'No criminal case shall be listed for trial unless the presiding judge or magistrate is satisfied that the case file was complete and available to the prosecution at least 48 hours in advance.'.—[Mr. Heath.]

Brought up, and read the First time.

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

This is a modest attempt to assist the Lord Chancellor's Department in doing something about the conduct of trials and the enormous waste of time, resource and money that is inherent in the failures of the present system. The Department estimated in 1999 that £41 million a year is wasted on cracked and ineffective trials in the magistrates courts alone. A cracked trial is one in which a case is concluded without a trial, and an ineffective trial is one in which a hearing is cancelled on the day it was due to go ahead.

I know that efforts have been made, through the Lord Chancellor's Department, to deal with some of the issues, not least of which is the instruction to the magistrates courts committees, while they still exist, to collect information on the reasons for trials not going ahead as planned. The efforts have not yet been desperately effective. An awful lot of trials still do not proceed on the day for which they are planned. Indeed, that happened in 27,500 trials in magistrates courts alone in the three months from April to June 2002. There are several reasons for that, and I do not mean to suggest that the sole reason is inadequacy in the preparation of the prosecution case. There are perfectly genuine reasons for trials not to proceed, and many others that are due to such eventualities as a witness's change of mind, new evidence coming to light or difficulties involving the defendant.

Mr. James Clappison (Hertsmere): It would be helpful if the hon. Gentleman could break down the figure for trials that do not proceed into those that are adjourned and those that are disposed of otherwise, perhaps through a guilty plea.

I have those figures somewhere, but I apologise to the hon. Gentleman because I cannot find in my notes that breakdown into different categories. I shall have to let him know later. I had prepared that figure, because it is obviously relevant to what we are discussing.

I know that in a relatively small but significant proportion of cases trials do not proceed on the day arranged because the prosecution case is not ready. The prosecution asks for an adjournment or for the case not to proceed on that day. That has an effect on everyone else involved in the case. Their time is wasted, and that is a cost. Police officers called to give evidence are taken from the districts that they are supposed to be policing, to hang around to no useful purpose at a magistrates court which, given that more and more magistrates courts are closing, is likely to be remote from that area. People in custody are transported, leading to the costs of transport and escort duty. Witnesses who are required to attend on one day and then, because the case is adjourned, to return on another, are severely inconvenienced. That should not happen, because they may have business and personal commitments and may be putting themselves to great trouble to help the judicial system as a witness. That may also apply to victims, who may time after time anticipate the resolution of the case, only to find that it does not happen.

The modest proposal in the new clause is intended to deal with a small aspect of what I have described. There should be a clear duty on the prosecuting authorities to prepare a case sufficiently early for their counsel properly to read and assess it. Their counsel should not have to go to court without having had full access to the relevant material. The court would be brought into the process and there would be a clear relationship between the investigatory authority—usually the police—the Crown Prosecution Service and the lawyer who acts as prosecutor. Together, they should be sure that they are ready to proceed. If they were not, there would be time for the court list to be reordered for that day and for people to make other arrangements, so that the minimum amount of time would be wasted on a pointless exercise.

I do not pretend that the new clause would deal with all potential delays, nor do I suggest that the prosecution are the main offenders. Indeed, the statistics show that they are not. However, it is the one area that is entirely within the province of the state—that is in the broadest sense—to order. Anything that would promote a better ordering of cases and of court procedures that are directly under the control of the prosecuting authorities must be a good idea, and I commend the new clause to the Committee.

The hon. Gentleman has drawn an important matter to the attention of the Committee, although I suspect that he would be the first to accept

that the wording is not satisfactory. He rightly began by saying that the new clause was a modest attempt to assist the Lord Chancellor's Department. I should like to expand a little on that and offer some practical advice on an important and troubling problem.

The new clause draws attention to cases not being ready for trial and thus, for one reason or another, not being disposed of on the day in question. It is important to recognise that we are dealing with two court systems, that different rules apply, and that one is much more efficient than the other. I shall deal first with the Crown courts.

When a case is committed by a magistrates court for trial in the Crown court, the practice has grown up in recent years of telling the defendant that he is committed to the Crown court for trial and that he will appear for a plea and directions hearing on a certain date. That is an excellent way forward. Plea and direction hearings in the Crown court are now available to magistrates who commit cases to the Crown court. There are custody dates and bail dates, so the magistrates will be able to tell the defendant that he is committed to the Crown court—shall we say Southwark Crown court—and that he will appear there for a plea and directions hearing on a certain date, which is normally five or six week ahead.

