Access to Justice

Part of 2. Questions to the Counsel General and Minister for the Constitution – in the Senedd at 3:00 pm on 12 January 2022.

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Photo of Mick Antoniw Mick Antoniw Labour 3:00, 12 January 2022

I thank the Member for that supplementary question. You raise a number of interesting points. The first one—. Of course, the latter point you raise is: have I as a Minister actually considered doing that? Well, of course, the Member will be aware that, despite our request, justice is not devolved. Just think how much better we could actually engage digital operations, public facilities, the public services that are so integral in respect of justice issues, if it was devolved. Now that's something, obviously, that I'm looking at in conjunction with the Minister for Social Justice, to show how we could operate a justice system and better access and better justice, I believe, within a devolved situation. So, that's one area that is under way. Of course, the assessment of that has been being carried out on an ongoing basis by the Ministry of Justice. Unfortunately, the engagement with us over that tends to be rather sporadic. We raise it with Ministers when we speak. The Member will probably not be surprised to know that we still have major hurdles in accessing justice data relating to Wales. Now how do you develop and design social policy and justice policy if you don't even know what the data is in your own country? And we've raised that numerous times at every level. I think the weaknesses of the data availability disaggregation are recognised, but what's happening about it, I don't know.

What I would like to see would be a situation where there was a greater engagement with us, and a greater say in the use of resources in the actual combination of public services and court services through the use of digital facilities, but at the moment we are still very dependent on the Ministry of Justice taking decisions. For example, we have a major civil justice court in the capital of Wales in Cardiff that is not fit for purpose. It is recognised as not fit for purpose; that point has regularly been made and yet we still await a decision on having proper court facilities for families, for representatives, with all the digital and security aspects that are required. So, you hit the right points, but there is still a long way to go for the Ministry of Justice, I believe, to have a comprehensive programme in respect of the use of digital technology and also the recognition of the ongoing need for those who do not have that digital access.