Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): I welcome the Lady Chief Justice and thank her for supporting the Committee's work in agreeing to provide evidence on this important matter. I invite her to make an opening statement.

Rt Hon Dame Siobhan Keegan (Lady Chief Justice): Thank you very much, Chair. I will try to be brief on this, because of limited time, and I understand that there will be questions in this area. I am not going to address individual cases, but I am conscious that delay is an issue that continues to exercise everyone who is invested in the justice system, and rightly so. It exercises me. We have delays in the system, and I do not deny that.

The effects of delay are that there are consequences for everyone, not least those who are within the criminal justice process. The victims of crime and their families just cannot understand why their cases take so long. I should say that delay impacts on defendants as well. What it can come down to is a lack of fairness potentially being argued in a case because it has gone on so long. It can increase costs, which means that it is related to the issue that we touched on in the previous session, and there is a danger that it can diminish public confidence. We have to be careful with our rhetoric in this area generally in order not to heighten public concerns. What I mean by that is that we can recognise the issue without really leading to a position where people think that the system is not working. It is working: it just could be better.

I have spoken about delay a lot. I remember that I gave evidence on this in March 2024. I sit on the Criminal Justice Board, and I look at the statistics on delay. Delay impacts across justice, but criminal justice is a particular area that, I know, members will be interested in because of the Crown Court and the high-profile cases that are dealt with at the high end of offending. I suggest that delay also affects cases in the middle bracket and, perhaps, the lower end, because they all have a victim, somebody who is being charged with an offence, and witnesses.

The problem at the minute is that, whilst we were in a good place last year to be dealing with the backlog that we had, that has gone a little bit backwards recently. I cannot avoid coming to the fact that there has been a withdrawal of services by the Bar. I will come to that shortly.

We have known for a long time that there is delay in criminal justice. I have picked up the issue in family justice as well, because I was worried that it perhaps was not getting the same attention. I have looked at that through various initiatives. It is equally problematic for families not getting their cases worked out. In my view — I have said this before — if you do not get the family justice element of cases right, you can end up in the criminal justice system.

The Criminal Justice Board has a number of initiatives towards speeding up justice that I am committed to. However, those must all be framed by a number of things. My office gave me a statistic that, in comparison with March 2020, there are 62% more defendants now before the courts. Added to the sheer volume of business within the courts is something that I have already touched on: the complexity of cases. Rightly so, we have many more bespoke domestic violence and sexual abuse offences on the books, but we also have all the forensic and digital evidence that we have to grapple with.

Delay is also system-wide. What I mean by that is that it is not just something that attracts to the courts. I raised this question at the Criminal Justice Board. The delay in cases has been broken down into the various stages. A lot of the statistics say that there is delay, but a criminal case starts with a complaint, proceeds through to investigation, and then through to the Public Prosecution Service (PPS), which decides whether to prosecute, and then it goes to court. I am not saying that there are no delays at the court, but it is system-wide.

I looked at whether there was an overuse of adjournment in the courts, for instance. I sent staff from my office over to the Crown Courts, and we did not detect that on a systemic basis due to the role of the judge. We detected that the PPS was not ready. There were issues with expert evidence, which was a big issue, and the probation services were not ready. I am trying to develop a form to show adjournments so that I have more empirical evidence about what they relate to.

I am not saying anything that is new. People are stretched at all ends of the justice system. The police will say that they are stretched; the PPS is stretched; and probation services are stretched. We cannot get enough experts involved in some of the cases.

Then we have people in the legal profession who are saying that their remuneration for more difficult cases needs to be looked at. It has not been looked at for years. I think that it falls within the 20-year bracket as opposed to 11 years. That is compounding the issue. I am very worried about that, because it compounds the delay that we have in the system that we have been trying to work with.

The courts service does a very good job within the parameters in which it works, but we do not have enough courts. We do not have enough Crown Courts. I have successfully argued that we should have 15 Crown Courts operating, which is an increase from 13. I have said that, if you give me 17, I can make more of an inroad into the Crown Court cases. I need more judges to deal with Crown Court cases. If we have direct committal, there needs to be a thought process that asks, "If you take out the Magistrates' Court and get cases on quicker in the Crown Court, do you have the infrastructure?". We need more judges, we need more courts, and we need more court staff. If Stephen Herron from the PPS was here, he would say that we need more prosecutors. Therefore, it is system-wide. That is a problem for family justice as well.

The Gillen review is well known. It talked about the need to avoid delay because the rot sets in, and it is really hard to deal with issues as the stone gathers moss. I am also a proponent of having more specialist courts. I have gone to the problem-solving courts and observed them first-hand, and they have been really good. I would love to see a specialist domestic abuse court. I would love to see court buildings that are properly set up for families who need solutions and people who are victims of domestic violence being protected. Anyway, that is a bigger picture that we know about in respect of resourcing.

