Government ministers and justice officials have failed to act for years after being repeatedly warned about deep flaws in the Single Justice Procedure.
Analysis by The Standard has identified at least three key moments since 2021 when MPs, justice experts, and journalists called for an urgent review of the secretivefast-track courts.
Yet warnings of “secret courts” and the potential for injustices apparently wentunheeded by a succession of politicians put in charge of the Ministry ofJustice.
Today, a major Evening Standard/ITV News investigation has uncovered evidence of wrongful prosecutions in the Single Justice Procedure, including convictions against defendants who had died.
The Single Justice Procedure was created in 2015 when Chris Grayling was LordChancellor, during the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition programme of austerityand in a drive to cut the cost of justice.
Junior minister Shailesh Vara promised Parliament that the courts would “not losetransparency” after reform, and he added: “We cannot allow the new process totake place without any scrutiny.”
When the new process was being debated, John McDonnell, Labour MP for Hayes and Harlington, insisted that court processes must be “visible”, while AndySlaughter, a Labour veteran on justice, warned of “secret courts”.
Yet the SJP process was created with no provisions written into the law abouttransparency.
SJP now processes up to 800,000 criminal cases each year, for minor offences suchas speeding, fare evasion, and not paying for a TV licence, with magistratessitting behind-closed-doors and making decisions based on written evidencealone.
In May 2020, then-Attorney General Suella Braverman approved the decision forbreaches of Covid-19 restrictions to be prosecuted in SJP, despite internalfears of mistakes with the newly-minted and complex laws as well as lack ofpublic scrutiny.
Groups such as Big Brother Watch, Fair Trials, and Transform Justice were critical ofthe decision, and in September 2021 MPs on the Justice Select Committee saidthe mass use of SJP for Covid crimes was a mistake.
“The Ministry of Justice should review the transparency of the singlejustice procedure and consider how the process could be made more open and accessible to the media and the public”, they recommended.
However a review did not take place on the back of the committee’s report.
In November 2021, Stephanie Needleman, legal director at charity JUSTICE, raisedconcerns in Parliament about a new process being contemplated - to allow foronline guilty pleas and automatic sentencing.
She said that proposal, building on the tenets of the Single Justice Procedure,does not take into account the need to “screen for any vulnerabilities”.
But it was voted into law and is set to be introduced during this Parliament, whileno alterations were made to the Single Justice Procedure.
In November 2022, the Justice Select Committee again warned in a report on openjustice that there are concerns about transparency of the SJP process.
“The Government should review the procedure and seek to enhance its transparency by ensuring that any information that would have been available had the cases been heard in open court is published in a timely fashion”, it said.
But the government responded in January 2023 with a defence of the system, including the bizarre claim that journalists get more information about SJP cases – dealt with behind-closed-doors – than when full details of crimes are ventilated in open court.
The Ministry promises to include SJP in a wider open justice consultation which finished taking submissions on September 7, 2023.
More than a year later, the exercise has yet to bear any fruit.
In late March this year, and in the face of sustained criticism of SJP including from magistrates themselves, then-Justice Secretary Alex Chalk told the House of Commons that “fairness is non-negotiable” and accepted for the first time: “There is an issue about transparency.”
He told the House: “It is something that we ought to consider recalibrating. Everyone accepts that the SJP works well and is a useful addition. We just need to see whether it ought to be refined in the interests of promoting transparency.”
But no public announcements about reform followed his statement, and the Conservative government was ejected from office in July.
Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour administration has focused its attention on the prison places crisis since entering office, while promising a “review” of the SJP system.
Responding this week to the Evening Standard/ITV News investigation, a MoJ spokesperson said: "This Government is reviewing what more can be done to support vulnerable defendants, as well as how to improve oversight and regulation.”
Shabana Mahmood is the 11th Justice Secretary to take office in the ten years since SJP was first introduced.
