“The Administrative Justice and Tribunals Council:
The hub of the wheel of administrative justice”
Speech given by the Rt Hon. the Lord Newton of Braintree OBE, DL at the launch of the Administrative Justice & Tribunals Council
Just as the occasion marks Robert’s new legitimacy in his significant new role, so in a wider sense it is an important landmark in the history of administrative justice in this country, fifty years on from the publication of the Franks Report in 1957. Not only did Franks completely alter the widely-held perception of tribunals as being administrative rather than judicial bodies, but his principles of ‘openness’, ‘fairness’ and ‘impartiality’ also went on to become the watchwords for how tribunals should operate. And of course his recommendations led to the establishment of the Council on Tribunals, with the role of overseeing the operation of tribunals and ensuring that the Franks principles were applied in practice.
In the intervening 50 years, the Council has I think played its part in promoting and securing the highest standards of excellence in the tribunals world – not always in the vociferous way which some would have wished, but in a way which I believe has given it a reputation for being measured, authoritative and fair-minded.
Certainly the Council has helped to move things forward in some important ways. Before my time, it produced in 1991 its Model Rules of Procedure and in 1997 a Special Report on “Tribunals: Their Organisation and Independence” giving guidance on the conditions for their proper independence and integrity.
More recently, we have developed our “Framework of Standards” for tribunals, overhauled and re-written the Model Rules as a guide to the drafting of such Rules, and published Special Reports including one on School Admission and Exclusion Appeal Panels which has contributed to a number of noteworthy improvements.
Overall, during the Council’s lifetime, tribunals have become an established and important means of resolving disputes between the citizen and the state, as well as between one private party and another, notably, but not exclusively, in the field of employment. At the same time, the number of tribunal jurisdictions, and the cases they deal with, have multiplied to the extent that tribunals now deal with many more cases than the courts themselves.
In 2000 Sir Andrew Leggatt was asked by the then Lord Chancellor, Lord Irvine of Lairg, to undertake the review which has brought us to where we are today. In his 2001 Report “Tribunals for Users: One System, One Service” Sir Andrew made a number of recommendations aimed at addressing the changing nature of the administrative law landscape. With regard to the Council on Tribunals, he envisaged that it should act as the “hub of the wheel of administrative justice”.
That widening from tribunals to “Administrative Justice” was taken up by the then Minister in a way reflected in the ensuing 2004 White Paper, Transforming Public Services: Complaints, Redress and Tribunals, which spelled out in more detail the proposed role of a new Administrative Justice Council:
- to keep under review the performance of the administrative justice system as a whole, drawing attention to matters of particular importance or concern;
- to review the relationships between the various components of the system (in particular ombudsmen, tribunals and the courts) to ensure that these are clear, complementary and flexible;
- to identify priorities for, and encourage the conduct of, research; and
- to provide advice and make recommendations to government on changes to legislation, practice and procedure, which will improve the workings of the administrative justice system.
And all of that was in turn carried through into what is now the Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Act, which received Royal Assent on 19 July 2007. It is no overstatement to say that this Act is the most significant piece of legislation affecting tribunals, and indeed the Council on Tribunals, since the original Tribunals and Inquiries Act of 1958.
The Bill, like the whole programme of reform, had the Council’s strong support, which I hope played some part in achieving a rare degree of cross-party Parliamentary endorsement. I was personally glad to be able to express that support in the debates, and at the same time to help in clarifying some points on the role of the AJTC in relation to research and the right of AJTC members to attend tribunal proceedings, including the tribunal’s deliberations, and in emphasising the overriding principles of fairness and justice in making rules of tribunal procedure.
The Administrative Justice and Tribunals Council, or AJTC, formally came into being just under three weeks ago on 1 November 2007. As I mentioned a few moments ago, the AJTC is charged with keeping under review the administrative justice system as a whole, and considering how it might be made more accessible, fair and efficient.
We are today publishing the AJTC’s Framework Document, copies of which you will find in your conference packs. The Framework, which is published jointly by the AJTC and the Ministry of Justice, sets out the arrangements for supporting the AJTC in its work and describes the relationship between it and the Ministry of Justice. No less importantly, it contains our own statement of what we see the new Council as being about.
We see our purpose as:
- playing a pivotal role in the development of coherent principles and good practice;
- promoting understanding, learning and continuous improvement;
- ensuring that the needs of users are central.
We describe our vision as a system where:
- those taking administrative decisions do so on soundly-based evidence and with regard for the needs of those affected;
- people are helped to understand how they can best challenge decisions or seek redress at least cost and inconvenience to themselves;
- grievances are resolved in a way which is fair, timely, open and proportionate;
- there is a continuous search for improvement at every stage in the process.
We define the values we promote as:
- Openness and transparency;
- Fairness and proportionality;
- Impartiality and independence;
- Equality of access to justice.
So we are not short of ambition, and it will inevitably take time to achieve. But we are developing our Work Programme, and meanwhile I can give you a flavour of what we already have in hand.
We are currently doing some initial work looking at the availability of legal assistance and advice to users of tribunals. We anticipate that this work will inform the development of policies and strategies for improving and promoting better and fairer access to tribunals for their users.
The AJTC will also promote access to justice by playing a pivotal role in the development of coherent principles and good practice. Looking slightly further to the future we will be working towards developing a coherent set of principles for administrative justice as a whole, which will promote collaboration and the sharing of good practice across the sector.