All that said, delay is not at the same level as in England and Wales. Their Crown Court backlog is over 79,000. They are not listing cases to 2030. I checked our listings, and, at the moment, they are still within this year. However, if we continue to have a paralysis in the operation of the Crown Courts, I am worried about that being pushed back, and I am worried about how we pick that up. Victims are rightly annoyed and making their case about that. My concern is to keep the courts operating and to maintain public confidence in our courts. I am not part of the Department, the Bar or the solicitors, but I have staked my claim that they need to talk and sort the dispute out sooner rather than later.

I am happy to take any questions at this point. I realise that that area is important to you and that you may have some questions for me on it.

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): Thank you, Lady Chief Justice. How many Crown Courts do we have at present?

Rt Hon Dame Siobhan Keegan: Fifteen can operate.

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): You said that, if you had one additional, that would —.

Rt Hon Dame Siobhan Keegan: I said, "two".

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): Sorry, two additional —.

Rt Hon Dame Siobhan Keegan: By the way, I am not saying anything that I have not said to the Northern Ireland Courts and Tribunals Service. It has tried, but it may come down to resourcing and staffing, as you can understand. I do understand the problems and that the budget for it is a difficulty too, but I can only go on what I am asked to do, which is to try to deal with backlog and get through delay. We have dealt with it very well, because Crown Court judges have worked over and above what they needed to or were expected to do, because they are conscientious. However, if we are serious, we need to improve the superstructure.

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): OK. How do you see your role in trying to speed that up, and how can you use your influence in that regard? What powers do you have to influence that?

Rt Hon Dame Siobhan Keegan: We have practice direction, No. 2 of 2019. It is very detailed about the obligations on defence and prosecution and on cases that should not be adjourned and cases that need to proceed. I tried to streamline that into a one-page, laminated document so that people would read it and get the message. That is the first thing.

The second thing is training. We have the benefit of a small jurisdiction. I can bring together all the judges. I do that; I do mandatory training now for the Crown Court. We had our last session just before Christmas. I bring them all together and say, "This is what needs to happen", but we can have a conversation about where the tweaks are. It is not wholly in our control.

I can also engage with the other actors. I engage with the Probation Service, because its representatives come to me and say, "The judges are putting too great a demand on us because they are saying, 'You have to have that report', and we cannot do it". Rather than wield a big stick and lose all the cases and all the probation reports, I try to come up with, "OK, we will allow you the six weeks if you can get them done within six weeks, and we will review that".

Where I have a difficulty is with experts. They take a long time to work in cases where we do not have enough of them. However, the practice direction deals with that to some extent and really says that judges need to actively case manage, so that is where I go with training. I engage with the profession as well. In the criminal and family areas, they are specialists; they know the territory. They have their own perspective, but they are receptive whenever I say, "Things have to tighten up". We have had a few training sessions where I have brought the Bar as well, and that has been good, because I have been able to say that there has been a bit of slippage with the practice direction.

In family law, I have issued a few practice directions recently that have really worked, I think, particularly as to how courts should deal with domestic violence. I had worried that there was perhaps an approach that might not have been as consistent, for whatever reason, across the board. To be honest, I got letters from people about that, and I also looked at it myself. I really put it out and said, "This is how you need to deal with those cases".

I have a role, and I hope that I am known for utilising it robustly. However, I cannot solve all the issues, which, I think, are coming in because of the pressures on the system and other variables beyond what I have talked about.

Mr McGlone: I am not going to take all day asking about AI. Lady Chief Justice, you mentioned the police, the Public Prosecution Service and the Probation Service, many of which are outwith your control. Are there any policies or practices that need to be changed or updated? Can you give us an idea about those areas from your extensive experience?

Rt Hon Dame Siobhan Keegan: As you can imagine, we are training on AI. In England and Wales, the judiciary has issued a practice direction on AI, and it needs to be updated because AI moves so quickly. The bottom line is that AI is not, in my view, a replacement for our systems, but it is a complement as long as it is transparent. You must be transparent that you are using AI, and there must be internal checks. Criminal justice and family justice contain a lot of sensitive information, and we must be careful not to compromise privacy and sensitivity. However, we need to adapt, and we are working on it. The police are working on using AI for phone triage, and the investigators need to be proportionate about what they want to get out of the phone call to help with the criminal case. AI could be utilised in that case. It could also be used for video and CCTV.

AI is a fact of life. People think that it is a recent development, but we are all subject to AI through our mobile telephones that choose things for us. It should help, but it will not replace the way that we work in the system. We can streamline AI, as long as I have confidence in the operating systems and that the justice system is not going to be led into integrity issues. AI is a good complement.

For example, generally, disclosure can amount to thousands of pages, and a human can take a lot of time to analyse it, whereas the computer will be faster if it is a proper product. My only worry is about whether so much time is spent checking that it is a proper product that the benefit is lost. It is very easy to be sceptical about AI, as we naturally incline that way, and the law does not particularly like radical change, but I am a proponent of being up to date with the tech as long as it is validated and can be used to our benefit.

