argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Courts and Tribunals (Judiciary and Functions of Staff) Bill [Lords] — House of Commons, 2018-11-27
Topic: Law and Crime
David Michael Gauke (Conservative, Centre-right): Indeed, and I will turn to that point in a moment. I hope that the clarification provided by those amendments will be widely welcomed in this House. The passage of this Bill in the other place was characterised by a constructive and co-operative approach from both sides, and I hope that that will continue to be the case—I suspect it will, but we shall see—because the point of those amendments was to provide particular protections. Other issues debated in the other place included suggestions about being more prescriptive. As I said to my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk), it is right that we use the judicially led rule committees in many of those areas, but the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Sir Edward Davey) makes a perfectly fair point.
Courts and Tribunals (Judiciary and Functions of Staff) Bill [Lords] — House of Commons, 2018-11-27
Topic: Law and Crime
Luke Anthony Hall (Conservative, Centre-right): My right hon. Friend is being generous in giving way. He is talking about the use of judicial time, so will he explain in a bit more detail how the measures will address the problem of the backlog of cases and what effect the Bill is likely to have on improving the current situation?
Courts and Tribunals (Judiciary and Functions of Staff) Bill [Lords] — House of Commons, 2018-11-27
Topic: Law and Crime
David Michael Gauke (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend raises a good point that comes back to how we ensure that judges’ time is used most effectively, freeing them up from the most routine tasks, such as changing the start time of the hearing, and enabling them to focus on more complex matters. They could then ensure that case preparation and management was resolved proportionately and at an appropriate level. That could also help to improve the overall efficiency and effectiveness of the court tribunal system. There is an opportunity to ensure greater consistency in the current arrangements, and it is right that we strengthen safeguards, as has already been touched upon It is important to guarantee the independence of all authorised staff when they are exercising judicial functions. Clause 3 will bring authorised staff under the leadership of senior lawyers. Although we are removing the post of justices’ clerk from the statute, the functions that such clerks undertake will continue to be carried out by heads of legal operations, who have a much greater leadership role across all jurisdictions. The change will ensure that we make all authorised staff ultimately accountable and subject to the direction of the Lord Chief Justice and the Senior President of Tribunals.
Courts and Tribunals (Judiciary and Functions of Staff) Bill [Lords] — House of Commons, 2018-11-27
Topic: Law and Crime
John Michael Howell (Conservative, Centre-right): My right hon. Friend is being generous with his time. The place where these changes can have the most effect is in the tribunal system. I have sat through tribunals that have lasted for days for no good reason, tying up three independent assessors. Surely, it is there that the changes he proposes can have the biggest effect.
Courts and Tribunals (Judiciary and Functions of Staff) Bill [Lords] — House of Commons, 2018-11-27
Topic: Law and Crime
David Michael Gauke (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend may well be right. The Bill of course relates to courts and tribunals, and it is important to bear in mind the impact on tribunals. Tribunals perhaps do not always attract the attention that they might, but they play a vital role within our justice system. If we can find ways to improve their efficiency, we should all welcome that. That is a key part of what this Bill is about.
Courts and Tribunals (Judiciary and Functions of Staff) Bill [Lords] — House of Commons, 2018-11-27
Topic: Law and Crime
Kevin Paul Hollinrake (Conservative, Centre-right): My right hon. Friend mentioned the start times of hearings. As he will know, Northallerton magistrates court, which serves many of my constituents, is due to close under these reforms. It is important that people can get to a hearing on time, so will requiring people to travel further to a more distant court be taken into account? Will there be mitigation, such as video links, and will those things be in place and operating before the court closes?
Courts and Tribunals (Judiciary and Functions of Staff) Bill [Lords] — House of Commons, 2018-11-27
Topic: Law and Crime
David Michael Gauke (Conservative, Centre-right): Journey times are taken into account. I am conscious that substantial issues can arise in rural areas, but journey times are considered. As for technology, if I remember correctly, the change at Northallerton magistrates court is conditional upon ensuring that the technology is properly in place. In the context of this Bill, authorised staff will be able to play a bigger role in determining start times, for example, and one hopes that that might enable the process to run as smoothly as possible and ensure that people’s concerns about when they can get to court can be properly considered.
Courts and Tribunals (Judiciary and Functions of Staff) Bill [Lords] — House of Commons, 2018-11-27
Topic: Law and Crime
Alexander John Gervase Chalk (Conservative, Centre-right): Does my right hon. Friend agree that the principle of delegating functions to authorised staff is not, of itself, new? There has been a successful history, particularly in the magistrates courts, of delegating powers to justices’ clerks to carry out a number of functions, which even include such matters as issuing summonses or requesting pre-sentence reports. The principle is in place but, of course, the execution is vital.
