§ '.—(1) The Lord Chancellor may, with the concurrence of the President of the Family Division, give directions that, in such circumstances as may be specified—
- (a) any family proceedings which are within the jurisdiction of county courts; or
- (b) any specified description of such proceedings,
§ (2) Any such direction shall have effect regardless of any rules of court.
§ (3) Where any directions have been given under this section allocating any proceedings to specified judges, the validity of anything done by a judge in, or in relation to, the proceedings shall not be called into question by reason only of the fact that he was not a specified judge.
§ (4) For the purposes of subsection (1) "county court" includes the principal registry of the Family Division of the High Court in so far as it is treated as a county court.
§
(5) In this section—
family proceedings" has the same meaning as in the Matrimonial and Family Proceedings Act 1984 and also includes any other proceedings which are family proceedings for the purposes of the Children Act 1989;
judge" means any person who—
- (a) is capable of sitting as a judge for a county court district;
- (b) is a district judge, an assistant district judge or a deputy district judge; or
- (c) is a district judge of the principal registry of the Family Division of the High Court; and
specified" means specified in the directions.'.—[The Solicitor-General.]6.11 pm
§ The Solicitor-General (Sir Nicholas Lyell)I beg to move, That the clause be now read a Second time.
§ Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Harold Walker)With this, it will be convenient to consider the following: Government new clause 7—Family proceedings in magistrates courts and related matters.
Government new clause 20—Extension of powers of justices' clerks.
Government amendments Nos. 168, 47, 50, 53 to 58, 172, 59 to 61, 182, 62 to 64, 173, 76, 175, 79, and 82 to 85.
§ The Solicitor-GeneralThis group of new clauses and amendments relates to or arises from the Children Act 1989 and the need for new arrangements for family proceedings. The changes will allow the 1989 Act to deliver its aims and objectives more fully in all family proceedings.
Clause 6 enables the Lord Chancellor to make directions about the allocation of family proceedings in county courts. They will fall into two parts. First, directions will be made allocating particular types of proceedings to a particular level of judge. That will enable the Lord Chancellor to give a comprehensive direction 509 covering all family business and to ensure that particularly sensitive proceedings, such as care cases, are heard by judiciary of sufficient standing.
Secondly, directions will be made allocating a particular type of proceedings to a specific individual judge. The effect will be to create a nominated group of circuit and district judges who will specialise in specific types of family work in county courts. Their selection will be a matter for the Lord Chancellor on the advice, and with the concurrence, of the president of the family division.
New clause 7 extends the rule-making provisions in section 93 of the Children Act 1989 to cover all family proceedings. That will ensure that children and other family proceedings brought in the magistrates court under the Children Act 1989 will be subject to the same rules of procedure. New clause 20 amends section 28(1) of the Justices of the Peace Act 1979 to enable rules to be made under section 144 of the Magistrates Courts Act 1980 to allow for the delegation of the duties and powers authorised to be done by a justices' clerk to somebody who is his deputy or assistant.
Amendment No. 59 concerns section 97 of the Children Act 1989, which provides for rules to enable a magistrates court to sit in private in certain proceedings under that legislation, and restricts the publication of material that might identify the child in question. Those measures supplement other statutory provisions concerning privacy, and amendment No. 59 clarifies that point. Amendment No. 53 makes it clear that when a young person is brought before a court for variation or discharge of a supervision order, the court will have the power, should it be necessary, to remand him to local authority accommodation if he is under the age of 18 or, in the sad cases where this is necessary, to a remand centre or prison if he has attained the age of 18.
Amendment No. 54 concerns regulations about staying access—that is, access to a member of the family with whom the child or young person is staying, which needs to be properly planned. Amendment No. 54 provides for that. Amendment No. 60 removes the 90-day time limit for complying with directions made under a supervision order, and amendment No. 61 will ensure that no child in care will remain a ward of court. Amendment No. 168 will ensure that the power to make rules of court contained in section 93 will be available also to the relevant rule-making authorities in Northern Ireland. The remaining amendments make the necessary consequential amendments, repeals and minor technical changes, and correct certain inconsistencies.
