“We just wanted to watch the court, to see what they are doing”, says Tracey Edwards, after she was turned away by security guards and told that magistrates would be making decisions in private that day.
Tracey and her friend Norman had travelled considerable distances to attend Birmingham magistrates court, hoping to watch as utility companies applied for warrants to be able to force their way into homes and businesses to fit pre-paid meters.
In late 2022, the courts abruptly stopped granting warrants for energy companies like British Gas to fit the meters, after journalists uncovered rotten practices in the system. This included magistrates approving warrants for hundreds of properties in a matter of minutes without proper scrutiny.
Families already struggling with debts and soaring energy costs were being targeted, with scant regard for possible vulnerabilities they may have.
Tracey and Norman, interested in understanding how these hearings worked, were surprised to find themselves locked out of that day’s proceedings – after being misled about the openness of the court process. They are now suing the government after their encounter. Their experience is just the tip of the iceberg in a justice system mired in crisis, beset by delays and backlogs, and increasingly turning to secretive hearings to try to steady the ship.
Judges frequently refer to justice only being done if it is seen to be done – the cornerstone of the Open Justice principle. But the inconvenient truth is more than 60 per cent of criminal court cases in England and Wales are now conducted either partly or fully behind-closed-doors, and that figure could rise dramatically in 2025.
Demands from the media and campaign groups for an overhaul of transparency in the courts have gone unanswered by government for more than a year, while plans have been drawn up for a greater amount of magistrates’ work to be withdrawn from public view. The Labour government faces ever growing public demand to drive down the court backlogs, but does it risk an even greater backlash from delivering so much justice in secret?
Christian Adams (Christian Adams)
Criminal convictions dished out in private
The Single Justice Procedure (SJP) was introduced in 2015 by David Cameron’s coalition government, to allow magistrates to dish out convictions and fines for minor crimes in back rooms of courts across the country. The rationale was that full court hearings for minor crimes could no longer be justified during a time of government austerity and endless squeezes on the Ministry of Justice’s budget. And crucially, it was believed the public would not mind, as the new process also allowed guilty pleas to be entered in writing from the comfort of defendants’ sofas.
The SJP process has grown in size over the last decade, and now takes in around 800,000 criminal cases each year. It is a system essentially built on implicit trust, as the public are excluded and not offered the chance to scrutinise the decisions of magistrates.
Successive governments maintained that the Single Justice Procedure is “working well”, and as recently as February ministers were asserting that there is no need for increased transparency or wider reform.
But The Standard’s award-winning investigation into the process has this year exposed the truth, that the cost-cutting and drive for “efficiency” was so deep that basic checks and humanity were stripped away.
Dementia patients, care home residents, people with cancer, and families who lost loved ones have been harshly pursued over unpaid bills during the darkest periods of their lives.
Last month, a grieving widow, 61, joined the list of victims, as she was convicted of not paying a £35 bill shortly after the death of her husband. She wrote to a court to explain that her husband’s death triggered “severe mental health problems”, and she had mistakenly not paid the tax when ownership of the vehicle transferred to her.
“Due to the state of my mental health and bereavement of my husband of 39 years, I apologise for my misunderstanding”, she pleaded. But it was not enough to avoid a criminal conviction.
The performance of Northern Rail has been criticised (Peter Byrne/PA) (PA Wire)
Train companies abused fast-track courts
Around 75,000 convictions for fare evasion are being overturned after we uncovered mass misuse of the fast-track courts, and the government has now ordered a full review of the way rail operators have been pursuing criminal cases. The SJP system – dubbed ‘conveyor belt justice’ by its critics – is under intense scrutiny, and the public is now rightly concerned about how justice is being done. Yet it remains hidden from public view.
In November, then-Courts Minister Heidi Alexander won praise for a public promise to reform the Single Justice Procedure, including new checks on the public interest of each prosecution. But conspicuously absent from her announcement were any measures to boost transparency in a court process rocked by scandal – and still handling more than 17,000 criminal cases a week.
To make matters worse, Ms Alexander was then promoted out of the Ministry of Justice, and while the government insists reforms remain on the table, it will be up to a new minister to take up the reins.
Heidi Alexander left the Ministry of Justice to become Secretary of State for Transport (Jonathan Brady/PA) (PA Wire)
“We just wanted to watch the court”
Tracey and Norman are part of a group set up to scrutinise the way courts are exercising their powers, looking particularly at the granting of utility warrants for pre-paid meters.