Courts and Tribunals (Judiciary and Functions of Staff) Bill [Lords] — House of Commons, 2018-11-27
Topic: Law and Crime
David Michael Gauke (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend is right, and his experience is a benefit to the House. He knows of what he speaks. This principle is not new, but it is one where we think we can go further, to the benefit of the courts and tribunals system and of the users of that system. He is absolutely right A balance needs to be struck on the safeguards, and we believe we have found the right balance. Indeed, the position was strongly supported in the other place by Lord Thomas, the former Lord Chief Justice, and Lord Neuberger, a former President of the Supreme Court, both of whom have a wealth of experience in this area, having chaired procedure rule committees. The combination of Lord Thomas, Lord Neuberger and my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham, very distinguished lawyers all, is one that should reassure the House. Lord Thomas warned on Second Reading against putting too much detail into the Bill: "Experience has shown that detailed restrictions on procedure are a very real fetter on the administration of justice."—[Official Report, House of Lords, 20 June 2018; Vol. 791, c. 2039.] Similarly, Lord Neuberger warned in Committee of placing "a potential straitjacket on the ability to appoint the appropriate people to make appropriate decisions."—[Official Report, House of Lords, 10 July 2018; Vol. 792, c. 882.] Lord Marks also warned against setting too high a bar on the qualifications of court and tribunal staff exercising judicial functions: "It seems…that the purpose of this part of the legislation is to increase efficiency and…to everybody’s advantage…the speed of decision-making… Having a legislative requirement that all delegated decisions must be taken by qualified lawyers with a minimum experience requirement runs the risk of frustrating this objective."—[Official Report, House of Lords, 16 October 2018; Vol. 793, c. 414.] I make those points in anticipation that this may be an issue that we debate further this afternoon, but I think the case is persuasive.
Courts and Tribunals (Judiciary and Functions of Staff) Bill [Lords] — House of Commons, 2018-11-27
Topic: Law and Crime
David Michael Gauke (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Lady is right to raise the importance of our judiciary, but I hope that we can reach a consensus on that. Does she not recognise that the Bill has the support of the judiciary? Senior retired judges have spoken in support of it in the other place, and it has been welcomed by the senior judiciary.
Courts and Tribunals (Judiciary and Functions of Staff) Bill [Lords] — House of Commons, 2018-11-27
Topic: Law and Crime
Robert James MacGillivray Neill (Conservative, Centre-right): I understand what the hon. Lady is saying, and I am not unsympathetic to her point, but, in fairness to the senior judiciary, is it not worth pointing out what was said by the two noble lords who spoke on this matter? Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury, the recently retired President of the Supreme Court, counselled that it would be unsatisfactory to reduce the flexibility of these proposals, pointing out that there will be many decisions where requisite experience is required, but others where less experience is necessary. Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, the previous Lord Chief Justice, pointed out that the procedure rule committee had practitioners on it who acted independently. He said: "Experience has shown that detailed restrictions on procedures are a very real fetter on the administration of justice."—[Official Report, House of Lords, 20 June 2018; Vol. 791, c. 2039.] Those are very serious counsels by two very distinguished recently retired judges.
Courts and Tribunals (Judiciary and Functions of Staff) Bill [Lords] — House of Commons, 2018-11-27
Topic: Law and Crime
Alexander John Gervase Chalk (Conservative, Centre-right): Like the Chairman of the Justice Committee, I welcome these measures to modernise the process. However, this should not be allowed to distract from what remains a fundamental problem, which is that there are not enough people coming into the judiciary. We need to ensure that they are properly incentivised to do so and rewarded for doing so, because the backlog of cases in the Court of Appeal and elsewhere will not be resolved by these measures alone. Does he agree?
Courts and Tribunals (Judiciary and Functions of Staff) Bill [Lords] — House of Commons, 2018-11-27
Topic: Law and Crime
Robert James MacGillivray Neill (Conservative, Centre-right): I totally agree. These are useful, practical measures on their own, but they are by no means a solution to the problem. In fact, they are but a very small part of the solution I am a bit concerned by some of the Law Society’s suggestions in briefings that some of the broader programme of courts reform is posited on making savings in judicial posts and appointments of about £37.5 million. I hope that the Lord Chancellor—or the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. and learned Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Lucy Frazer), when she responds to the debate—will be able to set our minds at rest on that. We can make savings by using staff qualified at the appropriate level in what one might term purely interlocutory or procedural matters, but all the decisions on issues of substance in any case—whatever the sum involved or whatever the nature of the charge, in a criminal case—have impacts on the individuals concerned, and they should, in my judgment, be taken only by properly qualified lawyers in an open court process. That is important We cannot allow the valuable nature of this Bill to take away from the fact that we need an injection of resource into the criminal justice system. We are seeing a shortfall in appointments to the High Court bench on a regular basis. A number of hon. Members have talked about the integrity of our justice system and the importance of its legal standing, and the quality of the judiciary is key to that. We also see difficulties in making sufficient appointments—full time, at any rate—to the circuit bench. It is easier with recorders, I grant, because they are able to sit part time, but there is a real issue there There is also a real issue, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham knows, about morale. I think that the Lord Chancellor and the Under-Secretary of State understand that and take it on board. I do not expect them to be able to wave a magic wand and solve everything overnight, but it is important to stress these things. Technical changes are useful as far as they go, but they cannot underpin what is essentially a people-based system.
