WHY DOES ENGLAND STAND ALONE?

Perhaps the outcome of what was the British Empire`s greatest gift to the world is that around 2 billion people speak English as a first or second language, i.e. 20%-25% of the world`s population.  Arguably the next most significant offering to authoritarian ruled societies was the foundation of a legal system where all the populus was treated equally before the law. At its lowest level this was incarnated in the system of magistrates courts where non lawyers were entrusted with the jurisdiction over the lowest levels of alleged criminal defendants.  It is therefore surprising that this English system  was not absorbed by the former colonies and dominions in anything like its current form.  Indeed New Zealand is the only country where the English court user would perhaps recognise its Antipodean counterpart of two community magistrates or Judicial Justices of the Peace.  Even in Scotland, the only other country where lay justices preside in any number, the system is not comparable to that south of the border e.g. single justices preside.  There are some few Australian and American states where lay justices preside. The question is why the English system has not been absorbed to the same extent as the English language in the old empire. 

Some historical aspects of the system might help to explain how we now are where we are. Government and judicial lackeys are forever extolling the virtues of "local" justice.  Until 1948 "local" meant magistrates approved by local dignitaries.  From that era until 2005 Local Advisory Committees recommended candidates to the Lord Chancellor using structured selection criteria. The current situation is that the Local Advisory Committees assess applicants; the Lady Chief Justice selects candidates and the Lord Chancellor makes the formal appointment on behalf of the Crown.

There has long been an undercurrent of disdain by criminal lawyers in their dealings with the lay magistracy in private if not in public.  While they value the principle of community justice and the fact that magistrates sit in diverse panels of three, lawyers frequently express frustration over the lay bench's lack of formal legal training.  Research indicates that some practitioners view magistrates as overly deferential to the police and the Crown Prosecution Service.   

Polling by The Queen Mary University Study (2024) indicated that lawyers overwhelmingly reported that lay magistrates are poorly trained and lack a sufficient understanding of basic law and procedural rules. Lawyers heavily favoured professional district judges, rating them as much faster, more efficient and capable of understanding complex legal arguments. They noted that lay decisions are significantly more inconsistent and prone to being unjust.  Considering the very low number of successful appeals to the crown court this opinion lacks credibility. The vast majority of polled lawyers demanded substantial, immediate reform regarding magistrates' training and communication styles. A segment of the respondents felt that reform would not be enough and openly advocated for the lay magistracy to be scrapped. 

The Law Society is always wary on its comments concerning the lay magistracy but there is an underlying theme that it opposes increasing its powers whilst the Magistrates Association, a government lap dog, strives for exactly the opposite policy and only rarely acts as an independent voice for magistrates despite its protestations to the contrary. 

I began this post with a question;Why the English system has not been absorbed to the same extent as the English language in the old empire.  Perhaps that opening should have been why England continues to rely upon lay justice but why almost everyone else decided not to.

As mentioned above only Scotland and New Zealand have retained a lower courts structure derived from the post war English form. That was a system of patronage reflecting the social structure of its time.  Advisory Committees were established to recruit candidates on merit rather than social standing with the aim of creating benches more representative of their communities. The principle of lay justice survived but the method of appointment became more transparent.

After WW2 most countries concluded that criminal courts should be presided over by legally qualified judges. England retained its lay magistrates but surrounded them with legal advisers, structured training, detailed sentencing guidelines and extensive procedural rules.  Supporters  argue that lay magistrates bring independence and community experience to the courtroom but, the detractors argue, at the cost of a lack of consistency in sentencing and decision-making which is easier to achieve when judges hear criminal cases every day rather than  26 half days annually even with the attendance of a legal advisor. 

Things are different in continental Europe.  Career judges, selected after legal education and specialist judicial training, are the norm. Where lay participation exists it is usually alongside professional judges rather than instead of them.