Mr McGlone: That naturally takes me to the use of experts. I do not know who the experts are that you referred to, but someone is probably developing artificial intelligence that could complement the role of those experts and facilitate or speed up the ability to give evidence before the courts. What type of experts are you referring to? What is their availability?

Rt Hon Dame Siobhan Keegan: There is a spectrum. The main availability issue is in the area of psychiatrists, who can come into criminal trials a lot. Psychology can also be an issue in family cases. There are also opinion experts, forensic experts, and AI may already be used in radiology. You will find that AI has quite a good billing in the medical world. There is a new group of experts in the modern landscape that is used to look at CCTV or other evidence. There is also engineering.

It is a very good question. We need to be smart and use the tech in a way that gets us through delay. I imagine that those other areas of expertise are using AI. I have some query about the opinion category that I mentioned. Save that, medical notes and records are a massive amount of documentation, so a proper model might be able to fine-tune that into what you want and avoid delay.

Mr McGlone: Yes. We could talk for ever about that, as it is such a fascinating issue. Thank you so much for that.

Mr Beattie: Lady Chief Justice, I am concerned about the speed of speeding up justice, and where we are with problem-solving . You are right: things were moving in the right direction, but we now have the impasse between the Bar and the Department. I am concerned that there is a stand-off because one is not willing to compromise. You highlighted very well that the people who are paying the biggest price are the victims. There must be a focus on that.

Speeding up justice mentions the remit of the Magistrates' Court. Is anything moving at pace to deal not just with the present short-term problem but with the wider problem of delays? Could the remit of the Magistrates' Court on sentencing be increased? I met Stephen Herron about a month ago. He said that, in the present impasse, some of the cases that need to be heard in the Crown Court but cannot be are being held in the Magistrates' Court and that sentencing will be bound over to the Crown Court when it becomes available. Is that feasible?

Rt Hon Dame Siobhan Keegan: Yes, it is. I have nailed my colours to the mast consistently before the Criminal Justice Board and, I think, publicly: Magistrates' Court sentencing powers should increase. In most cases, apart from criminal damage and maybe some other outliers, you are at 12 months. Magistrates need better sentencing powers to get through the raft of new legislation that has come about because of really good work on trying to end violence against women and girls. I have said all that. There is a will to do that. It is with the Department. It has not really said that that is not, in principle, something that cannot be worked through, as long as it can be resourced. It will have to look at the other outworkings of that.

I am a bit worried about direct committal, as I mentioned earlier. We have had this debate for a long time. We no longer have oral evidence, but we still have committal. It is holding up cases in the Magistrates' Court, which are the more serious cases. If you get them straight into the Crown Court, and properly resource the Crown Court to do that, we will get on with criminal trials much more easily. There is no point in having a committal and putting the victim, potentially, through the trauma of a preliminary when you can go straight into the Crown Court. The sentencing powers of the Magistrates' Court should go up. When we talk about delay, the Crown Court gets the attention, but the majority of our criminal business is in the Magistrates' Court.

At the other end of that is a piece of work coming from policy partners in the Criminal Justice Board rather than from me: out-of-court disposals for other areas. Take some work out, free up the Magistrates' Court to deal with more serious offences, give magistrates greater sentencing powers, and have direct committal. I do not think that there is much pushback from anybody on that, although I appreciate that the Department has to work out the logistics. I assure you that it is doing that. Those things take planning. The worst possible scenario if you do something is that it comes off the rails because you do not have the infrastructure. You have to set up rules and a structure to adapt to it. However, you are absolutely right: that is a way forward for us.

Mr Beattie: Thank you for that. You were very direct there, and it is important to be direct. You hear my concern when I talk about the speed of speeding up justice. I have been looking at this slide for a year.

What you are saying is that it takes time and let us scrutinise it. However, it could be a real game changer if we increased the sentencing remit. However, movement on it seems slow. Could the Sentencing Bill be a vehicle for that? Does it take legislation to do it? What does it take?

Rt Hon Dame Siobhan Keegan: Yes, it would take legislation.

Mr Beattie: Would it take primary legislation?

Rt Hon Dame Siobhan Keegan: Yes, I assume so.

Mr Beattie: As I am speaking, you can nod yes or no. We could use the Sentencing Bill to do exactly that?

Rt Hon Dame Siobhan Keegan: Yes, but the Sentencing Bill is where it is. There is quite a lot in it. There is a limit in this mandate, I am told, as to what can be brought forward. You know that the other area that I have been promoting is the filming of sentencing remarks, which has been put off, I am told, to the next mandate. That is the difficulty.

Mr Beattie: I know that this is more about the Public Prosecution Service, but it is extending the no-prosecution files coming from the police, so the police are dealing with this, which means that there is no file going to the public prosecutor. Does that have an effect on you?

Rt Hon Dame Siobhan Keegan: Not really, no. It will show at some stage in the system in a positive way, I hope, because it removes the middle adjudicator, but I have not seen it as yet. I would like to see it, and I would like to see it get to that point.