The purpose of a plea and directions hearing is to handle outstanding issues and to ensure that there is no impediment to a trial taking place. The defendant will invariably appear, as will his or her counsel, counsel for the Crown and the judge. The judge will go through a pro forma in the presence of counsel, and run through a series of questions. For example, he will want to know how long the trial will take, whether issues of law will be involved, whether alibi evidence will be adduced and whether witnesses have been warned. He will also want to know whether counsel are ready and whether any points of law are likely to arise in the trial. Those are all nuts and bolts issues, which the barristers and the judge deal with at the plea and directions hearings.

If the defence counsel is not satisfied that the Crown has made adequate disclosure, for example, that is the moment to tell the judge, ''We have not had a copy of the video,'' or ''We have not had a copy of the interview statement.'' The judge will then make directions orders, saying, ''Supply a copy in five days.'' In my anecdotal experience, the trial is much more likely to be effective because the outstanding issues will have been sorted out.

That all goes to show that, whatever legislation we pass, the efficiency of the criminal justice system is, to a huge extent, down to the day-to-day handling of the issues. When Crown court trials take place, issues such as warning witnesses, or which witnesses are required, will have been sorted out. Occasionally, such trials will crack, but that is normally because defendants plead guilty at the last moment—that saves time and probably money, too, in the long run—or because they go absent and do not answer bail. However, trials do not usually crack as the result of an administrative

hiccup, and that is because there is a plea and directions hearing. Contrast that with the state of affairs in our magistrates courts, where, I am afraid to say, the position is very different.

It is important to distinguish between the categories of reasons why cases do not take place. For example, someone may be charged with a matter as straightforward as driving without due care and attention. He may make a not guilty plea to the court by letter, and a trial date may be fixed. Various factors, such as a late plea of guilty, cannot affect that. There are, however, various reasons why trials do not go ahead. Sometimes, cases are dismissed without evidence being given; sometimes they are adjourned. However, it is important for the Minister to realise that cases are being sent for trial every day in the London courts, and there must be 20 or 30 magistrates or district judges courts centres in the London area.

There is no universal plea and directions hearing system in the magistrates courts. If a defendant is charged with an offence of actual bodily harm and pleads not guilty, the court tries to fix a trial date. It says, ''Not guilty. Right, we'll have the trial in this court.'' Everyone agrees, and the court tries to fix a date. In practice, the magistrate will ask the prosecuting and defence counsels how long the case will last, and they may agree that it is a two-hour case. He will then ask whether there are any dates to avoid. Have the Crown witnesses or the police supplied dates when they cannot come to court? The answer is often that no one knows which dates should be avoided. That brings us to the first bit of advice for the Lord Chancellor's Department, and I hope that those who are taking notes can follow this through. One must ensure that prosecutors have in their files the dates to avoid so that they can give them to the court straight away.

A date is fixed, but the trouble is that it could be two or three months ahead, and very little work may be done in the interim. I say to the Minister in passing—this is something of a mild sideswipe—that the more local magistrates courts are closed, the further people will have to travel for their trials and the more cases will be adjourned or will not be effective. However, let us look at the reasons why they are not effective. We fast forward two months. The case of actual bodily harm is set for trial. It is called for 2 pm. The district judge or the magistrates are ready to hear it. What has happened? There are reasons why the case will not be effective. The defendant may not turn up. Very little can be done about that, except that—and this is my second bit of advice—it may be no bad thing if in future defendants who are bailed to a trial date in a magistrates court are obliged to report the night before at their local police station to ensure their presence in the area at the time of trial. Otherwise we may find that a defendant has not turned up and not answered his or her bail. One can ask the defence counsel what the problem is, and the answer will be, ''We have been trying to get hold of the defendant for some days, but we cannot, because his mobile is switched off. We

wrote a fortnight ago but have heard nothing.'' Insisting that people answer their bail the day before their trial may help.

Much more common is witnesses not turning up. It can sometimes be a defence witness; it can often be a Crown witness. Defence witnesses may not turn up because they have not been given adequate warning by the defence team. More significantly, it is often the Crown witnesses who do not turn up because they have not been warned.

The district judge or magistrate will ask whether the witnesses were warned. ''We are not sure,'' says counsel for the defence or prosecutor, ''That is the job of the criminal justice unit.'' I have spent years trying to find out what the criminal justice unit is—I believe it to be a figment of somebody's imagination. I have never met anybody who works for it.

I believe that the criminal justice unit is a semi-retired police officer located in each court.

My hon. Friend says that, but I have searched Bow Street and Camberwell Green and cannot find these people. I am being a little flippant. There is no direct chain of command. Prosecuting counsel can wash his or her hands of the problem by saying, ''That is a matter for the criminal justice unit.'' Criminal justice unit staff are sometimes retired police officers or civilians. I do not know where they work—I have never seen them. However, in my experience they do not warn witnesses adequately. The days are gone when a policeman knocked witnesses' doors the night before a trial to ask whether they intended to go to court tomorrow. The criminal justice unit is a fundamental problem in the magistrates courts system. Day after day, magistrates and district judges return to their rooms at the end of the afternoon tearing their hair out at the inefficiencies of the criminal justice unit in not warning witnesses.