At a time when legislation is pending with government seeking to expand magistrates' sentencing powers, transfer increasingly serious cases into magistrates courts or curtail traditional rights of appeal they are placing greater reliance on a judicial model that few comparable jurisdictions have retained.

So asking why does England stand alone with regard to my original question and its alternative there appears to be no conclusive answer other than the observation that the employment of exclusively district judges to magistrates courts would be an additional cost which all governments to date have decided is not worth paying.  So much for the motto, local justice for local people: district judges are appointed on their merit not their neighbourhood. 

ONE MILLION VIEWS: THANKS TO MY SHORT SIGHTED READER

Last month this blog registered its millionth page view.  To those within and without the legal umbrella  who give even a moment or two of their waking hours to read my thoughts on topics however loosely related to magistrates and the wider legal community I offer my thanks. 

It was on a now defunct site I began this project in 1999. These earlier episodes to 2013 I try now to update approximately weekly and can be found at https://amagistratesdiaries.blogspot.com/

STATISTICAL GAPS LEAVE ROOM FOR SPECULATION : SOME FURTHER THOUGHTS

I was appointed to the magistracy in the closing years of the last century: a time of musical effervescence, cool Britannia, relief of the Good Friday Agreement, "education, education and education", "we are the servants of the people" and much much more.  A time when the average prison population was 65,000 and the terrorist crime of 9/11 was avoidable if the few discerning members of security agencies of the West had been able to convince their political masters of scenarios which were discernible even through the wrong end of  a Mossad or CIA telescope. 

In those far off days as a newbie one of my first training sessions was on the subject of bail with the starting point for discussion that every defendant has the right to bail such right open to argument by the prosecution.  This topic was discussed here on June 9th.  At the crown court over the last three years just under half of those defendants remanded were released on bail.  In 2024 95% of defendants at magistrates courts were given bail.  Of course prison overcrowding is a major driver when deciding to remand on bail or in custody.  However my question today when we know how many are granted bail is how many Fail to Appear to answer their bail; a statistic currently unavailable but  was included in Criminal Justice System Statistics Quarterly until March 2015. It was discontinued because data supplied by police forces became increasingly incomplete. Although the MOJ began publishing "experimental statistics" on FTA warrants again from December 2019 using a newly developed methodology labelled as experimental there is no bottom line saying "X% of people bailed at magistrates court subsequently failed to appear."  Is that by choice or reluctance on the part of MOJ? 

In 2018 His Majesty`s Courts and Tribunals Service quietly handed over some numbers via Freedom of Information requests.  It seems that now in 2026 the statistics are still "experimental".  The one figure that would actually answer the question everyone in this trade wants answered: of those granted bail what proportion failed to appear and had a warrant issued? MOJ will tell you how many people were bailed. It will tell you, separately, how many FTA warrants were issued. It will not join the two together at the level of an individual defendant. You are left doing the arithmetic yourself, on the back of an envelope, using historical parliamentary answers from a different decade and calling the result "roughly one in ten to one in seven" because nobody with better data will say it plainly.

At one time the excuse would be that several computer systems didn`t talk to each other: a similar excuse for hold ups and mishaps in the NHS and other government related organisations.  That get out clause is gradually nearing end of life status.  Building a linked defendant-level dataset connecting "bailed" to "failed to appear" to "warrant issued" is not, in 2026, beyond the wit of a department that runs prison population projections five years into the future down to the hundred. It would simply require someone to decide it mattered enough to fund. And that's the rub as the man from Stratford wrote in Hamlet.   A clean, published bail breach rate is a number that cuts both ways politically. Publish a low one and it's a quiet vindication of current bail practice at a moment when everyone is nervous about the remand population. Publish a higher one and it becomes ammunition for anyone arguing bail decisions are too soft;  not a comfortable position for a department also trying to reduce the remand population to relieve prison overcrowding.

For politicians when a number is awkward whichever way it lands the safest bureaucratic posture is not to produce it cleanly at all and to let "experimental" quietly do the work of "not our fault, still working on it."  The tale of the three monkeys comes to mind: no problem to see, no problem to  hear, no problem to speak of. 

