It's certainly change, but is it progress?

The season for bench half-year meetings has come around again, and it set me reflecting on the way things have changed in the fourteen years that I have been a magistrate. Back in 1993 we, like all metropolitan benches, were an independent entity, a petty sessional division serving our local community. The focus on the needs of the local community were reinforced by the fact that our PSD boundaries were identical to the borough boundaries (or as that appalling neologism would have it, coterminous).

The regulation of the court business was in th hands of the bench chairman and a small committee of senior magistrates, supported and guided by the clerk to the justices. The bench chairman was responsible for the magistrates; the clerk to the justices managed the staff and the facilities. It all worked very smoothly and we all felt part of the team. In addition the Advisory Committee dealt with any serious conduct or disciplinary matters, and sitting above all was the illustrious person of the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, by whom we were all appointed.

It was not long before things began to change. The then Lord Chancellor, Lord McKay, was not happy to have so many individual entities all ploughing their own furrow, and one could see his point - up to a point. Despite the best efforts of the Magistrates' Association to promote the idea of consistency in sentencing across England and Wales, most benches had their own 'black book' of recommended penalties for the whole range of common offences. But I suspect that he was also mindful of the fact that all of those individual clerks to the justices represented a powerful group when not happy with government proposals. Reducing their number would commensurately reduce their power. Officially, however, what concerned the Lord Chancellor was that financially it was wasteful and inefficient for his department to have to deal all the time with so many small individual PSDs.

The solution proposed was that PSDs should be encouraged to amalgamate with their neighbours and form larger, more efficient units. As I recall, sixty to eighty such groupings were thought to be appropriate. Some PSDs took the view that if that was what the Lord Chancellor required, then he should deal with it, not them. Others, my own included, took the view that if you jumped rather than waiting to be pushed, you might negotiate a better deal from the LCD. And so we amalgamated. However, the much vaunted efficiencies and cost savings were not readily apparent, because - naturally - there had to be a new level of management to run the new amalgamated body. And that very quickly came to cost more than had been saved, in addition to slowing down decisions, which now had to be discussed at length in committee, instead of over coffee or lunch in the Justices' Clerk's office. The decision makers, moreover, were now only available to and answerable to the magistrates themselves through intermediaries (MCC members) and we began to feel the effect in a reduction in involvement and consultation.

Of course, progress once initiated must be maintained and soon gathers momentum. In 1997 there was a change of government, and with it a change of Lord Chancellor. Lord Irvine spotted that if fewer justices' clerks were easier to control, then fewer still would be even easier! Forget sixty to eighty amalgamated bodies; henceforth PSDs should be coterminous (It is Lord Irvine who saddled us with this awful word) with police authority boundaries, and by considering the Met and the City of London police to be one for these purposes, declared that there would shortly be just forty two bodies for the whole of England & Wales. Oh, and PSDs would henceforth be known as PSAs. Now forgive me for seeming cynical, but when a government feels that it is worth spending time on changing a single word, I want to know why. Well, the reason was simple. PSD boundaries can only be changed by legislation, whereas the new Petty Sessional Areas could have their boundaries changed (tampered with, if you prefer) administratively. He also suggested that it would be far tidier if he removed responsibility for magistrates in the County Palatine from the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, and took it over himself. Unfortunately/fortunately, it transpired that due to the foresight of a Greater Manchester MP at the time of local government reorganisation, this could only be achieved by primary legislation, so it was shelved for a later date.

That later date arrived a couple of years ago when the government decided to combine the magistracy and the Courts Service into a new amalgamated body, HMCS. So having undergone one amalgamation in 1995, and another in 1997, we then faced a third. Each one has increased the distance between those who decide what shall happen and those who have to carry it out, be the latter magistrates, legal advisors, court managers or whatever. Justice may still be local in its delivery - though that is debatable - it is far from local in its management and accountability.

It must be acknowledged that benefits to the community have indeed occurred during this process, though whether because of it I am not sure. Principle among the benefits are the much higher quality of training which is now routinely available to magistrates to fit them for their duties and keep them up to speed, and a much greater degree of consistency across England and Wales in patterns of sentencing. These are good things and we should be proud that we have achieved them.

But I have recently become conscious of a parallel, insidious process which has been running alongside the one I have described. We used to be concerned first and foremost with the delivery of justice in our deliberations. At our recent half-year meeting, however, the word 'justice' did not crop up once. Instead, our masters at Area speak solely of performance targets, of cost savings, and of 'business cases' as the basis for decisions. I fear that in the past fourteen years we have begun to lose sight of our primary purpose. And that is most definitely not a good thing.