We will also continue to do this through our annual conferences and seminars and workshops, bringing together as they do members of the tribunal judiciary with ombudsmen, complaint handlers, interested academics, representatives of the advice sector and others.
The AJTC will work to keep under review and build up its influence in the development of legislation, both primary and secondary, affecting tribunals. To this end, we are currently working closely with the Ministry of Justice to develop a new Code for Consultation with the AJTC.
The Council will, of course, also be represented on the Tribunal Rules Committee, which will be responsible for the rules of procedure for the tribunals within the unified tribunal system.
And I hope I need hardly say that we will continue to seek to work in a collaborative way, building on what the former Council had already done to broaden its partnership-working with other interested parties - including academics, the advice sector, the Judicial Studies Board, the Law Commission and the British and Irish Ombudsman Association – and to adopt a more proactive approach to arranging and attending conferences and seminars.
But although we now have a significantly wider remit, tribunals will continue to be an important aspect of the Council’s work. Our members will continue to make visits to observe tribunal hearings. And we are keen to do more with our members’ visit reports, which, to date, have largely been reserved for the Council’s information only. This recognises a specific suggestion by Sir Andrew Leggatt who strongly urged that the Council should seek to do more with its visit reports as a form of feedback to tribunals.
We have already started routinely sending copies of our reports to the President and tribunal Chair of the systems we visit. We are also currently considering how best to feed back the findings from our visits to senior managers and the senior judiciary in the Tribunals Service.
In fulfilling its oversight function the AJTC will play a role as a “critical friend” of the Tribunals Service. Our working relationship with the Tribunals Service is founded on co-operation and collaboration, with a regular exchange of views about the workings of the TS tribunals under the AJTC’s oversight. In that respect it is helpful that the Council’s Chair has observer status on the Tribunals Service Management Board and is invited to the Senior President’s Group, and that the Senior President has observer status at the meetings of the AJTC.
One specific piece of work on which we are engaged, with the Tribunals Service is to address the ongoing concerns of stakeholders of the Mental Health Review Tribunal. We recently hosted a Round Table discussion to enable those concerns to be discussed with senior TS officials at first hand. This has led to the establishment of an AJTC-led group to inform the development and implementation of the MHRT’s improvement programme, and I warmly welcome the very constructive response which the Tribunals Service has made.
Another specific effort is our active support for the work of the Education Appeals Support Initiative, or EASI groups as they are called, which provide a forum for school appeals clerks to meet on a regular basis to share good practice and experiences. Because of the locally-based nature of school admission and exclusion appeals, their clerks were hitherto very isolated, but have now established useful networks. I recently chaired the 2nd annual EASI groups conference in Millbank Tower, feedback from which indicated that the clerks appreciate our support as it emphasises the value of their own role and that of the panels they serve. This is perhaps an illustration of our continuing interest in the smaller or more specialised tribunals – not least those which, at least for the present, remain outside the Tribunals Service itself.
A third piece of work I should mention, very much related to the new wider remit, is with the Disability and Carers Service of the Department for Work and Pensions on how to improve feedback to decision-makers from the decisions of tribunals. It is encouraging to note that the various quality improvement initiatives the Agency has put in place have led to a reduction in the numbers of cases that go to tribunals and in the number of appeals subsequently overturned on appeal.
All of these I see as good examples of the “hub of the wheel” role, which we shall of course be seeking to develop further.
The AJTC will take a keen interest in areas such as the development of key performance indicators for tribunals within the unified system. It will aim to exert a positive influence, particularly with a view to promoting the best interests of users.
More broadly, the Council will also seek to explore and promote the scope for new approaches to dispute resolution. To this end we have already conducted a survey on the use of ‘alternative’ and ‘proportionate’ dispute resolution in tribunals. The aim of the survey was to identify good practice and potential opportunities for encouraging more effective and swift resolution of disputes. A report is currently being finalised, with the aim of it being published in a special ‘proportionate dispute resolution’ edition of Adjust in the New Year.
In the same way, we plan to respond authoritatively to emerging issues and proposals that affect or involve administrative justice, tribunals and inquiries more generally. We have been taking forward work in a number of areas, including an exercise to map the administrative justice ‘landscape’, on which we are working in partnership with the British and Irish Ombudsman Association.
One of our key aspirations is to raise awareness of the different approaches within the UK legal systems. The AJTC will continue to have a separate Scottish Committee, which will take a particular interest in administrative justice and tribunals in Scotland, including those UK-wide tribunals which sit in Scotland, and some twenty tribunals which are constituted under separate Scottish legislation. The Scottish Committee has been developing its own work for the wider role, and is working with the Justice Department and academics from the University in Edinburgh on research to map the framework of administrative justice in Scotland, which has assisted materially in increasing the profile of administrative justice and tribunals north of the border.
Moreover, in what we see as a very positive development for the tribunals world in Wales, and indeed for the administrative justice system in a wider sense, the Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Act reinforces the role of the AJTC in Wales by establishing a new Welsh Committee of the AJTC, which will be formally constituted on the 1st of June 2008. This will ensure that matters with a specific Welsh element or focus will receive proper consideration by a dedicated Committee based in Wales. I hope that the Welsh Committee will benefit from the network of contacts in administrative justice in Wales that the Council has been building through its Welsh conferences, the most recent of which took place in Cardiff in June.
I conclude by thanking all of you for the encouragement you have consistently given to the old Council on Tribunals. I hope that, with our new name and wider role, we shall both earn and enjoy your continued support.