Defence and Crown regularly make applications for an adjournment because of disclosure failures. The more complicated disclosure has become in the past few years, the more defence lawyers go on a fishing exercise. At the very last moment they ask for copies of documents that have no bearing on the issues before the court.

I have another piece of advice. It is becoming increasingly common for a defendant who is in custody not to be present in court because Securicor, or one of the other teams, has been unable to liaise with the prison adequately to get him to court. The hon. Member for Somerton and Frome has some useful figures, but anecdotally, many more cases in the magistrates court are not effective compared with cases in the Crown court. That is a crying shame. The Minister will say that that is not right, but I know it to be the case. When asked, ''What are the prospects of your trials this afternoon being effective?'', any district judge will probably say that three out of five are not effective because of inefficiency.

What is the answer? I urge the Minister to take what I am about to say on board. It is an absolutely good idea that the practice used in the Crown court in relation to plea and directions hearings should be used much more in the magistrates court. Let us suppose that a trial date is to be fixed for two months' time in the magistrates court on, say, a case of actual bodily harm with three witnesses, a little disclosure here and there, and a possible videotape and other documents to be produced. It makes sense to insist that, say, two weeks before that trial date—a matter for the Minister and his colleagues—when perhaps an afternoon has been set aside, the advocates for the defence and the Crown are obliged either to appear in person briefly to say, or to certify to the court in writing so that it is on the file, that no outstanding issues could cause the trial to be vacated, and that if such issues arose they could be dealt with rapidly with a fortnight's notice or so.

I can think of no reason why the same disciplines and constraints that are applied in the Crown court through a plea and directions hearing should not be brought to bear in a magistrates court on a two or three-hour trial in an afternoon with counsel or solicitors on both sides. From time to time, district judges and magistrates of their own volition have, in effect, asked for a pre-trial review and say, when a seriously complicated case is coming up, to the advocates that they had better come in a fortnight before, when the case will be listed, but the defendant need not attend. The judge will have a little chat to both parties to ensure that they are absolutely ready, the witnesses have been warned and have not gone abroad, and they will not try to adjourn at the last moment.

Such a procedure is not set in statute. It is discretionary, depending on the court. Such matters do not arise often. If the Government and the Lord Chancellor's Department, in particular, focused hard on high-grade efficiency in the management of magistrates court cases, particularly by having a well in advance pre-trial review, a lot of the money that is wasted would not be.

I do not know whether the Minister could cause a letter to be sent to me about whether costs orders against the defence or the Crown are regularly made in the courts. My judgment is that courts are loth to make them and do not often take the robust view that should be taken. It is mainly a matter of efficiency, and the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome has done us a service by raising such problems. I hope that I have added to that service, and although obviously in its present form the new clause cannot be accepted, I hope that the Minister can assure us that he is taking active steps to improve a situation that at best is only satisfactory, and at worst—this is far too often the case—is completely unsatisfactory.

Like the hon. Member for Woking (Mr. Malins), I am grateful to the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome for tabling the new clause. It has given us the opportunity to have a short but useful debate about the importance of better and earlier case preparation.

For reasons that the hon. Gentleman outlined, the fundamental problem is that 40 per cent. of victims and witnesses attend court to give evidence, but are not called on the day in question. I can assist the hon. Member for Woking, who sought to compare the magistrates courts with the Crown court. The statistics for 2002 show that in the magistrates courts, 31 per cent., or 50,200, of the cases listed for trial were ineffective. In the Crown court, the figure was 23 per cent., or 12,600 cases. Although he is right that, in percentage terms, the problem is bigger in the magistrates courts, there is a problem in both.

When the Minister says ''ineffective'', does he mean that the case does not take place, or that it takes place on that day in a form other than that which was expected? That is an important distinction.

I am sure it is, and I shall check on the definition in order to respond. In giving the figures, I wanted to illustrate that whatever the definition used, the problem affects both types of court. The hon. Member for Somerton and Frome recognises that the new clause is a peg on which to hang a debate rather than something that could be put into effect, because it has a number of weaknesses. I shall not go into them now because I accept the spirit in which it is proposed. I shall write to the hon. Member for Woking about costs orders if the information is available.

A criminal justice unit is, as the hon. Member for Beaconsfield indicated, an administrative unit in each police station that is responsible for warning witnesses. It is also responsible for co-ordinating the production of files for the Crown Prosecution Service. Glidewell recommended that those units work more closely and be co-located with the CPS. That is sensible in view of the comments that have been made.

