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Mr. Humfrey Malins (Woking): It is remiss of me not to have mentioned that my hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield cannot be with us until about 2.50 pm and, through me, sends his apologies to the Committee; no discourtesy is intended. I shall pass on any comments that the hon. and learned Lady makes.
Vera Baird: I am grateful. The answers would have involved another trawl through a certain amount of legalism and in the absence of the hon. Member for Beaconsfield there is not much point in inflicting that on the rest of the Committee. I am content, up to a point, with the assurances that have been given.
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Dr. Turner: All that I want to add to my hon. and learned Friend's comments is to ask the Minister whether his earnest endeavours will result in the issue's being addressed in new clauses tabled during the remaining, fairly long passage of the Bill or in an almost equally imminent Bill that can bear it. A nod will satisfy me.
Hilary Benn: If I may intervene, I am happy to tell my hon. Friend that if we can find a solution on which there is general agreement, and if the Bill remains under consideration, we would address the matter in the Bill. However, the Whips and others would not let me give an assurance about future legislative vehicles. I meant what I said about seeking to legislate as soon as we have a policy on which we have all agreed and with which the Law Commission is happy.
Dr. Turner: I thank my hon. Friend, and I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.
Motion and clause, by leave, withdrawn.
New Clause 28
Preparation of prosecution cases
'No criminal case shall be listed for trial unless the presiding judge or magistrate is satisfied that the case file was complete and available to the prosecution at least 48 hours in advance.'.—[Mr. Heath.]
Brought up, and read the First time.
Mr. David Heath (Somerton and Frome): I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
This is a modest attempt to assist the Lord Chancellor's Department in doing something about the conduct of trials and the enormous waste of time, resource and money that is inherent in the failures of the present system. The Department estimated in 1999 that £41 million a year is wasted on cracked and ineffective trials in the magistrates courts alone. A cracked trial is one in which a case is concluded without a trial, and an ineffective trial is one in which a hearing is cancelled on the day it was due to go ahead.
I know that efforts have been made, through the Lord Chancellor's Department, to deal with some of the issues, not least of which is the instruction to the magistrates courts committees, while they still exist, to collect information on the reasons for trials not going ahead as planned. The efforts have not yet been desperately effective. An awful lot of trials still do not proceed on the day for which they are planned. Indeed, that happened in 27,500 trials in magistrates courts alone in the three months from April to June 2002. There are several reasons for that, and I do not mean to suggest that the sole reason is inadequacy in the preparation of the prosecution case. There are perfectly genuine reasons for trials not to proceed, and many others that are due to such eventualities as a witness's change of mind, new evidence coming to light or difficulties involving the defendant.
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Mr. James Clappison (Hertsmere): It would be helpful if the hon. Gentleman could break down the figure for trials that do not proceed into those that are adjourned and those that are disposed of otherwise, perhaps through a guilty plea.
Mr. Heath: I have those figures somewhere, but I apologise to the hon. Gentleman because I cannot find in my notes that breakdown into different categories. I shall have to let him know later. I had prepared that figure, because it is obviously relevant to what we are discussing.
I know that in a relatively small but significant proportion of cases trials do not proceed on the day arranged because the prosecution case is not ready. The prosecution asks for an adjournment or for the case not to proceed on that day. That has an effect on everyone else involved in the case. Their time is wasted, and that is a cost. Police officers called to give evidence are taken from the districts that they are supposed to be policing, to hang around to no useful purpose at a magistrates court which, given that more and more magistrates courts are closing, is likely to be remote from that area. People in custody are transported, leading to the costs of transport and escort duty. Witnesses who are required to attend on one day and then, because the case is adjourned, to return on another, are severely inconvenienced. That should not happen, because they may have business and personal commitments and may be putting themselves to great trouble to help the judicial system as a witness. That may also apply to victims, who may time after time anticipate the resolution of the case, only to find that it does not happen.
The modest proposal in the new clause is intended to deal with a small aspect of what I have described. There should be a clear duty on the prosecuting authorities to prepare a case sufficiently early for their counsel properly to read and assess it. Their counsel should not have to go to court without having had full access to the relevant material. The court would be brought into the process and there would be a clear relationship between the investigatory authority—usually the police—the Crown Prosecution Service and the lawyer who acts as prosecutor. Together, they should be sure that they are ready to proceed. If they were not, there would be time for the court list to be reordered for that day and for people to make other arrangements, so that the minimum amount of time would be wasted on a pointless exercise.
I do not pretend that the new clause would deal with all potential delays, nor do I suggest that the prosecution are the main offenders. Indeed, the statistics show that they are not. However, it is the one area that is entirely within the province of the state—that is in the broadest sense—to order. Anything that would promote a better ordering of cases and of court procedures that are directly under the control of the prosecuting authorities must be a good idea, and I commend the new clause to the Committee.
Mr. Malins: The hon. Gentleman has drawn an important matter to the attention of the Committee, although I suspect that he would be the first to accept
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that the wording is not satisfactory. He rightly began by saying that the new clause was a modest attempt to assist the Lord Chancellor's Department. I should like to expand a little on that and offer some practical advice on an important and troubling problem.