So as I posed above, "Is that by choice or reluctance on the part of MOJ?   Perhaps both.  Genuine historical logistics got government into the gap. The absence of any urgency to close it, now the technology exists, looks rather more like choice.  The old saying "what you don't know won't hurt you" often gives us a comfortable illusion of safety.  But in a political context the idea that "what we don't know won't hurt us" represents a dangerous illusion because government secrecy and a lack of transparency almost always harm the public.  At a time of increasing signs of a population being distanced and/or disillusioned by government policies, to conceal critical information whether on the courts, NHS, social services etc etc fuels widespread conspiracy theories and deeply damages civic engagement.  Citizens cannot use their vote effectively if the true actions, failures or motives of elected officials are kept secret.  

Democracy and its dependent institutions are now on a high wire in a high wind.  As the lullaby says "when the wind blows the cradle will rock".  Gales are forecast!

THE GREAT AND THE GOOD AND THE NOT SO GOOD

It`s easy to say that those with the longest memories appreciate the old adage that George Santayana, the Spanish philosopher famously warned, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."  Age and long memories in this country count for little.  Whereas some societies large and small venerate the wisdom of the ages or the aged others like to think that their opinions, decisions and subsequent actions are using innovative methods and controls to eradicate situations and problems failed by opposing factions. Today we might describe our society as rule by supervisory quango; a conniving government method of supposed supervision of many public bodies and institutions but at a "nothing to do with us" arms length from 10 Downing Street and Whitehall.   

This week Valerie Amos, a Labour peer and former diplomat, published her long-awaited review into maternity and neonatal care across England.  It was damning.  But it and others similar as I will explore, are not unique.  

This site was quiet whilst my wife and I were in Crete. At one of the most luxurious [and expensive] hotels on the island during a face to face digital check in staff were at pains to note on their system whether either of us had any allergies.  We made it very clear that my wife was allergic to shellfish to such sensitivity that she has to investigate if any prescribed medicament for oral or topical use contains oil from shellfish; many do.  Before sitting for dinner at the hotel`s ethnic Greek restaurant we were asked by the manager if there were any allergy that could be significant.  Of course we made clear that of shellfish as above.  During the meal we were served with a plate for two which I immediately recognised as prawns.  Needless to say I prevented my wife putting her fork anywhere near the platter and spoke to the manager in rather vociferous terms.  Later that evening I told the reception staff and they assured me that the catering and banqueting manager would be informed. I, in my fading belief in the efficiency of management when things go wrong, expected a reply and apology in person, by phone or by e mail.  None was received. Four days after coming home I had a "we would love to have your feedback on your stay" e mail from the hotel manager which I answered in direct but polite terms.  There came back a reply which was an abject apology and nothing more: not even an offer of a free day`s accommodation if we return not that we will. 

Thus is management today at whatever level it functions. 

Between 1945 and 1950 this country functioned on an almost laissez faire basis.  In 1948 the NHS was created but hospitals before that were a patchwork; voluntary hospitals, municipal hospitals and cottage hospitals each with their own boards of governors answerable to local trustees or local councils. There was no national regulator. 

Police forces were entirely local answerable to Watch Committees (borough forces) or Standing Joint Committees (county forces) made up of local councillors and magistrates. The Home Office had only limited oversight powers. Chief Constables were directly hired and fired by local elected bodies. This created inconsistency and local corruption but also genuine local democratic accountability.

With regard to child protection there was no formal system. Children in care fell under local Poor Law institutions transitioning to local authority control governed by local council committees. The Curtis Report (1946) exposed appalling conditions in children's homes directly leading to the Children Act 1948 which created Children's Committees in each council. Accountability was local and thin but scandals were harder to suppress across hundreds of independent councils.