There is frustration with the judiciary, sometimes, that every file is treated in the same way. That is not to take away from the fact that the landscape is crime, but there has to be a proportionality to look at some files that could be fast-tracked, for want of a better phrase. I have heard people in the bail court, and sometimes in the High Court, ask, "Are you not going to plead to get on with this case?" and they answer, "The barrister says that there is no file". However, it is as clear as day that this person wants to get their case progressed. A bit of joined-up work between the police and the PPS could be very beneficial. To be fair to both, they are alive to that.

Mr Beattie: They probably are, yes.

Rt Hon Dame Siobhan Keegan: The flip side is — I understand this, too — that they do not want to miss something or to have a problem that arises in the one case that they fast-track that is wrongly fast-tracked. I get that, but there are risks in everything. I would rather see a system, as the project title puts it, that speeds up.

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): I smile wryly to myself when you talk about the limited time in the mandate. There are two Bills coming, the Justice Bill and the Sentencing Bill, and you never know what amendments MLAs are thinking about.

Rt Hon Dame Siobhan Keegan: I know.

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): It can scare you. [Laughter.]

Mr Kingston: I welcome, Lady Chief Justice, what you said about out-of-court disposals and the desire to increase their use. You have spoken quite plainly to us, and that is appreciated. There is a perception that equivalent cases in Northern Ireland take longer than in GB. Is that is the case in general terms?

Rt Hon Dame Siobhan Keegan: To be honest, I have heard this a number of times, and I get a bit frustrated — not with you — because it is a valid question.

Mr Kingston: My role is to ask.

Rt Hon Dame Siobhan Keegan: Do not hold it against me. What happens is that all the criminal cases are lumped in together and that evaluated assessment is made. In England and Wales, the serious, high-profile cases probably tend to move a bit more quickly. However, if you broke down the statistics, the bulk of cases that are in the category just below that do not proceed any more quickly than our cases. That is in areas of serious sexual offences and suchlike. Therefore, I think that it is a bit of a misleading picture, to be honest.

I sat, by invitation, with some of the judges in the Old Bailey. They have quite a good system there, with a cohort of judges to fast-track a category of gangland murder cases, for instance. That is a showcase for something really good; I was very impressed with it. However, there is a bigger picture than that London court, which is well set up for it, because, when you go to the County Court — the country court — it is not as positive, and I do not think that cases there proceed any more quickly than ours at the other levels. That is my view. That is not to say that some of our cases are not trundling, but, as I have tried to say to you, I keep a very sharp eye on that as best I can.

Mr Kingston: OK. Thank you for that assessment. You mentioned earlier — it is a common perception — the overuse of adjournment of cases. Notwithstanding what you have just said, you said that you speak to judges about this, so is there a challenge to the overuse of adjournment, and is there, at times, a need for tighter timescales? Justice must be done fairly, but if either the prosecution or defence is repeatedly saying, "Oh, we are not quite ready", do there need to be tighter timescales to say that things will have to proceed at the next opportunity?

Rt Hon Dame Siobhan Keegan: Yes, that is called case management. You might detect that I am quite a stickler for case management. I set time frames, and that is very important. I have tried to invest that culture in the judges, but, to be fair to them, I am not on the front line of the Crown Court dealing with the pressures in there. To be fair, it would be wrong, in some cases, for them to push on a case, have an appeal to the Court of Appeal and then have me say that it was not a fair trial.

I understand their position. However, I have, I think, at least started the conversation and kept it going that you cannot adjourn unnecessarily. However, I am not satisfied that they were doing so. When I looked at a very small snapshot, it was largely due to the prosecution not being ready and the defence being a bit late to the table with what it wanted to raise, and that is about the pressure of work. Expert reports are also a factor.

The way to deal with it is to continue to make the point that there are timescales and that you have to keep to them. If you are in the Court of Appeal and are breaching them, you have to apply for an extension, so I at least have a handle on it. It is difficult for me to be overly critical of Crown Court judges — I keep coming back to that — because I do not know the nature of the cases, the challenges that they present, and the issues that are between the lines. For instance, there may not be enough prosecutors, or important evidence might have arisen just the day before. OK, the question might be this: why did the evidence arise the day before? However, it is a criminal trial, and it is very important. If we do not run fair trials, we will just run up appeals, which I do not want either. That is the best that I can do in that area.

Ms Sheerin: Who is responsible for funding the Crown Court? Is it DOJ?

Rt Hon Dame Siobhan Keegan: Yes, it is the responsibility of the Department through the Courts and Tribunals Service, which then operates the courts.

Ms Sheerin: Have you already requested that?

Rt Hon Dame Siobhan Keegan: I have.

Ms Sheerin: OK. What response did you get?

Rt Hon Dame Siobhan Keegan: You have to make a business case in relation to that. I continually have to vouch for why I am asking for it. I say that the stats speak for themselves and that I need more judges in particular. I have commissioned work from Queen's to get an evidence base on how many more judges I need. The Courts and Tribunals Service then says that it will consider the principle, but it also has an obligation to say that it has funding pressures. That is beyond me.

