The lord chief justice has revealed that the government missed its court spending pledge last year by £80m – but he remains optimistic about the prospect of future funding after discussions with Downing Street.
Giving evidence to the House of Lords constitution committee today, Lord Burnett of Maldon said that then-lord chancellor Dominic Raab initially found just £70m for improving the courts estate last year. This was despite the Treasury’s three-year spending review allocating £150m a year to deal with the multitude of repairs and maintenance works outstanding in courts across England and Wales.
Burnett, who has been outspoken about the dilapidated state of the courts estate, told peers that the shortfall money was provided towards the end of the year but it was not possible to spend it in time.
The senior judiciary has just completed talks over the next year’s budget – though Burnett pointedly said he would not go into detail why this was not done before the start of the financial year – and he said his expectation was that HMCTS would be in a ‘better position’ this year. ‘Having engaged in great detail not only with the lord chancellor but also with the prime minister I am reasonably confident… that the position for this financial year will be much better.
‘A point I have been pressing for ages is that it is hopeless to deal with this on a year-by-year basis because so much of the big capital expenditure will straddle different years. We are working towards an agreement now for the next financial year as well for capital spending.’
Burnett was giving one of his final public appearances before stepping down as lord chief justice but was reluctant to be drawn on political issues or controversial topics.
Having spoken at the lord chancellor’s swearing in earlier this month about the constitutional role of the position, he did expand on this point and the issues of having someone as lord chancellor who is also a secretary of state for justice. The time of the lord chancellor was likely to be ‘substantially diverted’ by prisons policy and this was likely to be at the expense of promoting the rule of law and administration of justice.
He added: ‘The lord chancellor has to be a politician of substance who is able to say to the prime minister and cabinet “no you can’t do that”. It is undesirable that a lord chancellor should be a minister actively or passively seeking promotion.’
