While we wait to see how those responsibilities play out, it is clear that magistrates in the north-west of Wales do not agree that an adequate assessment of the cultural and linguistic impact of these changes has yet been undertaken. In fact, magistrates have gone so far as to tell me that they believe the MOJ has treated Wales and the people of Wales with contempt.

They are not alone in their concerns, as the Welsh Language Commissioner has made clear. After receiving initial correspondence from the MOJ, the Welsh Language Commissioner’s office told magistrates that

“the information and response provided raises more questions about how the Welsh language was considered within the consultation, especially the alleged failure to consider the implications of moving Welsh Magistrates from Caernarfon to other courts across…Wales”—

that is a translation. The commissioner’s correspondence adds that they doubt whether the impact of the proposals on court users has been identified, particularly for those currently served by the north-west Wales bench. I am aware that the Welsh Language Commissioner has contacted the Minister in relation to their concerns, and I call on the Minister today to respond in full to the commissioner as soon as is practicable.

In her response to my letter, the Minister noted that the MOJ produced a

“full translation of the consultation document considering its relevance to Welsh magistrates, court staff and court users.”

The translation of such documents by public bodies is, in all honesty, the bare minimum—it is actually a requirement under Welsh language standards—and, in all honesty, that is not the point here. It is concerning that so little attention has been given to the effects of UK Government reform on the Welsh language, especially given the Labour Welsh Government’s goal of 1 million Welsh speakers by 2050.

Of course, this is not new. As a result of the closure of rural courts by the previous Conservative Government since 2010, the proportion of bilingual magistrates—who of course are able to work in Welsh and English; it is always worth spelling that out—serving Gwynedd and Môn has fallen from around 80% to just over 50%; as I mentioned earlier, it is at 55%. There are serious concerns that this reform in the north of Wales will further diminish the percentage and number of magistrates who will routinely be able to offer a service in both Welsh and English, restricting what is the right in law as regards language for court users.

It begs the question of how effective justice can be if a person is denied the right to justice in the language in which they express themselves best—the way they express their emotions and feelings. Of course, it is not only that; this language is one of the two official languages of the country. In the case of Caernarfon, and very much in the case of the greater part of Gwynedd and Môn, this is the first language of the majority of people.

My third question to the Minister is: when will there be a proper assessment into the impact of the use of Welsh in court under the proposed changes? After all, let us remember that when Dic Penderyn was sentenced to death in 1831 for his part in the Merthyr rising, he was tried in English, but he said from the scaffold, “O Arglwydd, dyma gamwedd,” or, “Oh Lord, this is injustice.”

The proposals follow what has already been considerable reform in the field of local justice. Local justice areas were last reorganised as recently as 2016. As I have mentioned, numerous courts across Wales have been closed since 2010, including those in Pwllheli, Llangefni, Dolgellau and Holyhead, with the operations centralised in Caernarfon. Magistrates have endured more than a decade of continuous change. Let us remember who they are: volunteers who dedicate their time to help provide justice in their local communities—that is why they have come forward. North-west Wales magistrates tell me that they are regularly praised for their performance. They say they have not been provided with any evidence as to why the proposed changes to merge benches in the north of Wales are necessary.

I suspect the MOJ may be considering following the model of North Wales Police, which is a regional police force. However, I hasten to point out that the force area operates community policing across three sub-regions—western, central and eastern—which reflect exactly the three benches as things stand in north Wales. The Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board also serves the north Wales region in its entirety, but the pressure placed on it in endeavouring to meet the needs of its widely varying communities is recognised as contributing in part to its being in and out of special measures in seven of the past 10 years.

I have a couple more questions. Will the Minister therefore commit to ensuring that the local justice reform proposals will recognise that justice is best served by magistrates rooted in their communities, and, uniquely to Wales, able to work in both national languages? Will she also commit to redoubling efforts to recruit bilingual magistrates across Wales, so that benches can be fully representative of the communities they serve?

To conclude, the Minister told me last week that one of the geniuses of the magistrates court is the local link, and the fact that it delivers local justice. I agree with her entirely, which is why I secured this debate. I close by urging the Minister and her Department to consider the points that I have raised on behalf of magistrates in north-west Wales, and ask her please to respond to the questions that I have posed during this speech. Diolch yn fawr iawn.