A secret court has been fining pensioners for TV licence crimes behind closed doors it has been revealed. But now the Magistrates’ Association has ordered that prosecutions of TV licence-related offences must be held in public, with the “secretive” Single Justice Procedure (SJP) resulting in vulnerable people being prosecuted behind closed doors without being present or having any legal representation.
The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has been told by the Magistrates’ Association it should adopt a 12-point plan that would include opening up the SJP to accredited journalists for the first time and greater transparency by publishing data on how many individuals are prosecuted without being present and how many plead guilty or make no pleas.
It comes as pressure intensifies on the MoJ to rethink the SJP which decides 40,000 cases in private every month ranging from -non-payment of television licence fees to speeding, common assault and truancy.
The cases are often decided without the defendant present and by a single magistrate.
Since the start of 2023 there have been claims of magistrates convicting and fining defendants in less than a minute, key evidence going missing or being overlooked and thousands of prosecutions conducted in secret according to the Telegraph.
Cases the SJP has prosecuted include a 78-year-old with dementia fined for not having car insurance when she was in a care home, a 33-year-old handed a £781 legal bill after accidentally failing to pay £4 to the DVLA and an 85-year-old woman prosecuted for not paying car insurance after suffering a broken neck and admission to a care home.
Pressure from the Magistrates’ Association comes after a survey of its members which found they were “uncomfortable” with the way the SJP operated, felt under-trained and a “significant proportion” felt they did not “always get as much time as they need to properly consider each case”.
The group’s chairman Mark Beattie JP said the principle of SJP was right because it spared people the ordeal of court for minor offences but there were “flaws” in the way it operated that were harming “some of society’s most vulnerable people”.
He told the Telegraph: “It is clear to us that reform, as well as additional investment in training and transparency, is needed to restore public confidence in the SJP.”
The plan proposed by the Magistrates’ Association includes a new public interest check by prosecutors before cases come to court and for the Government to “make provision for SJP sittings to be observable by accredited journalists”.
It also recommends improved training for magistrates including textbooks written in “plain English” rather than legal jargon.