I commend the amendments, which will enable changes to be made to the Children Act 1989 necessary to allow that very valuable legislation to deliver its aims in a full and proper way.
§ Mr. John Morris (Aberavon)I welcome the Solicitor-General's explanation, but we are dealing with a host of new clauses and amendments which would have been better introduced in Committee, when there would have been an opportunity for organisations and individuals to consider and comment on a major initiative. That would have been the right course, rather than introducing these amendments on Report.
510 Having said that, I welcome the proposed changes, and hope that we may eventually see the emergence of a complete family court, bringing together all the jurisdictions. The Bill is an important step in that direction. I should like to know how many different tiers of courts will still be dealing with children's work and what changes are envisaged in substantive law. Judging from the new clauses and amendments, I suspect that no changes are anticipated.
It is some years since I ventured into a juvenile court or into the family division, but I know from magistrates close to me that they look forward to the new challenges in family work. Shall we still have wardship dealt with in the High Court, custody in the equivalent of the divorce courts, care in the magistrates courts, and so on? Will the old divisions remain, or will a change emanate from the proposals that we have had only a short time to study?
I welcome the proposals for specified judges and for "specified descriptions" of judges—whatever that expression may mean. I accept the need for specialisation. I am told that nothing is more impressive than the solicitors panel which appears in care cases before London juvenile courts. The expertise and the care that it exhibits is, I am told, impressive. It follows that the Lord Chancellor is right to propose a degree of specialisation, and the considerable training and familiarity gained from dealing with like cases on a regular basis will be of assistance.
How are the new procedures to be monitored once they have been implemented? We all recognise and regard as important the independence of the judiciary, but we know also that some are better than others. Where people no longer wish to be specified or are quite frankly, not up to the task of being specified, it is important that they should be able without difficulty to be transferred to other tasks. There is plenty of demand in the realm of general Crown court work, so none of them would be unemployed.
It is important not to specify or allocate responsibilities to someone who, over a period of time, finds that he is perhaps not attuned to the needs and changes. I hope that we can have an assurance that the president of the family division will keep a most watchful eye on those who have been chosen to ensure that standards are not only maintained, but improved.
In a half sentence before he finished his opening remarks, the Solicitor-General referred to the reliance on local authorities with regard to care and accommodation facilities. My impression is that that is rather patchy in some areas and perhaps one or two local authorities are not so co-operative as they might be.
That co-operation must exist in the provision of facilities and we must bear in mind that local authorities have very few financial resources these days. It must also exist in the provision of reports. I have heard complaints from magistrates that local authorities do not always produce the required reports and that they are not always particularly co-operative. We should be told about that because it is very important. If any persuasion is necessary, I am sure that in the face of argument, those who may not be so good as the others will do what they can to improve the necessary co-operation between the judiciary and local authorities.
§ Mr. Gerald Bermingham (St. Helens, South)I wish to raise one point about the Children Act 1989. It has been brought to my attention by the Justices' Clerks Society that there is a proposal that legal aid certificates for the 511 child and the parents should be granted by the Legal Aid Board. The board's delivery rate is in the region of up to 20 weeks for 100 per cent. delivery. In such cases it is absolutely essential that legal aid is granted immediately.
The justices' clerks know the facts of the matter and can very often grant legal aid overnight or during the course of the night. They can assess the needs and representation in those delicate cases in which speed is often essential and in which the aid should be granted at the first available opportunity.
To leave it to the Legal Aid Board with its cumbersome processing procedures—I do not say that unkindly—would, I believe, be a considerable mistake. I hope that the Solicitor-General will take on board that one small point, which could mean a terrific amount to the children and parents involved. Perhaps he can suggest to the Lord Chancellor that that proposal is not wise.