I go on need. I think that the justice system has to adapt to the needs, which are obvious, based on the crime stats. You will find in some of the stats that crime has gone down, but there is more complexity in cases, including family cases. Naively, in a way, I think that it is self-evident why I need more courts and better courts, but there is a funding piece there. I have gone over before how justice has been at the bottom end in getting an increment in money received.

Ms Sheerin: This is not really a follow-up but a different question. We had a small conversation about the current impasse. I have been uncomfortable with how some of it has been presented and framed in the media in that an entire profession has sometimes been labelled as entitled or that this is a very wealthy section of society. The evidence tells us that that is not the case and that young people are entering this field who are by no means earning a lot, particularly those from working-class and minority communities. We want to see more of those people, and we want to see access to justice for those on the margins of society.

I have a concern that perhaps those people are being pitted against victims of crime and families of victims of crime and that there is almost a bit of emotional manipulation going on, particularly through the media. Do you have a view on that?

Rt Hon Dame Siobhan Keegan: I am not sure that it is for me to comment. As I said, my concern is for those affected by this, understanding that the profession has a perspective and that the Department has a perspective. I am not sure that the issue is not one that cannot be spoken about in whatever forum will solve it. That is not going to be the media forum. I think that it will be knocking heads together on what should happen to get through this sooner rather than later, and I think that I have made my position clear. I wrote to the Minister and the Bar on the same terms in November. I predicted that there could be a problem and asked both of them to get round the table to sort it out. I still hope that that can happen.

To be fair to both sides, I think that discussions are ongoing. However, as every week goes on, it will have a ripple effect on the people who are invested in their cases. It will also store up costs down the line and will put the dampener on my delay initiatives because that will be another burden that I will have to face.

Ms Egan: I picked up on what you said about the direction that you issued to family courts. Can you go into a bit more detail? You said that you got some letters about it, and I think that a few of those were probably from me.

Rt Hon Dame Siobhan Keegan: They may well have been.

Ms Egan: Yes, it is something that I am particularly interested in.

Rt Hon Dame Siobhan Keegan: That is private law, which includes the breakdown of a relationship with children in the middle. There was a general theme from those letters that domestic violence was not being looked at seriously enough. In those advances to me there was also a perception that the residential parent, usually the mother, was being forced into giving contact when there was a domestic violence issue.

I have therefore tried to streamline cases by asking courts to work out, at an early stage, what the issue is and deal with it. I set up a bespoke group of family judges, which included Judge Gillen, who came back from retirement to help me advance all of this. The group was supposed to be in place for six months, but I have kept it going. We met last week, and, funnily enough, one of the issues that came up was the need for the profession to indicate properly on the application forms that there is a domestic violence issue so that the judge can timetable the case properly at the start of the court proceedings and make a finding or not. That might sound simple to do.

I tried to bust the myth that there is a presumption of contact in Northern Ireland, because there is not in the Children (Northern Ireland) Order 1995. There is in the Children Act 1989, which is largely identical in terms, but there is going to be law to take it out in England and Wales. We do not have presumption of contact here, but it is right to say that the rights of a child usually involve having a relationship with both parents. The guidance sets out things that people should know but that I think will help streamline cases for those people who are in a critical area, because they are bewildered about what is happening. There is a perception that they are being forced into contact and that they are not being heard. I want to reassure them. Again, I train family judges on that, and there are many really specialist family judges, particularly at the Magistrates' Court, who know the territory.

I should mention another initiative that I am thinking about, following the group meeting last week. I do not really understand why there should not be a one-stop shop for family law. In other words, I do not really understand why there should not be a one-stop shop for the domestic criminal side of things, the family side of things and the money side of things. I am not saying anything that Judge Gillen did not say in his review.

I am therefore looking at that, but the domestic violence guidance makes the point that the issue now has to be specifically addressed, and at the earliest stage. Contact is not automatic. It depends on the circumstances and on the risk to children. Every case is different, of course, and there are different perspectives. I cannot be overly prescriptive, but I think that I have at least set out a template that is workable and is public. Everyone can therefore see it, which I hope will help.

I have also piloted a family resolution court, which will start next month in the family care centre, which is the intermediate level of the County Court. I would like it to go to the Magistrates' Court to offer what is effectively judge-led mediation at the very start to see whether we can avoid delay and acrimony, which does not help those cases.

Ms Egan: Thank you. That is really useful. I would love to have a whole Committee session on family courts, Chair, but I know that we are extremely busy.

You mentioned presumption of contact. After it was announced that the law was changing in England and Wales, I had people contact me to ask how we might do it in Northern Ireland. When I explained to them that we do not even have it in Northern Ireland, they were quite surprised. I will not go into individual cases, but even organisations such as Women's Aid said that it is almost a cultural issue.

Rt Hon Dame Siobhan Keegan: I know that.

