Crown Court (Recording and Broadcasting) Order 2020

Motion to Approve

Moved by

That the draft Order laid before the House on 16 January be approved.

My Lords, these draft orders would remove current prohibitions on the recording and broadcasting of certain court proceedings. In the Crown Court, this would enable the broadcast of judges’ sentencing remarks and in the Court of Appeal would make permissible the broadcast of judgments and advocates’ arguments in selected family proceedings. Currently, the recording and broadcasting of court proceedings in England and Wales is prohibited by Section 41 of the Criminal Justice Act 1925 and Section 9 of the Contempt of Court Act 1981.

Section 32 of the Crime and Courts Act 2013 enables the Lord Chancellor, with the agreement of the Lord Chief Justice, to make an order specifying circumstances in which the prohibitions on recording and broadcasting may be lifted. This has been done to allow recording and broadcasting of proceedings in the Civil and Criminal Divisions of the Court of Appeal, which has proceeded successfully since 2013. Section 32 does not apply to proceedings in the Supreme Court, which has its own provision allowing for broadcasting of its proceedings.

The two draft orders vary in effect and scope but share the common intent of increasing transparency, public engagement and understanding about what happens in courts. Very few people have the time or opportunity to attend and observe this in person. Increasingly, people rely on television and the internet for access to news and current affairs. It is right to respond to these changes in technology and society and allow cameras into our courts. There is evidence to suggest that the more informed people are about the justice system, the more confidence they will have in it.

I will briefly summarise the intended purpose and impact of the two orders before your Lordships today. The Crown Court (Recording and Broadcasting) Order will lift current restrictions to the extent necessary to enable recordings to be made where remarks made in passing sentence are delivered in the Crown Court by a High Court judge or a senior circuit judge. Recordings will be made by broadcasters only with written permission to do so from the Lord Chancellor.

Parliament first considered the proposal to extend broadcasting to the Crown Court in 2016 during debates on the Crown Court (Recording and Broadcasting) Order, which lifted the prohibition on recording, to enable a not-for-broadcast test in eight Crown Courts across England and Wales. This test gave us the opportunity to consider the practical implications of filming in Crown Courts. We have taken into account the concerns raised by both Houses when considering the results of that test. Our learning from this, and from some years filming in the Court of Appeal, has informed the drafting of the current order and the safeguards contained within it.

We have listened to concerns regarding the potential impact of court broadcasting on victims and witnesses, and indeed on the dignity and integrity of our courts. The welfare of victims and witnesses is of paramount importance, and the order does not permit the filming of victims or witnesses, or of any other person present in court, including staff, defendants, jurors and advocates.

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord for his explanation of the orders. I have to wrestle with two competing influences in dealing with issues of this kind: on the one hand, the need for justice to be seen to be done, and, on the other, the danger of outside influences such as sensationalism influencing court proceedings. I regret that I first opposed, and then supported, the broadcasting of the House of Commons. Time has proved that I was right the second time round.

Other than when I was a Minister—under three Prime Ministers—I have spent all my professional life practising in the criminal courts. I venture to think that I have met near as many alleged murders, rapists and fraudsters as most in your Lordships’ House. The first order is very limited, applying only to senior judges in the Crown Court, and would not have applied to a part-time recorder like myself sitting as a Crown Court judge. So we are only putting our toes in the water, so far as the criminal courts, and I commend this approach.

Sentencing remarks can unexpectedly become very sensational. I suspect that a consequence of the order will be that judges will in future exercise extra care in their sentencing remarks. That would be for the good. The only publicity I had, in many years sitting as a judge, was around my sentencing remarks in a rare triple bigamy case. The offences had taken place many years before, but the accused was fairly young. The years had gone by, and he was now happily married, with a wife and children. Every tabloid splashed my sentencing remarks, “Judge tells bigamist: You get on with it”. What I meant was that, given the passing of so many years, he should now get on with his settled life. I was much more careful in my other cases after that.

I particularly welcome that the broadcast should not be in breach of any applicable restriction order, which could be of fundamental importance in, I surmise, a small number of cases. The results of a breach of such a restriction can have appalling and costly consequences. On the basis that this is not the thin edge of the wedge, I welcome the order. I suggest, if I may, that, in perhaps two or three years, the Lord Chancellor should report to Parliament on its operation. What should be paramount in our consideration is ensuring that there is no infringement of the right to a fair trial. I am content with the second order.

My Lords, this significant development is being introduced by statutory instrument without any up-to-date consultation. As the Explanatory Memorandum shows, the Government rely on a consultation from 2005—15 years ago—to justify its introduction in 2020. That is not proper consultation. Broadcasting has changed since 2005, as have the courts. At a practical level what control will be exercised over the broadcast of sentencing remarks on the internet, and on social media, which was not at all obvious in 2005? Article 10 imposes restrictions on use, but are they enforceable in the current age?