When building and/or housing safety is considered local authorities were both builders and inspectors of their own housing stock; an obvious conflict of interest but decisions were made by elected councillors directly answerable to local voters. There was no national building regulator. Central government guidance was minimal.

Taking public corporations as an example the Post Office had always been a Crown body under direct ministerial control with a Postmaster General sitting in Cabinet and answerable daily to Parliament through questions. It was therefore more directly democratically supervised than the arm's-length commercial model that later allowed the Horizon scandal to fester for decades.

And what do we have now three quarters of a century and three generations later? Some might say we have multiple supervisory authorities whose members are appointed by a relatively small coterie itself selected by the great and the good of the establishment.  Indeed we can go further down this road of "not me guv" and see where it leads.

With regard to policing in its final report the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA, Final Report: October 2022) concluded that police forces and local councils were still failing to tackle child sexual exploitation and set out further recommendations for change. None of the 20 recommendations from the inquiry has been implemented.

The outcome of the Manchester Arena Inquiry (Report: 2021–2023)  into the 2017 bombing found serious failings in how MI5 and the police handled prior intelligence about the attacker and criticised the emergency response, including the actions of security staff on the night.

Child protection or its failings always gets top billing.  The Casey Report exposed systemic failures in tackling group-based child sexual exploitation leading to the announcement of a new Grooming Gangs Inquiry in June 2025. Councils and police in Rotherham, Telford, Oldham and Greater Manchester were specifically found to have ignored or downplayed abuse over many years.  Multiple police forces, councils and social services were found to have failed children catastrophically. No chief constable or director of children's services was dismissed as a direct result of the inquiry findings but some councils were placed in special measures.

The Grenfell Inquiry (2024)  led to 58 recommendations to overhaul "seriously defective" regulation of the construction industry, calling for defragmentation of the sector and bringing different wings of the industry under a single regulator. Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (as landlord) was also criticised for its indifferent relationship with residents. 

As of April 2026 the proposed Hillsborough Law  which would impose a statutory duty of candour on public bodies during inquiries has still not been passed, despite the Prime Minister having committed to introducing it.  It seems likely this current PM will have another example for the historians of his proving Peter`s Principle of having risen to his level of incompetence. 

The recurring culprits across these inquiries are NHS bodies, police forces, local councils, central government departments, regulatory agencies and quasi-public corporations  with the justice system itself (courts and prosecutors) also implicated in several cases.

Despite the scale of the scandals uncovered the number of people actually dismissed as a direct consequence of inquiry findings is remarkably small  and in most cases even that distinction blurs between being fired, being pushed out, or choosing to resign.  Former health secretary Wes Streeting has said that those senior staff who refused to engage with the largest maternity scandal in NHS history should be hauled before Parliament.  Who would wager that will happen or that those culpable will not return to their highly pensioned new senior posts or enjoy a well financially cushioned retirement? 

Competing for one of the most disgraceful examples of successive governments turning blind eyes to blatant law breaking by senior management was aforementioned Post Office scandal.  Paula Vennells (CEO of Post Office 2012–2019)  was not fired. She had already left the role before the inquiry concluded. Under enormous public pressure following the ITV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office she resigned from her non-executive directorships at Dunelm and Morrisons in 2021 after 39 subpostmasters' convictions were quashed. Her CBE, awarded in 2019, was revoked in 2024 for "bringing the honours system into disrepute". She was not prosecuted. Currently  no Post Office or Fujitsu employee has been held criminally accountable, though the Metropolitan Police is investigating potential offences including perverting the course of justice and perjury. 

When policing goes wrong there is the appearance that those at the top sail on blithely to their tax payer funded pensions.  Such is the case of Dame Cressida Dick  not fired but effectively forced out. On 10 February 2022 Dick announced her resignation as Met Commissioner stating that "the Mayor no longer has sufficient confidence in my leadership." The triggers included the murder of Sarah Everard by PC Wayne Couzens, the subsequent mishandling of the vigil and the serial rape case of PC David Carrick. She reportedly felt "entitled" to a £500,000 severance after being pushed to stand aside. She was not disciplined through any formal misconduct process.