Ms Egan: Do you recognise that? Is that really what you are trying to do?

Rt Hon Dame Siobhan Keegan: I do recognise that, and it is what I am trying to do. I am trying to educate on what the right steps are to get to the right result, which, ultimately, is in the best interests of a child and deals with risk, because there is risk analysis in all of this, and the risks have to be balanced.

Ms Egan: That is helpful. Thank you very much.

Ms Ferguson: You will be aware that the Committee has commissioned a Research and Information Service (RaISe) paper on family courts, which we hope will be presented to us shortly. We have met you in the past on that issue, and I think that a presumption of contact is a cultural thing, regardless of our not having it here. Too many individuals who feel the same have approached many MLAs. Has the work that you talked about been published? I am keen to get —.

Rt Hon Dame Siobhan Keegan: Do you mean the guidance document?

Ms Ferguson: On the practice.

Rt Hon Dame Siobhan Keegan: Yes. I will have that sent to you.

Ms Ferguson: That would be useful.

Rt Hon Dame Siobhan Keegan: It is on the Judiciary NI website, but I will get a copy sent to the Committee.

Ms Ferguson: It would be excellent for us to have that. Likewise, it would be excellent to get more information on the family resolution court pilot.

Rt Hon Dame Siobhan Keegan: I have a template document that I can send to the Committee.

Ms Ferguson: That would be great.

There are three more areas at which I want to look. I will list them and then give you an opportunity to respond. The first is one that I, in particular, have raised continually, and I know that other members have done so as well. We are concerned about high remand rates and their impact on our prisons as a result of overcrowding. We see from a Public Accounts Committee report that, in 2023-24, 37% of our total prison population was on remand, compared with 18% in England and Wales and 28% in Scotland. What are your views on what could be done there?

The second area is the use of live links, which is in the Justice Bill. I acknowledge and appreciate the work that you have done on physical, remote and hybrid attendance at court. You updated that work in October. What are your views on the key benefits and potential risks associated with the increased use of live links. In particular, how do we make sure that vulnerable adults and children are fully aware of and have given consent to the use of live links? That is an area of concern for me, and I would love to hear your opinion.

The third area is a general one. Delays in justice are system-wide. From conversations that I have had with various organisations, I have learnt that it is almost the case that, because delays are so systemic, one can blame the other. That is natural enough, because each is operating in its bubble, thinking about the work that it needs to do. Organisations are waiting on one another. From spending 10 minutes in court myself, I saw that it was a case of adjournment after adjournment. In those 10 minutes, about 10 people went through the court. I was quite shocked at that. A lot of the adjournments had to do with, as you said, there having been a lack of investigation. That was 10 people in just 10 minutes because of a lack of investigation by the PSNI that would have assisted in dealing with those cases in court. It is probably a resource issue, although that is just my perception. The PPS also has a total lack of resources, and there is an issue with the length of delays. I am liaising with the PPS on a case at the moment.

You mentioned experts. Is there one key area that could be tackled in order to speed up the system, given that delays are systemic? I know about the work that you are doing on the courts, but is there something that can be done across the system? You are at the tail end of it, and, as you said, other things need to happen prior to cases coming to court. Is there something that can be done on resource? What area could be tackled in order to have the biggest impact?

Finally, if I can just throw another quick one in —.

Rt Hon Dame Siobhan Keegan: That was three. [Laughter.]

Ms Ferguson: This one is to do with family courts.

Rt Hon Dame Siobhan Keegan: OK.

Ms Ferguson: You are well aware of the key issues that we have raised about what is happening in family courts. Individuals are also looking at what can be done in the Department of Health, particularly on the quality of evidence. We are speeding up getting evidence, but how do we ensure that that evidence is checked for quality and is to the fore? I am particularly thinking of social workers and family courts. I do not know whether you can comment on that, but it is in the same area and is a concern on which I would like further information. Sorry about that.

Rt Hon Dame Siobhan Keegan: OK. I will try my best. That was four questions, but I will go through them.

High remand rates is a big issue. I have visited all the prisons on that issue. There needs to be a greater appreciation in the courts of the fact that the people who come before them may be eligible for bail. In serious cases, there is a knee-jerk reaction that there should be no bail. Bail is pre-trial, and being granted bail does not mean that the person will not be convicted or put in prison for a long time. We have obligations, however, to look at whether the risk can be met by the imposition of conditions. There needs to be a public appreciation of that. Some cases are not suitable for bail, but some are. This is problematic, because the worst thing for a victim — I have heard this, and I believe it — is when somebody who is convicted and gets, say, two years is released immediately, on the day, because they have served the sentence on remand time.

That is not vindication. We need a better appreciation of the fact that we can manage risks on bail. There will be outliers with whom it does not work, but I come back to the need for there to be a better system-wide approach.

