MINISTRY OF JUSTICE — House of Commons, 2018-07-02
Topic: Law and Crime
Ian Colin Lucas (Labour, Centre-left): It is a pleasure to take part in the debate and to follow the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), the Chair of the Justice Committee; I will touch briefly on the Committee’s "Transforming Rehabilitation" report. I also welcome the relatively new Ministers—one of them is very new—to their places I want to begin with a positive, which is the construction in my constituency of the largest prison in western Europe, HM Prison Berwyn—a proposal the size of which concerned me deeply, to such an extent that I initially opposed the construction of the prison. However, I have worked very closely with the Ministry of Justice over a considerable period and have benefited from that. I would particularly like to thank Amy Rees, the current leader of the Prison and Probation Service in Wales, and the governor, Russ Trent, with whom I met on Friday and with whom I have developed a close working relationship I never had a prison in my constituency until this prison was opened, so this is new to me and there are real challenges relating to it. However, I say cautiously that I think the prison has been welcomed in Wrexham, and positive work is taking place there, which we all want to support. Wrexham’s community has been working hard with the local prison, and the prison has been very good at engaging with business and local voluntary organisations. At this stage, the prison is around half full—perhaps a little more—and the close relations between the community, me as the Member of Parliament and the prison have been very positive. I would like to thank those working at the prison for their engagement On probation, I was interested to read the "Transforming Rehabilitation" report to which the Chair of the Select Committee referred. I will not rehearse what I said last week, but there has been an extremely serious case in Wrexham involving the murder of one of my constituents, Mr Nicholas Churton, which appears to have been the result of a failure to adequately supervise an individual who was under supervision and on licence from prison. That is currently the subject of two Independent Office for Police Conduct investigations. I have spoken in detail with the probation service about it but unfortunately have not had the same level of co-operation from North Wales police. That causes me profound concern about the current probation regime. The incident that led to the murder of my constituent happened well over a year ago. We are still awaiting the outcomes of the inquiries, and I will watch those extremely closely. I have profound concerns about the resourcing of the current system. I hope that when the reports come back to the Ministers, they will look at them extremely closely and ensure that there is no repeat of the appalling failures that appear to have happened The third area that I want to raise is the court system. In a previous life, I was a solicitor, and for a time I worked as a practising solicitor in the criminal courts. That was so long ago that if there was an issue at Wrexham magistrates court that concerned me, I would speak to the local clerk to the justices face to face and receive a response on the issue. I regret that the court system today is, to my mind, entirely unresponsive to the local communities that it is supposed to serve. Wrexham is the largest town in north Wales. It is administered within the court system in Wales by someone who I believe is based in Llanelli, which is a long walk away and has no affinity or contact with the local area in Wrexham I will raise a single case, with which the Ministry of Justice will think I am obsessed: the cells at Wrexham magistrates court. This is an example of how detached the court system is under the present Government. I have commended the Ministry of Justice thus far for the close relations that I have had with the Prison and Probation Service, but I am afraid that my contact with the Courts Service has been very bad indeed. The cells at Wrexham magistrates court are important, because at present they are served by the local police station, which is in the process of closing. I raised the closure of the police station because I knew that when the police station closed, the custody facility at Wrexham magistrates court would also disappear. Towns are very important places, and solicitors’ practices in towns that serve places such as magistrates courts are also very important None of that appears to have occurred to the Ministry of Justice or, indeed, North Wales police, which clearly had not thought about what would happen to the cells at Wrexham magistrates court until I raised the issue some years ago. That began a sequence of correspondence with the Ministry of Justice and with Ministers concerning the magistrates court and led me to secure in 2016 what I believed was an undertaking from the then Minister that criminal cases would continue to be heard in Wrexham—the largest town in north Wales—and that custody facilities would be developed and built to serve the court. I was therefore very upset last week to receive a notice that I believe was sent to magistrates in Wrexham, saying: "As you are aware, the closure of Wrexham Police station has led to the loss of the shared custodial facilities at Wrexham Magistrates Court. As such, from Friday 17 August, cases that have a custodial requirement will be listed at Mold." That is exactly what I have been working for a number of years to avoid. My objective has been to ensure that there continues to be a fully functioning and effective working magistrates court in the largest town in north Wales The decision that appears to have been made thus far by the Ministry of Justice or its officials in the local area is that the court will cease in August. We do not know at this juncture—there has been no discussion with anyone that I am aware of, and certainly not with me—what the proposals are for the magistrates court in Wrexham. The local administration of the magistrates court knows very well that I have been following this extremely closely, and that I have intervened a number of times to obtain information about the case. At no stage, however, has there been any attempt to contact me concerning the present circumstances at the court It seems to me that this is a microcosm of how the court system is now operating certainly in Wales and, I am sure, across England too. The remoteness of the court system and the administration from Members of Parliament and from their local communities is the absolute antithesis of what a local system of justice should be. I, as the Member of Parliament, have no idea what the correct point of contact is. I would therefore welcome a complete rethink by Ministers on the Front Bench as far as the courts are concerned, and I would welcome a re-engagement with elected Members of Parliament about the future of their local magistrates courts and the local justice system Local justice is hugely important, and towns need the thriving local businesses—for example, solicitors’ offices—that serve the magistrates court in civic centres such as Wrexham. The way in which the Government and the Ministry of Justice are operating at the moment is that they have scant regard for those towns, for the Members of Parliament and for the people that I represent. That needs to change fundamentally, and I would really welcome such a change from the Ministers who have been listening to me so courteously.