Government plans to slash the courts service budget will have a damaging effect on the public’s access to justice.

Black holes in space are a scientific fact, but black holes in public sector budgets are often a matter of dispute. This is the case with the alleged £90m ‘black hole’ in the courts budget.

This controversy started with a letter from Lord Justice Leveson which was leaked to the Conservative Party. In the letter he outlines the ‘difficult’ financial situation the courts are in as they have to find £90m in cuts over the next three years. Henry Bellingham, the shadow minister for justice, made much media hay over the contents of the letter, linking it to the continuing controversy over the family fee income. The justice minister, Lord Hunt, countered and insisted that there was no ‘black hole’ and that the planned ‘efficiency savings’ would have no impact on the people who use the courts service.

As the Gazette reported in August, applications for child care and supervision orders have plummeted by 25% since councils were forced to bear the full cost of court fees, prompting fears about the welfare of vulnerable children.

The judiciary has been outspoken about the enormous hike in fees – up from £150 to more than £4,000 if a case goes to a full hearing. This is a key part of the government’s plan to make the courts self-financing and fits into the Ministry of Justice’s (MoJ) overall financial strategy.

LAG believes that a significant factor in the drop in cases has been the introduction of the Public Law Outline (PLO), which has led to more cases being resolved before proceedings are issued. Next month the new proceedings and increase in fees will have been running for six months – an opportune time for the government to review whether these changes have led to an improvement or a reduction in the legal protection of vulnerable children.

Important though it is, the debate on the changes to fees and the PLO are side issues in the controversy over the courts service budget. Court fee income can fluctuate because of changes in law and in the economy. LAG notes that in the last quarter, creditors’ petitions increased by 18% and housing repossession orders by 24% on the same period last year. It would be distasteful in the extreme to herald such figures as a ‘business triumph’, representing as they do the human misery caused by economic woes for which risk-taking bankers are largely to blame. This is perhaps at the heart of the judiciary’s objections to the courts service being run like a stand-alone business focused on the bottom line.

More than the market

The administration of justice should be independent of market forces. Court administration should be as efficient as any business, but access to justice should not be determined by the market. The problem is that the MoJ’s difficulties with its overall budget are forcing the service down this route.

By 2010/11 the MoJ has to make £1bn in savings. This includes £140m from the court service – £60m more than Judge Leveson claims – and £45m from the tribunals, as well as £180m from that other area of great concern for LAG, the rapidly shrinking legal aid fund. This is in part to pay for other priority spending such as ‘titan’ prisons – another target of judicial criticism – and to meet the department’s overall target set by the Treasury in the Comprehensive Spending Review.

With inflation running at 5%, well above the 2% target set by the government, it is likely that the MoJ will have to find further ‘efficiency savings’. The biggest item of expenditure will be the funding of pay increases for staff if they exceed the 2.4% public sector pay policy.

A black hole definitely exists, but the MoJ prefers to call it ‘efficiency savings’ while the rest of us call it budget cuts. Some savings can be made by more effective management and LAG would support this. But to achieve the level of cuts necessary to balance the books there will inevitably be reductions in service, such as fewer clerks to administer courts, less judicial time and the maximising of fee income – all at the expense of access to justice for the public.

Steve Hynes is director of the Legal Action Group