The new clause draws attention to cases not being ready for trial and thus, for one reason or another, not being disposed of on the day in question. It is important to recognise that we are dealing with two court systems, that different rules apply, and that one is much more efficient than the other. I shall deal first with the Crown courts.
When a case is committed by a magistrates court for trial in the Crown court, the practice has grown up in recent years of telling the defendant that he is committed to the Crown court for trial and that he will appear for a plea and directions hearing on a certain date. That is an excellent way forward. Plea and direction hearings in the Crown court are now available to magistrates who commit cases to the Crown court. There are custody dates and bail dates, so the magistrates will be able to tell the defendant that he is committed to the Crown court—shall we say Southwark Crown court—and that he will appear there for a plea and directions hearing on a certain date, which is normally five or six week ahead.
The purpose of a plea and directions hearing is to handle outstanding issues and to ensure that there is no impediment to a trial taking place. The defendant will invariably appear, as will his or her counsel, counsel for the Crown and the judge. The judge will go through a pro forma in the presence of counsel, and run through a series of questions. For example, he will want to know how long the trial will take, whether issues of law will be involved, whether alibi evidence will be adduced and whether witnesses have been warned. He will also want to know whether counsel are ready and whether any points of law are likely to arise in the trial. Those are all nuts and bolts issues, which the barristers and the judge deal with at the plea and directions hearings.
If the defence counsel is not satisfied that the Crown has made adequate disclosure, for example, that is the moment to tell the judge, ''We have not had a copy of the video,'' or ''We have not had a copy of the interview statement.'' The judge will then make directions orders, saying, ''Supply a copy in five days.'' In my anecdotal experience, the trial is much more likely to be effective because the outstanding issues will have been sorted out.
That all goes to show that, whatever legislation we pass, the efficiency of the criminal justice system is, to a huge extent, down to the day-to-day handling of the issues. When Crown court trials take place, issues such as warning witnesses, or which witnesses are required, will have been sorted out. Occasionally, such trials will crack, but that is normally because defendants plead guilty at the last moment—that saves time and probably money, too, in the long run—or because they go absent and do not answer bail. However, trials do not usually crack as the result of an administrative
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hiccup, and that is because there is a plea and directions hearing. Contrast that with the state of affairs in our magistrates courts, where, I am afraid to say, the position is very different.
It is important to distinguish between the categories of reasons why cases do not take place. For example, someone may be charged with a matter as straightforward as driving without due care and attention. He may make a not guilty plea to the court by letter, and a trial date may be fixed. Various factors, such as a late plea of guilty, cannot affect that. There are, however, various reasons why trials do not go ahead. Sometimes, cases are dismissed without evidence being given; sometimes they are adjourned. However, it is important for the Minister to realise that cases are being sent for trial every day in the London courts, and there must be 20 or 30 magistrates or district judges courts centres in the London area.
There is no universal plea and directions hearing system in the magistrates courts. If a defendant is charged with an offence of actual bodily harm and pleads not guilty, the court tries to fix a trial date. It says, ''Not guilty. Right, we'll have the trial in this court.'' Everyone agrees, and the court tries to fix a date. In practice, the magistrate will ask the prosecuting and defence counsels how long the case will last, and they may agree that it is a two-hour case. He will then ask whether there are any dates to avoid. Have the Crown witnesses or the police supplied dates when they cannot come to court? The answer is often that no one knows which dates should be avoided. That brings us to the first bit of advice for the Lord Chancellor's Department, and I hope that those who are taking notes can follow this through. One must ensure that prosecutors have in their files the dates to avoid so that they can give them to the court straight away.
A date is fixed, but the trouble is that it could be two or three months ahead, and very little work may be done in the interim. I say to the Minister in passing—this is something of a mild sideswipe—that the more local magistrates courts are closed, the further people will have to travel for their trials and the more cases will be adjourned or will not be effective. However, let us look at the reasons why they are not effective. We fast forward two months. The case of actual bodily harm is set for trial. It is called for 2 pm. The district judge or the magistrates are ready to hear it. What has happened? There are reasons why the case will not be effective. The defendant may not turn up. Very little can be done about that, except that—and this is my second bit of advice—it may be no bad thing if in future defendants who are bailed to a trial date in a magistrates court are obliged to report the night before at their local police station to ensure their presence in the area at the time of trial. Otherwise we may find that a defendant has not turned up and not answered his or her bail. One can ask the defence counsel what the problem is, and the answer will be, ''We have been trying to get hold of the defendant for some days, but we cannot, because his mobile is switched off. We
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wrote a fortnight ago but have heard nothing.'' Insisting that people answer their bail the day before their trial may help.
3 pm
Much more common is witnesses not turning up. It can sometimes be a defence witness; it can often be a Crown witness. Defence witnesses may not turn up because they have not been given adequate warning by the defence team. More significantly, it is often the Crown witnesses who do not turn up because they have not been warned.
The district judge or magistrate will ask whether the witnesses were warned. ''We are not sure,'' says counsel for the defence or prosecutor, ''That is the job of the criminal justice unit.'' I have spent years trying to find out what the criminal justice unit is—I believe it to be a figment of somebody's imagination. I have never met anybody who works for it.
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