 

No senior council official, government minister or building industry executive has been fired or prosecuted as a direct result of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry. 

Perhaps the most atrocious example of government collusion and cover up on a grand scale is the Infected Blood Inquiry. There was a a deliberate cover-up spanning decades across government and the NHS. The then Prime Minister Rishi Sunak issued a full apology in May 2024. He acknowledged that victims had "died without seeing anyone held to account." That remains the situation: no prosecutions, no dismissals of senior figures and the Health Secretaries over that prolonged period of scandalous indifference during which thousands of families lost their loved ones.

Decade after decade, inquiry after inquiry, the ritual is identical: shock, sympathy, solemn promises, a report, some recommendations partially implemented, then silence  until the next catastrophe. The centralised post-war settlement replaced local democratic messiness with professional expertise and national consistency. What it could not replace was the simple, brutal accountability of an elected councillor facing angry neighbours at the town hall. Instead it created elaborate supervisory architecture; boards, regulators, inspectorates, audit committees  whose very complexity obscures the question of who is actually responsible when children are abused, patients poisoned,or buildings burn.  How it is that the Criminal Cases Review Commission, the very last resort for those wrongly convicted, demands an admission of guilt before it can recommend parole the case of Andrew Malkinson being just about the most defining example of an institution not fit for purpose although Helen Pitcher former chair and Karen Kneller former CEO both resigned albeit with some reluctance. 

Those of us who sat on the bench long enough developed a certain immunity to surprise. We watched defendants appear before us for the third, fourth and fifth time for offences whose causes nobody in authority had seen fit to seriously address. The pattern repeats. The paperwork multiplies. Nothing changes.

It would appear that those who govern our great institutions have acquired the same habit. Grenfell, Infected Blood, The Post Office, Maternity services, Child sexual exploitation. One reaches for the word unprecedented and then recalls that one reached for exactly that word the last time and the time before that.

What strikes this observer and it is not an original observation, merely one that is consistently ignored,  is that the supervisory bodies which fail so spectacularly are not staffed by villains. They are staffed by people who know one another rather well. Estimates of the pool from which non-executive directors, quango chairs, NHS trust boards, police authorities and regulatory bodies are drawn tend toward a figure somewhere between three and five thousand individuals nationally. They lunch together. They sit on each others advisory panels. They write each others references. It is not a conspiracy. It is something rather more comfortable and therefore considerably more dangerous than a conspiracy. It is a disposition.

The appointers bear examination here. When a board appointment goes wrong, when a trust chair fails to notice what any competent ward sister could have told him in five minutes  the question rarely asked is who put him there and on what basis. The answer is almost invariably: someone very much like him, applying criteria very much like the ones by which he himself was appointed.

The Curtis Report of 1946, exposed conditions in children`s homes that would shame a Victorian poorhouse.  One might have supposed that 75 years of legislative activity since then would have resolved the matter. The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse reported in 2022 that institutional failure remained widespread. Rotherham, Telford, Oldham; the files are thick. The consequences for those at the top have been notably thin.

During my time as an active presiding magistrate  when a pattern of offending repeated we enquired via the probation service  carefully into the conditions which produced it. We did not simply fine the offender and congratulate ourselves on a proper process. Those who design the supervisory architecture of this country might with profit adopt a similar approach. The inquiry is not the accountability. It is, too often, the substitute for it.

That the Hillsborough Law requiring simple honesty from public servants  remains unenacted tells one everything one needs to know about the appetite for genuine reform among those in a position to deliver it. The pattern will repeat. It always does.

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MORE MAGISTRATES: THAT`S THE TARGET

Whilst I am still dealing with my domestic affairs during my absence, readers might like to read yesterday`s exchanges on magistrates` recruitment:-

 https://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2026-06-30a.739.3&s=%22magistrates%22#g739.4