The Explanatory Memorandum makes it clear, as the Minister did a moment ago, that the policy behind this provision is

“to increase transparency in the justice system and public engagement with, and understanding of, what happens in courts.”

To confine the broadcasting proceedings to the judge’s sentencing remarks seems to do little to achieve those objectives. In a straightforward case, the sentencing remarks may be only very brief. Even in a serious case, they may reflect little of the issues played out in the trial process. In R v Chin-Charles last year, the Lord Chief Justice made it clear that sentencing remarks should be merely a brief explanation of the reasons for sentencing; the issues in the trial should not be rehearsed. The noble and learned Baroness, Lady Hallett, was a party to that judgment. I cannot imagine the public waiting anxiously to be educated at their television sets, or at their laptops and iPads, at the precise moment the judge comes into court to deliver his sentence. Surely providing clips for news programmes must be low on the priorities of a court service desperately requiring money for repairs and refurbishing.

On the issue of cost, in the Court of Appeal project the broadcasters agreed to bear the cost of installing and operating the cameras. Have they agreed to bear the cost of these provisions, both for now and stretching into the future? If not, what is the projected cost? In any event, the time and money spent even in the training of court staff cannot be justified for the limited purpose of “educating the public” or upholding the dignity of the court. There is a lengthy waiting list for trials in the Crown Court and the focus should be on speeding up the trial process.

My Lords, I wholeheartedly support the implementation of these two orders. It is essential that proceedings in our courts should be as open to the public as possible, subject to any overriding public interests, such as the interests of justice generally and in a particular case before the court. While I bear in mind the more cautious and charmingly self-deprecating contributions of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris of Aberavon, and the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, the restrictions outlined by my noble and learned friend the Advocate-General are, in my mind, proportionate and sensible.

My noble and learned friend and I have appeared as advocates in the Supreme Court, where, as he said, proceedings are recorded and live-streamed—I hope he will agree, to the public benefit. Although not every case is necessarily interesting to the public and some are, frankly, pretty dry, that they can be seen and heard live, or later by people who cannot get to Parliament Square, helps demystify the Supreme Court’s procedures and the work of those who take part in appeals as justices, advocates or litigants. It also helps the wider understanding of the law and its development through decisions of the court. I am sure that is true of broadcasts of the Court of Appeal, even if they are not routine.

I have some questions about the Crown Court order, which I sent to my noble and learned friend earlier this afternoon. Regarding that order, can he tell us how long the general permission to record sentencing remarks given by the Lord Chancellor lasts? Will there be a list of people or organisations, or only one designated recording organisation, permitted to record by the Lord Chancellor under the order, whereas those who wish to broadcast what has been recorded will need to apply to the sentencing judge on each occasion? Is the judge’s permission to broadcast limited to the particular case in which he or she is the sentencing judge, or can a High Court judge or a resident judge give permission to broadcast the sentencing remarks of another judge sitting at the same Crown Court?

I too warmly welcome the proposed orders. They are an important yet incremental step in ensuring that justice is as open as possible. Courts have always sought to do this using modern methods of communication. That is because it is always essential that justice is seen to be done openly, in the interests of not only the defendant but society as a whole, so that everyone can see that justice is being done.

For some time, the judiciary has made available transcripts or notes of sentencing remarks to ensure that they are reported accurately. This has proved very successful in ensuring that what a judge says is accurately reported in the press, but it is right that we now go further than this.

The experience the courts had in the Court of Appeal —both the Criminal Division and the Civil Division—and the Supreme Court has shown that broadcasting is a very important part of open justice. To allay some of the fears expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, and my noble and learned friend Lord Morris of Aberavon, there have been few problems. There have been no real problems with matters being repeated on the internet or social media. The courts have always tried to take into account the views of the parties. Particularly in hearing criminal appeals, they have been anxious to protect the position of the victims, or the family if the victim is deceased.

It is a tribute to our broadcasters that they have shown very real responsibility. The cameraman who used to sit in court and record what happened was always acutely sensitive to what was being said and transmitted. Therefore, bearing in mind the way this is being taken forward, we can be reasonably sure that the problems have been looked into.

It is important that the broadcasting will be restricted to the most important cases. It will therefore be possible for the public to see and hear from the judge’s own words what has been said. That is much better than the prosecutor, for example, appearing on the steps and explaining what the judge has said.

My Lords, I confess that—unlike, I think, all the previous speakers—I am afraid I do not fall into the “noble and learned” category, since I have neither legal qualifications nor the experience of serving in court proceedings that was so evident from the previous contributions. I am not sure that my service as Home Secretary compensates for that absence or necessarily endears me to those who are entitled to be referred to as noble and learned Lords. Nevertheless, perhaps I could make a few short layman’s points about the proposals before us. If I repeat some elements of the opening contribution by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen of Elie, it is because I cannot remember any occasion when I have agreed more with him than today.