Courts and Tribunals (Judiciary and Functions of Staff) Bill [Lords] — House of Commons, 2018-11-27
Topic: Law and Crime
Robert James MacGillivray Neill (Conservative, Centre-right): I very much respect the point that the right hon. and learned Lady is making, but I must say to her frankly that I am not convinced that this Bill is the appropriate vehicle for dealing with that issue, although it is a real one, simply because the Bill is very tightly drawn in scope and relates to function. What she wishes to do—I understand why she may wish to do it—would have significant impacts on the operation of the law of evidence, which is a consideration that deserves to be looked at on its own. We probably have a shared view as to what we might want to achieve, but I am not sure that this Bill would be the right one to achieve it We do need to look very carefully at the whole approach to the way that previous sexual conduct is dealt with in rape and other sexual offence cases, but we also have to bear in mind—I say this as somebody who prosecuted and defended in these cases—that we should not assume that these issues will never be relevant to the key issue in the case. A balance has to be struck, and very often that is a decision that can only be taken by the trial judge in the light of the submissions made by the parties. I would not want us to restrict the ability of the trial judge to make that decision, because they are best placed to do that. However, the right hon. and learned Lady’s point about failure to follow the procedures and make proper application in advance, and enforcement of those procedures by the judiciary, is an important one that we certainly ought to take forward.
Courts and Tribunals (Judiciary and Functions of Staff) Bill [Lords] — House of Commons, 2018-11-27
Topic: Law and Crime
Robert James MacGillivray Neill (Conservative, Centre-right): That is a very interesting and constructive point, because we do want to have an evidence base. Again, the only caution I have is this: is it appropriate to do that through a form of statute, or is it better done through placing that requirement in the criminal procedure rules? I am going to talk about the procedure rules in a moment. Either way, there should be a means of capturing that information, and I am very sympathetic to doing so. Perhaps the right hon. and learned Lady and I could talk with others about the best way forward on achieving that, because it should certainly be possible, with modern court technology.
Courts and Tribunals (Judiciary and Functions of Staff) Bill [Lords] — House of Commons, 2018-11-27
Topic: Law and Crime
John Michael Howell (Conservative, Centre-right): May I take my hon. Friend back to where he left off? Does he agree that the threat to the use of English law around the globe comes about from the efficiency or otherwise of the judges, and that the more that judges are unable to be efficient in giving a judgment, the more there is a threat to the use of English law? Does he agree that this Bill goes a long way towards trying to sort that out?
Courts and Tribunals (Judiciary and Functions of Staff) Bill [Lords] — House of Commons, 2018-11-27
Topic: Law and Crime
John Michael Howell (Conservative, Centre-right): It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire), not least because, like her, I am not a lawyer. I think the more non-lawyers who speak in this debate, the better it will be, because we bring common sense to such a debate, which I am afraid from time to time legally qualified Members do not I was, however, completely entranced by the description of justices’ clerks given by my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill). I thought that my opportunity had now come, because these were non-legally qualified people who had a role to play, and I thought, "This is an opportunity for me when I finish here". Sadly, however, even that has been taken away from me If I may, I will just pick up on one of the things that the hon. Member for Bristol West mentioned when she talked about other things distracting us from our examination of this area. I think this is just the sort of Bill that we need to concentrate on. I do not think we should be distracted by other things, because the Bill is crucial to the management of justice and of our courts.
Courts and Tribunals (Judiciary and Functions of Staff) Bill [Lords] — House of Commons, 2018-11-27
Topic: Law and Crime
John Michael Howell (Conservative, Centre-right): It was a great shock to the barristers, particularly when I sat in the planning court and the barrister was well known to me. We played a little trick on him by coming in through different doors so that he was unaware of who we were The point of all that is that it is a very valuable training scheme. The more that people can go on it, the more there will be an understanding of the issues raised in the Bill and of the need to bring the courts into the 21st century.
