COMMONS AMENDMENT (Hansard, 27 March 1975)

§ Lord HUGHES

My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 1. This Amendment modifies somewhat a comparable provision added to the Bill by your Lordships. The earlier version provided that the Secretary of State might direct a local authority to appoint a stipendiary magistrate if he thought that this was desirable for the better administration of the courts. I argued against that Amendment largely because of the possible interpretations or misinterpretations that might be placed on the words "better administration of the courts". Such a provision, I felt then and still feel, would either be wholly unworkable or could be used to secure without Parliamentary decision the abolition of lay summary justice in Scotland.

But, as I also said in our previous consideration of this Bill, the Government have always been prepared to be flexible and we gave very careful consideration to all that your Lordships said in our earlier debate on Clause 5 to see whether an acceptable and, equally important, workable provision could be found. In 1304 particular the noble Earl, Lord Selkirk, in moving the original Amendment, made clear that what he really wanted was a provision which would empower the Secretary of State to say to a local authority—and here I quote what the noble Earl said— Unless you speed up your court procedure, unless you make your arrangements better, I will step in."—[Official Report; 19/12/74, col. 1279.] What the new subsection (4) of Clause 5 provides is a power for the Secretary of State to direct a local authority to appoint a stipendiary magistrate where it is expendient to do so in order to avoid delays in the administration of justice. The type of situation where this power could be used would be where the justices in a district were unwilling or unable to devote sufficient time to undertake training and to man the Bench, and where it had proved difficult to find suitable and willing new justices to do the work. Clearly it is difficult if not impossible at this stage to identify all the circumstances in which such a provision might be used, and to introduce necessary flexibility the new version provides that the period of appointment may be set by the Secretary of State. This might prove useful, for example, in some circumstance where, perhaps through no fault of its own, a district court has acquired a large back-log of cases and, to avoid long delays over a lengthy period, a stipendiary magistrate can be moved in for a time to help the justices.

When he introduced the original Amendment the noble Earl, Lord Selkirk, suggested that he thought it would probably never be necessary for the Secretary of State to use this power. I hope that he is right but if, by mischance, we are both wrong, then the provision in its amended form should prove thoroughly workable and no doubt the knowledge that this provision is on the Statute Book will, in itself, serve to ensure that early action is taken to make certain that it never has to be used. I beg to move that this House doth agree with the Commons in the Amendment.