It seems obvious that increasing the transparency of our court proceedings is an important step forward for our legal system. It may not be a major step—as my noble and learned friend Lord Morris said, we are dipping our toe another little bit into the water here—but it is a step in the right direction. As several noble Lords have pointed out, it is a truism that justice should not only be done but be seen to be done. The fact is that, although theoretically our courts are accessible to the public, we all know that in practice there is severely limited access to the average person, for reasons that are self-evident. This proposal increases that accessibility and transparency, even if in a somewhat limited fashion.

Secondly, it seems likely to increase understanding of how the courts actually work. It is a system that is still largely shrouded in mystery and misunderstanding for the ordinary member of the public. Thirdly, I would like to believe that in turn this will engender more widespread confidence in our justice system—although, unlike my noble and learned friend Lord Morris, I do not think it self-evident that televised parliamentary proceedings engender increased respect or understanding, so perhaps I am expressing a rather overoptimistic view. Nevertheless, it is possible that it will do this and, if so, it is to be welcomed.

My Lords, I support the making of both orders but shall speak only to the Crown Court order. My only reservation is that it may be too limited in its scope to meet effectively the stated objective of increasing transparency in our judicial system and public engagement with, and understanding of, what happens in our courts.

It has taken a long time to reach this modest stage. I well remember the consultation carried out by the Labour Government in 2005. At that stage I had been a magistrate and was the Opposition spokesperson on home affairs and, from time to time, matters covered by the Department for Constitutional Affairs.

The Crown Court order will authorise only certain judges sitting in the Crown Court to permit the recording and broadcasting of their sentencing remarks. The judges will be High Court judges, senior circuit judges who are also the resident judge of a Crown Court centre, or a senior circuit judge whose base court is the Central Criminal Court. All circuit judges have a base court but may sit at other courts. The permanent judges based at the Central Criminal Court are senior circuit judges, but other non-senior circuit judges may be requested to sit there from time to time. Those other judges will be excluded from the provisions of this order.

High Court judges and senior circuit judges preside over trials of class 1 offences, which include murder, attempted murder, rape and other serious sexual offences, but other circuit judges may be authorised to try some of these offences too. On occasion, Crown Court judges are criticised by the police—sorry, by the public—and the press for the perceived inadequacy of their sentences. Perhaps my slip of the tongue may be true as well, judging by the source of some criticism. Sentences in certain types of offence, in particular, often attract a public outcry or criticism: for example, not only those given for serious sexual offences such as rape but for other sexual offences too. Some serious sexual offences are tried before non-senior circuit judges or, indeed, as mentioned earlier today, before recorders. Sentences in such cases will be excluded from the provisions of this order. For clarity, I do not refer to the honorary recorders of major city Crown Courts who are senior circuit judges—for example, Liverpool, Manchester and Leeds, to name but a few.

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord for his usual thorough and precise introduction. I will confine my remarks to the order that relates to Crown Courts, and I say at the outset that I welcome it as an initial step. However, I share, almost word for word, the views and reservations just expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay.

I chair National Trading Standards, which is responsible, on behalf of BEIS, for delivering national and regional consumer protection enforcement activities in England and Wales. Scotland has similar but distinct arrangements. The teams we fund are located within local authorities and use local authority trading standards powers to investigate and bring prosecutions against organised crime groups, which perpetrate consumer scams targeting often vulnerable consumers, and which, as a side-effect, thereby undermine legitimate businesses and traders. Clearly, the objective is to bring the perpetrators to court. A typical example would be Allan John Coutts, a rogue trader who ran a tarmac repair business across England and Wales, operating under several trading names to avoid detection. He used a lorry specifically designed to resemble an official vehicle to cold-call customers to obtain driveway repair work. The work itself was often of very poor quality; sometimes he simply dumped loose chippings on existing driveways with no solution to hold them in place. He demanded cash for this work, often accompanying people to their banks to “help” them withdraw the cash. Very rapidly, the customers would then discover that the five-year guarantee that he offered was worthless, and Coutts and their money had vanished. When it came to court, Anthony Rees from the NTS investigation team received a judge’s commendation for his work on bringing Coutts to justice, and Coutts himself received a prison sentence of five and a half years. That was a good outcome, but justice needs to be seen to be done.

It used to be the case that the staple content of local news media was the court reporter, who would take down a shorthand note of the remarks of a judge in passing sentence. However, local news media are in decline, and, even if they have reporters, often can no longer send them to the Crown Court to cover the end of anything but the most high-profile trials. However, it is important that not only such cases as the one I described but all of them are reported. First, the outcome of a case may provide some sense of relief and closure to those who have been exploited and victimised by the criminals. Secondly, the sentences handed down may be a deterrent to other potential scammers. Thirdly, the cases act as a warning to those who may be taken in by scammers such as Coutts, and they serve as a reminder that an offer which sounds too good to be true is almost certainly too good to be true. That is why I welcome the order introduced by the noble and learned Lord. However, I would like confirmation of three points from him.