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Mr. Heath: I accept entirely the Minister's argument. The clause will deal with a power rather than a duty. The power derives from the duty, not the other way round. There is potential for confusion in the present wording.
Given that there is no explicit duty to provide premises in the general duty, does that have any implications for the powers of compulsory purchase under the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, or will the general duties suffice for that purpose?
Mr. Leslie: I have to assume that there is no adverse effect on our powers as set out. Particular descriptions of the nature of compulsory acquisitions of powers are set out under clause 3. We are relatively content with them. However, I will talk to officials at some point and if there is any opinion other than that which I have just expressed, I will drop the hon. Gentleman a note to correct myself, but I do not anticipate any difficulties. I am glad that hon. Members can see that we might get into a pickle should the words remain in the Bill and that the amendment is necessary to preserve the spirit of good working order under the new arrangements.
2.45 pm
Angela Watkinson (Upminster): As a layman surrounded by lawyers, I hesitate to challenge the wording of legal documents, but looking at the clause with layman's eyes—[Interruption.] I am not alone, I am glad to hear. At line 41, the phrase ''appear to him appropriate'' seems so open to interpretation that I
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wonder if it would matter whether the word ''shall'' were changed to ''may'' or not. It could be overridden by an interpretation of ''appear to him appropriate''. For example, if the Lord Chancellor thought it appropriate to close a courthouse, the wording would hardly matter. That is a layman's question.
Mr. Leslie: That is a reasonable question for the hon. Lady to ask. Our primary concern is that, if the Lord Chancellor must provide, equip, maintain and manage courthouses himself, it raises a doubt whether the contracting out by a third party would be possible. If we were to rely only on the phrase ''appear to him appropriate'', there would still be confusion. To avoid that, I consider that it is best to change that word.
Amendment agreed to.
Clause 3, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 4
Establishment of courts boards
Mr. Leslie: I beg to move amendment No. 19, in
clause 4, page 3, line 17, leave out 'Subject to subsection (7),'.
The Chairman: With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment No. 9, in
Government amendment No. 20, in
clause 4, page 3, line 29, leave out from 'Chancellor' to second 'the' in line 34 and insert
'must have regard to the desirability of specifying areas which are the same as—
(a) the police areas listed in Schedule 1 to the Police Act 1996 (c.16) (division of England and Wales, except London, into police areas), and
(b) the area consisting of '.
And amendment (a) to the proposed amendment,
Mr. Leslie: I shall speak to amendments Nos. 19 and 20 first. Others will speak to their amendments, and I want to hear the debate before I respond to them. I think that would be the most appropriate way to proceed.
Amendments Nos. 19 and 20 make drafting changes to an amendment made on Third Reading in another place. That amendment required the Lord Chancellor, when specifying the courts boards areas, to have regard to the desirability and coterminosity with the 42 criminal justice areas. The areas are based on the current police authority areas. There was a great deal of debate about that point and there may well be in Committee. We agree that the criminal justice areas are one of the factors that should be taken into account when deciding how the courts boards should be organised.
However, there are other factors, such as an effective fit with other agencies in the civil and family jurisdictions, the need and the nature of local
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communities to be considered in the shape of those courts boards and the volume of work load in each area, the distribution of courthouses and even the shape of Government offices and region boundaries. If those factors are changed, there must be scope to alter the courts boards areas accordingly in consultation with the boards affected. The amendment in another place affords sufficient flexibility to take those factors into account. We therefore propose only minor drafting changes to that amendment to make sure that the degree of flexibility is retained, along the lines of the proceedings in another place.
Mr. Hawkins: We are delighted that the Government accepted that what was put forward by my noble Friend Baroness Anelay of St Johns and supported by the Liberal Democrats and others was an improvement to the Bill. It was one of the most important debates in another place. It is a good example of how the Committees in another place and here work to improve what the Government initially put forward.