Courts and Tribunals (Judiciary and Functions of Staff) Bill [Lords] — House of Commons, 2018-11-27
Topic: Law and Crime
Jack Edgar Brereton (Conservative, Centre-right): It is an absolute pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell), and I am very pleased to speak on Second Reading of the Bill, which is part of a wider programme of reforms to our judicial system. In 2016, there was a joint statement about the reform programme from the Lord Chancellor, the Lord Chief Justice and the Senior President of Tribunals saying that the reforms would combine "our respected traditions with the enabling power of technology. The vision is to modernise and upgrade our justice system so that it works even better for everyone, from judges and legal professionals, to witnesses, litigants and the vulnerable victims of crime. When they have to engage with the system, we want everyone to have available to them the finest justice system in the world." That is absolutely right. That is what we want from these reforms; we want a system that works for everybody and is more accessible to everybody I also want to bring the attention of the House to what Susan Acland-Hood, the chief executive of the Courts and Tribunals Service said about this: "Our ambitious programme of court reform aims to bring new technology and modern ways of working to what is—and will remain—the best justice system in the world." That is absolutely right. We want to make our fantastic and world-renowned justice system the best in the world. She also says: "We know our systems and processes haven’t always kept pace with the rapid technological developments…around us." That is the key point that is so important for our courts, our tribunal services and our justice system. They very much need to remain relevant, in time and in touch with technological change and it is important that we have that as we move forward The Bill is about delivering on those significant reforms to the Courts and Tribunals Service. It includes proposals to develop high-quality digital services, which are so important as we move towards a more digitised age. People are now so used to using digital technologies.
Jagtar Singh Johal — House of Commons, 2018-11-27
Topic: International Affairs
Mark Christopher Field (Conservative, Centre-right): I am grateful to the hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire (Martin Docherty-Hughes) for securing this debate on the detention of his constituent in India, on whose behalf he has been working extremely hard this past year or so. I recognise the deep concern felt by a number of other Members who are gracing us with their presence in this Adjournment debate about Mr Johal’s situation. Representing as I do an inner-city seat—the one that covers where we are today—I, too, have a reasonably sized Sikh community in my constituency, and it has made me well aware at the outset of the issues in this case May I also say how much we appreciate what a desperately difficult time this must be for Mr Johal’s family and friends, as well as for the wider Sikh community in the UK, particularly in view of the specific concerns about mistreatment and torture, about which the hon. Gentleman gave us details?
Jagtar Singh Johal — House of Commons, 2018-11-27
Topic: International Affairs
Mark Christopher Field (Conservative, Centre-right): As the hon. Gentleman will know, I always try to work on a cross-party basis, particularly on these very difficult matters. For those who are interested in the BBC programme on the Foreign Office, I believe that Thursday’s programme will talk about a particular consular case from Cambodia—my part of the world—on which half a dozen MPs on a cross-party basis expressed particular concerns Let me try to respond to many of the points that have been raised. I undertake to write to those whose questions I may not be in a position to answer fully.
Jagtar Singh Johal — House of Commons, 2018-11-27
Topic: International Affairs
Mark Christopher Field (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention. While I inevitably cannot make a guarantee that no other families will go through some of these difficulties, I am clearly only too happy to work with her. Unfortunately, it is the nature of being a Foreign Office Minister that in the past 18 months, I have met several families—not constituents of mine, but of other hon. Members—who have been through the harrowing experiences to which she referred.
Legal Advice: Workplace Injuries — House of Commons, 2018-12-18
Topic: Law and Crime
Lucy Claire Leigh (Frazer) (Conservative, Centre-right): I believe that the hon. Gentleman is referring to our proposal to raise the small claims limit for employees’ personal injury claims to £2,000. That change is not only in line with inflation, but will give those affected the opportunity to be heard in an uncomplicated, accessible court, without the need for a lawyer if they so choose.
Legal Advice: Workplace Injuries — House of Commons, 2018-12-18
Topic: Law and Crime
Lucy Claire Leigh (Frazer) (Conservative, Centre-right): The Ministry of Justice always ensures that it brings measures to the House in a way that is appropriate for them. Of course this measure will have scrutiny; statutory instrument procedure involves the scrutiny of the House. This measure will ensure that people can access the courts in an accessible way, without the need to spend excessive amounts of money.
Legal Advice: Workplace Injuries — House of Commons, 2018-12-18
Topic: Law and Crime
Lucy Claire Leigh (Frazer) (Conservative, Centre-right): My right hon. Friend makes an important point. We are here to serve the people, and we are here to serve people who have claims. People can still bring their claims through a very simple process in our courts. I should also mention that the Ministry of Justice has brought forward and is progressing an online system for money claims, which is achieving a great deal of satisfaction among users.
Legal Advice: Workplace Injuries — House of Commons, 2018-12-18
Topic: Law and Crime
Lucy Claire Leigh (Frazer) (Conservative, Centre-right): We are concerned about the injury that is suffered, not the person’s profession. As I said, this measure will help people to access courts. The small claims limit for other money claims is £10,000, not £2,000, and people will still be able to get justice.