Tenth Standing Committeeon Delegated Legislation
Thursday 1 July 1999
[Mrs. Marion Roe in the Chair]
Draft Contracting Out (Jury Summoning Functions) Order 1999
4.30 pm
The Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department (Mr. Keith Vaz): I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Contracting Out (Jury Summoning Functions) Order 1999.
On behalf of Committee members, I welcome you, Mrs. Roe, to the Chair. Committee members are here because they want to hear about the jury summonsing order.
Section 69 of the Deregulation and Contracting Out Act 1994 enables a Minister, by making an order, to permit himself to authorise functions that are conferred on him to be carried out by another person, or by the other person's employees.
The purpose of the order is to enable the Lord Chancellor to authorise another person, or that person's employees, to perform the functions of the Lord Chancellor under section 2 of the Juries Act 1974, in so far as those functions involve the production and posting of jury summonses, and the signing of certificates of posting under section 2(6) of the Juries Act 1974.
The Act requires that jurors shall be summoned by notice in writing sent by post, or delivered by hand. A certificate of posting must be signed by an "appropriate officer". The court manager or, more usually, one of his or her staff, is currently designated as the "appropriate officer" for those purposes.
As Committee members know, jury service is an important civic duty. About 500,000 people every year are summoned to serve. In a past life, I served on a jury, and I know from my experience of the value of that system. Currently, each Crown court uses old-fashioned and resource-intensive systems to summon jurors. The intention is to modernise that important part of the criminal justice system by introducing new systems and modern technology to support the process. One of the changes will be to establish a central summoning bureau for England and Wales. That will introduce a more consistent approach to summoning jurors; it will also reduce costs and offer higher levels of customer service to those who undertake that important duty.
The civil servants who work in the Court Services, one of the Lord Chancellor's executive agencies, will continue to be responsible for nearly all the procedures that are involved in summoning jurors, and they will staff and run the new central bureau.
However, it will announce the efficiency of the new procedures if the functions of printing and posting summonses and signing the certificate of posting are contracted out. The Lord Chancellor and I are thereforeseeking a contracting out order under the Deregulation and Contracting Out Act 1994 to enable a private sector organisation to post the summons and to sign the certificate of posting in the future. Our intention is to authorise the Court Service's private finance initiative suppliers, which is currently EDS, to carry out those functions. EDS is a completely different company from the one that is currently dealing with the computerisation of the issuing of passports. There is no connection between this contracting-out exercise and any other.
I stress that no other aspect of the Juries Act 1974 will be affected by the changes that we intend to introduce, and that the selection of jurors from the electoral register and the administration of juror responses will remain with Court Service staff. The draft seeks to contract out only the posting and printing of summonses and the certification of posting. I commend the order to the Committee.
4.34 pm
Mr. Nick Hawkins (Surrey Heath): I join the Minister in welcoming you, Mrs. Roe, as the Chairman of our proceedings, which will, I believe, be brief.
It was a great pleasure to hear the Minister refer to the Deregulation and Contracting Out Act 1994. That splendid piece of Conservative legislation, which was wisely introduced during the previous Parliament, encouraged the use of the private sector. The Government Whip doubtless hand-picked Labour Committee members to ensure that they were all on-message and new Labour, and that they supported the 1994 Act. Perhaps other Government Back Benchers, who are less on-message, would object to the privatisation of this part of the courts' duties, but I welcome the fact that, in this case, the Minister is a sinner who has repented and believes that the private sector has a role to play.
I should declare a constituency interest because EDS has a substantial operation in my constituency of Surrey Heath. Indeed, the part of EDS that has dealt with much of the computerisation work in the court service is based in Camberley in my constituency, and that part of EDS might carry out this work once the order has been approved. Therefore, I welcome the order.
I should like to make one minor correction. I believe that, when the Minister first referred to the title of the order, he said "jury summonsing order". When I practised at the Bar in Birmingham, summonsing, at least in the Birmingham vernacular, was something very different from the summoning of juries. It was the sort of word that defendants used when they were told that they would receive a summons to attend a police station or court.
Mr. Vaz: I can assure the hon. Gentleman that I meant to say summoning. Any slip of the tongue was just the result of the heavy burden of ministerial duties.
Mr. Hawkins: Of course, I realised that it was just a slip of the tongue. Committee members know what we are talking about.
The order provides for a sensible application of the powers in the Deregulation and Contracting Out Act 1994, which the Opposition welcome. I am happy to approve the order.
4.37 pm
Mr. John Burnett (Torridge and West Devon): I join the Minister and the hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Mr. Hawkins) in welcoming you to the Chair, Mrs. Roe. I shall not keep you or the Committee long as we consider the order, head to head and horn to horn. I am sure that the Minister will correct me if I am wrong, but I assume that the order delegates only administrative functions, and that it will not affect the selection of jurors. In addition, I should like to ask the Minister what monitoring will be carried out by the Lord Chancellor's Department once these functions have been delegated?
4.38 pm
Mr. Vaz: I can assure the hon. Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr. Burnett) that the order will not affect the selection of jurors, which will not be contracted out. Of course, the Department will continue to monitor the functions that have been delegated, especially as it is something that we are doing for the first time. We shall ensure that the contactors carry out their responsibilities. I am sure that if they do not, the hon. Gentleman will be one of the first to write to me, along with the Opposition spokesman, the hon. Member for Surrey Heath, as we have decided to give the contract to a firm in his constituency--we are a generous and benign Government.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That the Committee has considered the draft Contracting Out (Jury Summoning Functions) Order 1999.
Committee rose at twenty-one minutes to Five o'clock.
The following Members attended the Committee:
Roe, Mrs. Marion (Chairman)
Burnett, Mr.
Campbell, Mr. Alan
Foster, Mr. Michael Jabez
Hawkins, Mr.
Hill, Mr.
Perham, Ms
Ruddock, Joan
Starkey, Dr.
Taylor, Mr. John M.
Vaz, Mr.
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