The other issue with high remand rates is that people do not get any reparative work while on remand. It is therefore a no-brainer. The stats are good for youth, as opposed to male adult offenders, and there is definitely an opportunity through bail programmes to help avoid women being remanded. Hydebank is doing good work on that. There is a companion piece, however. Those people need places to live. The judge will not bail them if they do not have a proper address from which we can be satisfied that they will not reoffend. There is a strong tie-up with housing and with the Department of Health. You rightly mention Health, because we cannot put somebody out who will have a psychiatric episode and reoffend. We could not do that.

I agree with you on high remand rates. We need to think about that issue, but we are in that space, and we understand that. We do not want to be in the same position as England and Wales is in, with prisoner numbers leading to people being released early. If ever there was a shock to public confidence, that was it. We therefore have the balance right, but the public need to understand what bail is about in order to see that we are calibrating the issue in a better way.

I am a fan of live links. Their use is really good, as it streamlines the system and saves costs. It means that, within reason, professional people do not have to come to court but can link to it. We had been doing that for experts for years, but we now do it with more frequency, and we do it for lawyers as well. The downside is that some people break the rules. That is now rare, however. People are not to be disrespectful to the court through the link, but we do not get too much of that. They are not to record, and we do not get too much of that. Their use has worked well, so why would we not do it? I am therefore really pleased about that.

Is there one thing that could help with delays? Yes. I point to disclosure. In criminal cases in particular, disclosure comes at the last minute and is too voluminous: it is not proportionate. One of my Crown Court judges is working on that. He is preparing for me, if he has not done so already, a draft practice direction that I will roll out with judges. I think that I will bring in the profession. I cannot say that the work that he is doing will be an immediate fix, because there is a cultural element to it. Unfortunately, as I said, disclosure is left until the last minute. By "disclosure", I mean records and police evidence. All of that is left to the last minute. The fault for that lies across the board, but if we can crack disclosure in criminal law, our cases will progress a lot quicker.

Your final question was about joining up with the Department of Health. That is really important. Problem-solving courts are good, but they need buy-in from Health, given that over 90% of our cases probably involve, somewhere along the line, addiction or mental health issues or problems to do with housing or education. We should think about joining up in a better way. We do it ad hoc, but I would like to see specialist domestic abuse courts and to see more substance abuse courts being rolled out throughout the Province, as well as other problem-solving courts. Departments need to work together on that, however.

Ms Ferguson: The mental health court pilot did not proceed —

Rt Hon Dame Siobhan Keegan: No.

Ms Ferguson: — as it was to proceed.

Rt Hon Dame Siobhan Keegan: Yes.

Ms Ferguson: Is there a working group on specialist courts, or was there one? When did it last meet, and is that something on which we need to follow up?

Rt Hon Dame Siobhan Keegan: There is a group in the Department. There tend to be pilots, and I worry about that a little, because pilots can go on forever and a day, but they do not have the strength that comes with being permanent. There is a funding issue involved. My worry is that specialist courts will go to the bottom of the pile because of all the other pressures. Specialist courts can, by way of early intervention, militate against increased crime or increased family dispute, so I am a big fan of them.

Ms Ferguson: That is good to hear. Thank you.

Ms Finnegan: I am new to the Committee, so I did not think that I would be asking you anything. It is refreshing to hear your take on family courts and about the work that you have done on domestic violence. I know that we have talked about the issue, so I do not want to repeat any of the questions. You spoke about the delays in the court system and referenced the work that has been undertaken on domestic violence cases and family courts, including the importance of having experts and the need for more of them. I could not agree with you more.

Time and again, we hear that, because of the lack of experts for such cases, social workers and community care officers (CCOs) have to become experts in their own right for the reports that they write. Will you elaborate a wee bit on how specialist expertise would help address delays in domestic violence cases and family courts and whether that approach could be expanded more widely to improve timeliness and outcomes for the courts and for victims?

Rt Hon Dame Siobhan Keegan: Social workers in our jurisdiction are under pressure. I worry about their having to go home and write up a long report after spending their day at the interface trying to sort things out. I would prefer it if social workers, who are important and who do have expertise, were to give us the headlines in bullet point form so that we, as judges, can at least isolate the issues and see whether we need something else, such as another expert. You mentioned CCOs, who are amazing. We do not have enough of them. We should have one in every court, because they know the territory and can help someone resolve their case at an early stage. The family resolution court pilot, about which I talked and on which I will send you the information, in the family care centre looks at that.

There is an overarching issue in family law. Domestic violence needs to be determined in a case. That can lead to a problem with mediation, for instance, because there is an inequality of bargaining power, and I worry about coercive control seeping into mediation. In some cases, however, we need to empower parents to make decisions about issues such as pick-up times and the timing of contact, rather than have the judge do that. I am very keen on that, but they need a bit of help.

Having worked in that area when I was in practice, I really value the social workers whom we have, but the trusts have a problem keeping them, and we need more CCOs. Do we need other expertise for cases in family courts? It depends. When I sat as the family judge here, you had to convince me that you needed an expert — a psychologist or whomever it might be — because providing one would cause delay and cost money. In some cases, an expert was needed, but, in other cases, one was not.

