A rather scary report on the current state of the UK’s court system under the Tories on the day we read that Boris needs a private jet at the Foreign office.
The Law Gazette reports
‘This court is dead. We’re the second city in the country and this is what we have as the major court,’ a barrister tells me as he waits to go into one of the courtrooms. This is a bleak verdict on Manchester Crown Court – what should be one of the foremost courts in England and Wales.
This opinion is shared by other court users. A solicitor tells me the robing room is in a state of disrepair: it is small, the chairs are torn and the lifts in the three-story building that take you up there have been out of action for three months.
Like many lawyers I speak to, the solicitor – acting in a prominent murder trial – also complains about the lack of refreshment facilities. ‘This is the most stressful time of your life for some of the people here and we can’t even get them a drink of water,’ she says. Those who do want a drink are forced to go outside to the shops, return via a rigorous security process and sip the drink on re-entry to prove it is not a noxious substance.
Several of the information screens outside the courtrooms are not functioning and the reception desk is unstaffed at various points in the day, leaving just a TV screen to display what cases are happening where.
But the problems are not limited to facilities – or lack of them – inside the building. Court 7 has five cases all listed for a 10:30am start. ‘This is quite normal,’ a barrister tells me. He adds that, often, more than five cases are listed to start at the same time. ‘It’s often in these courts when judges deal with defendants who do not have representation,’ he explains.