They contacted Birmingham magistrates court to say they were interested in “observing the judicial process of granting warrants of entry”, and got the answer that they should come to court on January 26, 2024.
But on arrival, they were “refused entry by the security staff and…were told that there was no hearing”, court papers reveal.
“The security staff were challenged on this claim and a member of the security team consulted with two magistrates, who were sitting in the hearing, and it was confirmed that (they) were not allowed into the courtroom as it was a private hearing.”
A scandal engulfed the energy sector in 2022 after it emerged warrants had been issued by courts in questionable circumstances (PA) (PA Wire)
The 2022 utilities warrants scandal had uncovered magistrates approving hundreds of warrants in hearings lasting no more than a few minutes. Trust was shattered in a system which had been responsible for the granting of more than 360,000 utility warrants that year.
Yet when magistrates started approving warrants again under a reformed system said to have extra scrutiny, Chief Magistrate Paul Goldspring decreed that courts could – if they chose to – do this work entirely in private.
Tracey and Norman have sued the courts over their experience, alleging human rights violations and suggesting the Ministry of Justice should accept that blocking members of the public from watching court is wrong.
But the MoJ has instead instructed lawyers to fight them in court, relying on Judge Goldspring’s decision that “there is no requirement for applications to be heard in open court”.
Ironically, when The Standard asked to watch Tracey and Norman’s showdown with the MoJ at Barnsley county court via a videolink, we were initially told it would cost £119 just to make an application. A court official then suggested because it is a civil case we “may not be allowed in the hearing anyway”. The hearing ultimately took place in public with a videolink set up, and the court’s decision has not yet been delivered.
Dhillon Shenoy is one of 150 volunteers who have signed up to the Court Watch project (ES/Kirk)
“Why are you here?”
So how common is denying the public and defendants access to the courts and information on cases? The charity Transform Justice sent volunteers into London’s magistrates courts for a mass observation project, called CourtWatch, and concluded in May that the public faces “many barriers to seeing how justice is done”.
Volunteers had to contend with inaccurate court listings, sound issues in the courtrooms, a legal process jammed with impenetrable jargon, and hostile questioning from security guards and staff, asking: “Why are you here?”
Bromley Magistrates’ Court (Joe Coughlan)
Dr Shaun Yates, a senior lecturer in Criminology at London Metropolitan University, spent more than half a year observing the magistrates courts for a new book, which calls for a radical change in the way justice is delivered.
He observed defendants being “rushed through the system” while patently struggling to understand what was happening, in courts where speed is of the essence after years of being told to “do more with less”.
“Defendants are told to be quiet, like the process is not something they are involved in or anything to do with them”, he said. “There is currently a crisis when it comes to the issue of efficiency. They need to reimagine what an effective justice system looks like. They can’t just cut costs and constantly do more with less.”
On his trips to court he noticed failings in the public listing of cases, and in the courtroom found a process where acronyms and jargon are commonplace.
“When defendants comprehend what’s going on, we know they are less likely to go out and do further offending”, he said. “The idea is that defendants view the system as legitimate, not corrupt, and it inspires them to become law-abiding citizens.
“If more people know what’s happening in the courtrooms, it’s more likely they do agree with the system and its legitimacy. When you don’t know and view the system as being corrupt and illegitimate, that’s bad for our society.”
A number of people have already been jailed for their part in the nationwide riots (Police/CPS/PA) (PA Media)
Room for improvement
In the aftermath of this summer’s riots, Ms Alexander praised the media’s court reporting as culprits were swiftly brought through the courts and sentenced: “At a time when the response of the criminal justice system was under enormous scrutiny, it was important for the public to see and hear about justice being done; that crime leads to punishment and that criminal activity has consequences.”
But she also acknowledged the ongoing issues, with “room for improvement when it comes to some of the practicalities of accessing hearings, systems and the information you need to do your job”.
Video technology has become embedded in the justice system since the start of the pandemic, introducing a welcome degree of flexibility to listings and increased access to hearings. But there are clear downsides.
Judge Richard Marks KC delivers a sentencing which was broadcast live from the Old Bailey in London. (PA)
Dr Yates saw defendants being muted over a videolink and apparently being blocked from taking part in their own hearing. And The Standard is aware of murder trials where the numbers of journalists allowed in the hearing room – rather than watching a live video feed – has been severely limited, including one where reporters were banished entirely from the courtroom.