Ms Finnegan: Thank you. I have one more question. You touched on coercive control in family courts. There definitely are examples of family courts being used as a form of coercive control, a form of financial abuse or both. I do not think that there is enough recognition of that. You mentioned that, if there is any delay in the family court, a case may end up in the criminal court. For me, there is a huge barrier between family courts and criminal courts. Criminal activity, be it domestic violence or the use of the court as a form of coercive control, is not being recognised or is being overlooked in family courts.

I am interested in your take on that. Do you think that there should be more recognition of criminal activity in family courts? If crime is being committed, should the case be taken from the family court to the criminal court and be recognised for exactly what it is?

Rt Hon Dame Siobhan Keegan: I do, yes. That is what I am saying. We have made great strides in the past number of years. I have to say this: credit to the Minister. She has been at the forefront of that by putting actual domestic abuse offences on the statute book. That is filtering through, and people understand. Where I think that coercive control comes in is where a person, possibly benefiting from having legal aid, makes repeat applications against somebody who does not have legal aid. I know that that happens. There are ways and means of dealing with that. When I was at the Bar, there was a proposal — this may have been 20 years ago — to cap the number of applications that could be made. That was done to put off people who were using an application as a method of control. That is where specialist judges come in. They would have the antennae to work out what was going on. The problem is that people are entitled to have a fair trial. In family law, however, article 179 of the Children Order allows a court to restrict further applications without leave. Courts should probably use that provision more often in order to avoid repeat applications, because having another application is a stress in itself.

Ms Finnegan: That would bring it full circle. It would help with delays.

Rt Hon Dame Siobhan Keegan: Yes.

Ms Finnegan: If people were not allowed to make repeat applications for the purpose of taking a person back to court, you would imagine that it would —.

Rt Hon Dame Siobhan Keegan: There is a statutory provision: article 179(14) of the Children Order. There are criteria attached, but a judge can impose the provision in the right circumstances.

Ms Finnegan: Finally, on the same topic, there is very good legislation to help victims of domestic violence get legal aid and whatnot. It is not being implemented in the courts, however. Why is that the case? Although the legislation exists, the return that solicitors or barristers — solicitors, I think — get for it is not enough. Perhaps that is for a different day.

Rt Hon Dame Siobhan Keegan: I do not know the answer to that. I would be disappointed if it were not a situation in which people have access to good solicitors who can get them legal aid, after which those solicitors are properly remunerated to deal with those cases.

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): Doug, you wanted in for a brief question.

Mr Beattie: Yes. Sorry, Lady Chief Justice.

Rt Hon Dame Siobhan Keegan: You are OK.

Mr Beattie: Mine is a small but pointed question. It goes back to the remand piece. At the minute, I am dealing with that very issue for somebody. I will not talk about an individual case. A foreign national is placed on remand and goes before the court. The court gives him a sentence of one year. He has already served that time on remand, so he is released, but, because he has been given a year, he should be returned to his country of origin. He should be deported. Those are the rules. There is nobody there to do that, however. Whose responsibility is it to trigger that deportation? I know that it is the Home Office that —.

Rt Hon Dame Siobhan Keegan: It is the Home Office's responsibility.

Mr Beattie: Yes, but whose responsibility is it to inform the Home Office to enable it to do that? It cannot be the judge's. Is it the Prison Service's? Do you understand what I mean?

Rt Hon Dame Siobhan Keegan: I do. I can tell you that I had a case, without naming it, in which that very issue arose. For some reason unbeknownst to me, the Home Office was there, which was brilliant. I therefore asked, "What is happening?", and it said, "That person is on a flight this evening", or whatever. I think that, yes, it is probably the prison that would be equipped with the information to flag that to the Home Office. If there is no protocol in place for working together on that, there should be. It would not take too much to do. You would not want there to be a gap in the information, because that would lead to a real anxiety for the victims, I would have thought, in certain cases.

Mr Beattie: I am dealing with a case now that is exactly as you have just described. It seems as though there was no trigger to tell the Home Office to be there and that everybody was looking in different directions on it.

Rt Hon Dame Siobhan Keegan: If there is a practice, I will let the Committee know a direction. My experience, however, in the case that I had was that there was somebody there. There should be information sharing. That would have to be shared by the prison with the Home Office, yes.

Mr Beattie: Perfect. Thank you.

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): Thank you very much, Lady Chief Justice, for your time. The meeting has been very informative. You have been very helpful to the Committee in both sessions. We are truly indebted to you for your time.

Rt Hon Dame Siobhan Keegan: Thank you very much. As I say, I value our interaction. If there is anything that I can do to help on an ongoing basis, by way of information, please let me know. You are also welcome to visit the courts. Some of you have taken up the offer of court visits — I know that some of you mentioned it — through my office. You are very welcome. I will also send in some of the documents to which I referred. Once again, I say that it really is a delight to see the Committee here in the Royal Courts of Justice, so thank you.