§ Mr. Austin Mitchell (Great Grimsby)I echo the concern voiced by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Aberavon (Mr. Morris) about this procedure today. We now face complicated new clauses which have been introduced at the last minute and without adequate briefing for hon. Members. It would have been convenient and a courtesy if the Government had provided some notes on clauses to allow for a better informed debate.
Not only hon. Members are being neglected in that way. The interest groups affected by the changes, in many cases, learned of them only at the last minute. Some of those groups learned about the changes only last Friday. That is far too late to allow a proper process of consultation. This procedure is a preparation for inadequate legislation. I am not sure whether Ministers want to give the House of Lords a useful job and something to do, but having considered the Bill initially, further changes will have to be made in the House of Lords to remedy the deficiencies caused by the last-minute rush of clauses before us today.
There is such enormous legal power on the Government Front Bench that it is virtually an all-knight party. However, it is not good enough for the best legal brains to be vamping the Bill at the last minute in this fashion. The president of the National Union of Mineworkers was invited to go away and run a fish and chip shop. On the evidence of this Bill, the best legal brains could not run a fish and chip shop. Cobbling things together in this way is just not good enough. Indeed, my most devastating criticism is that I could have done it better myself. That should certainly bring them to their knees.
I welcome the Government's proposals as a first step along a road which we need to take and along which we need to progress far more quickly than the measures propose. However, the road leads towards a separate self-contained structure of family courts to deal with those matters as a specialised area. That proposal is long overdue in this country and we delayed far too long in developing such a structure. The faster the progress we can make, the better. That structure will need a specially trained and selected hierachy of judges to deal with family matters. People with sensitivity and with experience and training in that area are required and any step along that road is welcome.
I have long been an advocate of a Manpower Services Commission or Training Commission scheme for judges. 512 The training of judges in this country is totally inadequate in view of the weight of responsibility that falls on them. Training is to be provided in family matters. Such training is long overdue in many areas.
I understand that, in France, judges who deal with family matters are required to undergo a course of psychotherapy so as to understand their own prejudices, what motivates them and their own feelings, hang-ups, inhibitions and problems about the family—in short, so that they can know themselves. I do not know what results would be produced if some of the judges that I have seen around this country were required to undergo psychotherapy in that way, but if they at least knew themselves and the prejudices that motivated them, that would be extremely useful.
§ Mr. Keith Vaz (Leicester, East)At the beginning of our proceedings, it is right that I should yet again declare my interest in the matter. When the proceedings on the Bill began, I was a solicitor. Since then, I have transferred to the Bar as a mere pupil, although I am not sure whether that has happened as a result of the standard of debate in Committee. However, I receive no income either from the solicitor's profession or from the Bar.
§ Mr. Austin MitchellThat must be the first example of going back to the sinking ship.
§ Mr. VazI wonder whether my hon. Friend would like to sink with me.
The history of the discussions and debates about family courts and related matters is not good. On Report on the Children Act 1989, when the Solicitor-General was present and we were discussing family courts, my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) entered the Chamber and announced the resignation of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Unfortunately, following that, discussions on the Children Bill were curtailed. I am not sure whether that will happen again with quite the same drama today.
New clauses 6 and 7 raise important points, which were raised during the passage of the Children Act and in the Standing Committee on this Bill. The clauses proceed from a press release—not a statement—by the Lord Chancellor on 9 July this year in which he referred to the creation of family hearing centres.
I share the disappointment voiced by my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell). Having started on the road to family courts in the Lord Chancellor's Second Reading speech in December 1988, having been promised a family court at some stage and having been told that the Children Bill was the family court in all but name as it dealt with the judicial matters, it is disappointing that the Solicitor-General has decided not to announce the formal establishment of a family court. There is great support by hon. Members on both sides of the House for the creation of a family court, for the reasons that have been outlined by hon. Members in debates on family matters during the proceedings on the Children Bill and on Second Reading and in the Standing Committee stage of this Bill.