In the White Paper, the Government announced the setting up of the case preparation project on a trilateral basis—involving the Home Office, the CPS and the Lord Chancellor's Department. It is designed to improve the preparation of cases by the parties and the court and to reduce the number of ineffective trials.

The hon. Member for Woking drew on his considerable experience to give us a short masterclass in the practicalities. He is right: this debate is not about the legislation that is in the Bill; it is about what is done daily, who communicates with whom, and how the system fits together effectively to deal with the problem that he has identified. I am sure that the officials will have taken a careful note of what he said.

The case preparation project, which is intended to address the matter, will pilot its proposals in six criminal justice areas for at least nine months. Two of the areas, Essex and Bedfordshire, have already commenced piloting some of the proposals on listing this week. The remaining four will start in June. The Essex and Bedfordshire pilots are only running in the Crown courts, but they will be extended to the magistrates courts in April. The outcome will be evaluated so that things that work successfully can be implemented nationally.

Our aim on listing is to set trial dates with greater certainty and, increasingly, whenever possible to use fixtures that are based on the state of readiness of the case. In the pilot in Essex and Bedfordshire, the Crown court will move towards giving a fixed date for trial in every case by using an incremental approach to change. The desired outcome of the pilots will be that all hearings that are fixed under the arrangements should go ahead on the date, at the time and in the location agreed. The pilot will also aim to maximise the use of the time of legal representatives including CPS higher court advocates, for example, for plea and directions hearings and preliminary hearings, through the use of block listing.

The later pilots will also test other improvements to the case preparation process, including the use of certificates of readiness and improved case progression elements within the courts, the CPS, the police and the defence. I hope that the work that is already in hand in these pilot projects indicates the seriousness with which the Government take the issue. All of us who are involved in the criminal justice system have a duty to ensure that the bits work together as effectively as possible—to reduce the number of cases that do not go ahead when they should do, not least because of the inconvenience that it causes to defendants and to the 40 per cent. of people who turn up to do their duty and find that the system cannot accommodate them on the day in question. That is not good enough and we need to do better.

I thank the hon. Member for Woking for his contribution. He speaks with a great deal of authority on this issue. He corroborated my argument about the difficulties that are so often experienced, and drew a telling analogy between the plea and directions hearing in the higher courts and what could be achieved in the magistrates courts.

I hope that I have made it clear that the new clause is not intended to be the last word, but simply raises the problem. The Minister's reply was extremely helpful. It is clear that the Government want to address the issue and it sounds as though we are making progress. I am a little worried that it is a trilateral arrangement, but it says all that we need to know about the arrangements of the criminal justice system that three Government Departments have to work together to achieve a single result: adequate case management in the courts. Nevertheless, the pilot schemes to which the Minister referred give us some means of working towards better management of cases by the prosecution and, hopefully, of dealing with other issues, such as disclosure, which are often the cause of adjournments.

We hope that what eventually emerges is not simply better communication between the various elements involved in the preparation of cases, but a series of milestones along the way in every court case. That would enable the progress of cases to be monitored to ensure that, once the trial date has been set, the trial actually takes place on that date and there is no problem with the preparation of the case from the

prosecution, defence or police, or in relation to the introduction of witnesses. I shall watch the progress of the pilot schemes with interest and return to the matter within the compass of my other responsibilities in connection with the Lord Chancellor's Department. We must hope that, in the near future, we shall have a system that is adequate to the task and underpinned by the appropriate technology—another issue that I could discuss, but will not.

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

I was just about to sit down, but I shall give way to the hon. Gentleman.

I might have spoken earlier had I heard the hon. Gentleman's opening remarks, but I want to put in a plea. Some proactive management from the judiciary is also required. We have largely ignored the judiciary during our debate but my experience is that they sometimes contribute to the ineffectiveness of trial dates by a curious reluctance to get on with the job.

The hon. Gentleman speaks from more experience than I do.

I was referring to my hon. Friend the Member for Woking.

''If the wig fits'' is, perhaps, the appropriate term to use with reference to any specific judge or magistrate in any particular circumstances. I broadly agree with the hon. Gentleman. It is a cause for concern when the whole process becomes increasingly remote.

I am sure that we shall return to the matter in the context of the Courts Bill. The more remote the process is, the less likely it is that there will be good communications and relationships between the various people concerned with the progress of the case. Having heard what the Minister said, I am reassured that the Government have a serious intent and that what they say is not mere rhetoric. I am surprised that it has taken so long since Ministers first raised the issue to reach the point of running pilot schemes. Nevertheless, that is welcome news; let us hope for the results that we want. On that basis, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.

Motion and clause, by leave, withdrawn.