Amendment No. 9 is intended to reinforce my noble Friend's victory in another place by adding some extra words to subsection (4), so that if a police authority area were to change the Lord Chancellor could make an order altering an area, but could not change the coterminosity of a court board area with a police authority area. I hope that even if the Minister cannot accept amendment No. 9 today, he understands the spirit of it. We are simply seeking to back up with an extra safeguard the change made in another place, which the Government have now accepted. We may want to return to that matter on Report, if the Government cannot accept our amendment today.
I am entirely sympathetic to Liberal Democrat amendment (a) to Government amendment No. 20. Indeed, if the amendments had not been starred, I might have wanted to add my name and the names of my hon. Friends to that of the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome, who tabled it. That amendment would reinforce the principle on which my noble Friends in another place, and those of the hon. Gentleman, were working. I genuinely congratulate the Government on their wisdom in accepting the underlying philosophy of our putting forward coterminosity between police areas and those of the new courts boards. I do not have a problem with the Government doing a little bit of tidying and redrafting of what we achieved in another place, but it would be even better if they accepted both Liberal Democrat amendment (a) and our amendment No. 9. I shall listen with interest to the Minister's response to those two amendments.
We are grateful to the Government for accepting their defeat with good grace, and for accepting the principle behind what we put forward in another place.
Mr. Heath: This is an important matter in terms of the courts boards proposed by the Government. Most commentators outside this place feel that there is a need to ensure a sense of locality in the courts boards, so that they are not so large as to be divorced from the proper concerns and interests of the people they purport to represent. There is clearly a strong argument for coterminosity with the other functions
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of the justice system. That argument has been used in recent years to bring the present magistrates courts committee structure into line with the police authority areas, which were established under the Police Act 1996.
I can understand that argument. Indeed, I recall that the hon. Member for Stone (Mr. Cash), speaking on Second Reading, questioned
''why 42 was the chosen number.''
Somebody sotto voce said, ''Because it is the answer to the world, the universe and everything.'' The recorded sedentary intervention in the Official Report is mine:
''It is the number of police authorities,''—[Official Report, 9 June 2003; Vol. 406, c. 461.]
which is rather more mundane and boring. But it is true. It is important that there should be no fewer than 42 police authority areas under the clause in terms of the courts boards. I can envisage a strong argument for there being more, provided that those do not cross the borders of the police authority areas. That is the purpose of amendment (a) to Government amendment No. 20.
I mentioned in the debate this morning that some police authority areas are large. The largest is in the Metropolis—the Metropolitan police area—which is treated as being connected in this instance with the City of London police. Of course, it is connected geographically, but not in constabulary structure. That area is equivalent to 15 normal sized constabulary areas. I daresay, although I am no expert on London, that Committee members would feel that the structures of their constituencies are very different from each other. I have no doubt that the hon. Member for Upminster (Angela Watkinson) and the hon. Member for Lewisham, East (Ms Prentice) feel that the areas that they represent not only have different problems with policing and maintenance of law and order, but are different from, say, Soho, the east end or Harrow. Those areas are vastly different in terms of community interests and structures. Similarly, there are hugely disparate areas even in the police authority areas outside the metropolis, such as the Greater Manchester police area, the West Midlands police area and the Thames Valley police area. St. Pauls in Bristol, in the Avon and Somerset constabulary area, is very different from somewhere up on the Quantocks. There is therefore an argument for courts boards areas that more relevantly follow the community boundaries that they represent. For the sake of convenience and ''operational efficiency'' many police authority areas have coupled together shire counties, metropolitan districts, and so on, into rather ungainly apparatus.
There is an argument that we have espoused on many occasions for reducing the unit of accountability in relation to policy on policing, sentencing and prosecution, courts, the probation service and all the accessory functions of state, to something that people can relate to. For the police, that will very often be the basic command unit. I am concerned that the presumption of coterminousity with police authority
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areas that is in the scope of the Bill works against that principle, if it were to be espoused in the future. For London, I should like to see areas, perhaps the size of a borough or something similar, where people can really have a say in the way that courts are administered, police functions are carried out, and local prosecutions are mounted, so that they connect to the citizen in a way which I suspect people would find it difficult to relate to now.
My argument in the amendment is not that we should invent small areas just for the purpose of inventing small areas—that would be nonsense.
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