The case for a family court is unanswerable. How disappointing it is that the Solicitor-General, having promised in the Children Bill that he would set up a rolling programme to establish a family court, has given us something rather less than that—that is, family proceedings panels and family hearing centres. I hope that the Solicitor-General will confirm that next week he will 513 announce the venues for those family hearing centres. If that is the case, it would have been much more appropriate for him to make that announcement today, as it would have given us the opportunity to discuss those important matters.
I agree with what has been said about consultation. What a different approach has been taken on the Bill from that taken by the right hon. and learned Member for Putney (Mr. Mellor), now the Minister for the Arts, during the passage of the Children Bill, which was heralded as a consensus Bill, when the right hon. and learned Gentleman adjourned the Committee and allowed discussions between Opposition Members and officials of his Department when any new or different proposal was put forward, especially one of such complexity.
6.30 pm
Despite the army of civil servants present today, no attempt has been made by the Lord Chancellor's office or his Department to contact members of the Committee to discuss an issue of deep concern to those of us involved in family rights and the Family Court Campaign. There have been ample opportunities to do that. Pledges have been made about the need to carry the Committee with the Government, but none of those pledges has been realised.
On 11 July 1990, Baroness Faithfull, chairperson of the Family Court Campaign, issued a statement in which she commented quite favourably on the Lord Chancellor's press release, saying:
Now is the time to move that step forward to ensure that we have a family court.She ended her statement with the following words:It is vital to maintain the momentum of the Lord Chancellor's rolling programme of family court reform by a firm public commitment to the next stages in the process. It is hoped that under the new arrangements there will be reasonable access for families to the courts.She went on to comment on the Children Act.I hesitate, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover has just entered the Chamber. I do not know whether he is bringing us news of a resignation as he did on a previous occasion, or whether he intends to take part in a debate on family courts. Today, I received a letter from the Solicitor-General about a new body called the Authorised Conveyancing Practitioners Board, which I know he will deal with when we discuss amendment No. 26, which talks about the need to provide almost £1 million of Government money for the new board. If he is prepared to provide £1 million for a board dealing with licensed conveyancers, surely he can provide the necessary resources for fully fledged, all-singing, all-dancing family courts—to use the words of the Solicitor-General when we discussed the matter on Report of the Children Bill. Money cannot be the problem, so it must be the Government's commitment to enable that to happen.
In my constituency an overworked and understaffed juvenile court deals with family matters. Only one court in Leicester deals with such cases. The waiting room has to accommodate more than 140 people. No refreshments are available for the advocates, the parents or the children. People have to wait for a long time for their cases to be heard, as there is no fixed appointments system. The conditions are intolerable. On hot days such as today, people have to submit to the pressures of the weather. Their cases are dealt with in the same building that houses young people who may have been found guilty of criminal offences. It is not good enough for the Government to say 514 that there is no outside pressure. If they look at juvenile courts throughout the country, they will find that the service is inadequate.
I should like to know which groups the Solicitor-General, the Attorney-General or the Lord Chancellor has consulted about the proposals. What are the Solicitor-General's plans for monitoring the proposals? Are there any precedents for what he suggests in any other areas of law? Will he give me a straight answer to a straight question? When will we reach the end of the rolling programme? When will he or the Attorney-General come to the Dispatch Box and say, "We have tried out various experiments; we have made progress and time has moved on. We have had consultations with the Department of Health and now is the time for us to have fully fledged family courts with trained lawyers and judges." When will the Government make that commitment? Instead of having a rolling programme with no timetable and no end, the Solicitor-General should make a specific pledge that at a fixed time and date family courts will be introduced into our judicial system.
§ The Solicitor-GeneralI am most grateful for the welcome of the right hon. and learned Member for Aberavon (Mr. Morris) for the legislative provisions. As he said, he did not take part in the discussions on the Children Act, but he and the hon. Member for Leicester, East (Mr. Vaz) will know that the major initiative which relates to the group of amendments was the Children Act 1989. The amendments use the Bill as a legislative vehicle to build upon that major initiative.