Lawyers routinely apply for reporting restrictions in London’s courts without even telling the media, and sometimes attempt to block trials from being reported at all.
It is not just in criminal courts where secrecy is growing.
Freelance journalist Charlie Moloney was recently blocked from finding out the conclusion of an inquest into a 38-year-old man’s death, when it was conducted “in writing” and in private. The Senior Coroner unilaterally concluded there was “no public interest” in details of the death or his findings being made public, asserting: “There is no broader learning or public health benefit that would merit publicity in this case.”
“Maybe the coroner is right that this county is better off not knowing about how one of its residents died”, Mr Moloney said. “Perhaps we should just take his word for it. On the other hand, who is he to make that decision? Surely that is a matter for us, the taxpaying public who funds the coroner’s service, to decide.”
Plans for new ‘secret’ courts
Lurking on the horizon is the Online Plea and Allocation system (OPA), sold to MPs in 2022 as a great new idea to streamline the justice system. Under OPA, the events of a normal court hearing – explaining the charge, indicating a plea, agreeing bail conditions – would happen online with lawyers and judges swapping private messages. The public would not get to know about cases involving serious criminality as they enter the courts.
More than 100 journalists and legal observers raised the alarm about the negative impact OPA would have, but the reform was passed into law nonetheless. It has been sat in the background for the last two years, waiting to be activated and bring about the effective abolition of tens of thousands of court hearings a year.
The previous Conservative government promised transparency measures similar to those that exist in the much-maligned Single Justice Procedure, doing little to quell suspicions this new process would herald more secret justice. The new Labour government is now faced with a quandary – bring in the new system which may help the battle against record-breaking backlogs and delays, or ditch it to avoid delivering yet another blow to the UK’s battered reputation on open justice.
An MoJ spokesperson called open justice a “fundamental principle of our legal system, with transparency and accessibility being vital to promoting trust and understanding”.
“We are continually looking at ways to improve the openness of the justice system. We are considering responses to the Open Justice consultation and are taking action to improve the Single Justice Procedure”, they added.
The Ministry continues to pick over ideas from the Open Justice consultation, including online publication of legal documents in a similar way to the US courts, a central register of reporting restrictions, and greater public access to information. Fourteen months have elapsed since the consultation closed, with no date set yet for a government response.
The MoJ says space is sometimes limited in courtrooms, which is why videolinks are utilised, and the department has no control over the decisions of coroners. It has taken action following the Courtwatch report to improve the experience for members of the public at court, and work is underway on listings and access to reporting restrictions.
The Ministry can also point to a successful judge-led campaign for more media reporting in the notoriously secretive family courts, and a project established by the Lady Chief Justice Baroness Carr to promote Open Justice in future years. Judges are looking at the possible expansion of filming in criminal courts, after the warm reception to broadcasting judges passing sentence.
Jodie Comer in Prima Facie, the smash hit play which explored the impact of delays in the criminal justice system (Helen Murray)
‘Off the books’
The London Standard eventually managed to track down a court handling applications for utility warrants, and was invited into a session at Uxbridge magistrates court – a magistrate and legal adviser on an MS Teams link, with an agent for the utility company joining by phone.
Over the course of an hour, the magistrate asked set questions about whether those affected by the warrants had been visited, if they had been informed of their human rights, and the justifications for entering the premises.
Twelve warrants were checked at random from the stack of 131 applications. Two failed, ten passed, and then 129 warrants were approved en masse. Efforts by this newspaper to see the stack of warrants applications in full have so far been blocked, so it is impossible to say whether the new system is working well. Having watched the process, it seems the system is at least more robust than when warrants were nodded through in just a few minutes.
But the process remains frustratingly out of the view of members of the public, just like Tracey and Norman. Hearings are kept off the court listings and appear to be “invite-only”, while the decisions of magistrates are recorded “off the books”.
(Clara Molden/PA) (PA Archive)
When the government finally delivers its verdict on its Open Justice consultation, it may want to consider whether it is right for a court process so recently hit by scandal to continue being so shrouded in secrecy.
The justice system has been starved of resources, the delays have never been worse, and the prisons crisis overshadows everything taking place in the courts. But withdrawing the justice system from public view and scrutiny – in the name of cost-cutting and efficiency – should never be the answer.