Mr Booth’s concerns and Mr Fenton’s response (letters, 12 November) highlight the real problem with HM Courts Service. It likes to dictate how things should be organised when alternative, local methods of working would be more appropriate.

HMCS runs its courts its way, never mind what solicitors have to say. The point about front-door security at courts is that it is unnecessary and costly. Solicitors who for many years have entered a court building and resisted the temptation to attack a client or prosecutor with a biro or an old edition of Wilkinsons are now searched along with defendants and others. It is not a real security policy but one designed to look like a real security policy.

How strange it is that courts feel the need to search me, but museums, shops, hospitals and other such places do not. I do not get searched getting onto a train, or into a taxi, or when entering a bus, or when visiting a police station custody suite. Indeed, at Sunderland Magistrates’ Court the security policy is enforced with such vigour that umbrellas are deemed a risk to life and limb.

This government would do well to organise a proper review of the entire justice system to identify waste and inefficiency, and bureaucratic nonsense. The government might even conclude that there are far too many managers and directors and meetings, and far too much gathering of statistics, and that reform following a holistic review (that includes solicitors) is long overdue.

Michael Robinson, Emmersons Solicitors, Sunderland