Several hon. Gentlemen, including the hon. Member for Leicester, East, asked how the provisions fit into the framework of family courts, about the monitoring of the proposals and about training. The hon. Member for St. Helens, South (Mr. Bermingham) asked a detailed and pertinent question about the granting of legal aid certificates. I shall seek to answer those points. I emphasise to the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell) that this is not the first step; we are building upon an important major first initiative, the Children Act.
The hon. Member for Leicester, East has just become a barrister, and he will be concentrating upon clarity of expression. As the Lord Chancellor has made clear, in order to have a successful family court, whether it deals with children or wider family law, it is necessary first to create and establish a proper body of law which applies to those matters. That is exactly what we have done in the Children Act, which has been widely recognised on all sides to be a major initiative. Having created a body of law, we can create the specialised courts structure to administer it. That is what we are in the process of doing, and the amendments assist us in that process.
The proposals will be put into effect in accordance with the framework which the amendments help to construct. To that extent, they are a significant first step towards the creation of the family courts. The next step must be to establish a coherent body of family law, drawing together the different aspects, and then to create the court structure—I suspect in a way similar to what we are doing for children in relation to the wider body of family law. Then the programme to which I refer will have rolled on and we shall not simply have been making pledges for the future, with which we have been all too familiar in politics in the past. We have seen a certain amount of it from the Labour 515 party in the recent past. We shall be dealing not with pledges for the future, whether or not they have been costed, but with the constructive creation of a real system.
§ Mr. VazI accept that it is necessary to create a substantial body of law, but that is what we did in the Children Act 1989. My hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Mrs. Golding), who is present in the Chamber, served on the Committee on that Bill and I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Norwood (Mr. Fraser), who is also present, served on it too. We repealed and consolidated much legislation about children. It is accepted that it was a landmark piece of legislation. Can I tease from the Solicitor-General when the process will end? He must have some sort of timetable in mind. Governments must work to some schedule and not just embark on a continuous rolling programme. When will the process end?
§ The Solicitor-GeneralWe have created a body of law. With these new clauses we are creating the administrative structure—the court framework—to operate that body of law. That will be the first major step in the creation of a family court. The next steps will come with the development of family law.
§ The Solicitor-GeneralI will not answer the hon. Gentleman. I have told him that it is a rolling programme, and it will roll forward. He should welcome the advance and recognise how important it is.
The programme will be monitored and staffed at every level by a specially selected and trained judiciary. The monitoring will be undertaken by the Lord Chancellor and the president of the family division, who will have the benefit of a central advisory committee drawn from experts in the wide number of disciplines which come together in this aspect of children law. The committee will be judicially chaired and will assist in monitoring. There will be training at every level.
The Legal Aid Board will set up a special structure to ensure that legal aid certificates can be dealt with swiftly. Meantime, I take note of the point made by the hon. Member for St. Helens, South. As in many areas, we are anxious to move from one practical system which works well only when we have in place another practical system which will work well.
§ Mr. BerminghamDoes the Solicitor-General accept that experience is the best teacher and that experience has taught us that in these matters time is essential? I cannot foresee a stage when the board will be able to give the 24-hour cover which is necessary. Later, I shall give another example in which it is blatantly clear that the board cannot deal with legal aid applicants appropriately.
§ The Solicitor-GeneralWe have not immediately reached the stage where the board is pretending to do that. We are creating a framework in which it can do so. The hon. Gentleman will appreciate, particularly if he has had an opportunity to read the board's recent annual report, that it has already made valuable progress in other areas.
516 We are using this part of the Bill to make major advances in an area in which we began even more fundamentally with the Children Act. I commend the new clauses to the House.
§ Question put and agreed to.
§ Clause read a Second time, and added to the Bill.