Open and shut

It’s time for a minute’s silence, please bow your heads in reverence, after a long fight with its demons the principle of open justice is dead.

Well, it is in Birmingham anyway. It must be, either that or they’ve redefined the word ‘public’ for the 21st century. No one told me though, one of you could have done.

It would have made my job a lot easier, I’d just not bother turning up to court anymore, we’ll just wait for the results via post court, might as well sack hundreds of journalists as well, would save a few pounds.

OK, this is overkill, but the battle for information inside courts and tribunals seems to be becoming harder by the day.

For no reason other than a raft of interesting cases I have spent quite a few days in the employment tribunals building in the country’s second city recently.

It is a completely unremarkable building from the outside, just another of Birmingham’s row after row of concrete monstrosities built in the 60s and 70s.

Inside the walls are partitions, grey, along with the carpets, as if to suck the last will to stay awake from your body.

Those inside it are there for some kind of justice, it’s easy to forget when inside that without this drab building those who are unfairly dealt with by companies bigger than themselves would have nowhere to make their case, no one to stand up for them.

The problems start when you dare to try and get some information out of anyone.

This is a place of law, a judge presides over all the hearings, it’s not some shady back room where lawyers haggle out a deal to keep everything hushed up.

So in reality you should be able to walk up to the clerk and get the information you need. I’m not asking much, just the names of those involved.

This is beyond the workers of the employment tribunals though.

The very idea of being told the first name of a judge is laughed at, “no, we don’t give that detail out” is the terse reply whenever you dare to ask the question.

A month or so ago I ventured into a tribunal where even the lawyers wouldn’t tell me their names. Even worse, the names of the witnesses were never mentioned.

“Can we have the next witness,” the judge said. Cue the lawyer for the respondent turning round, pointing at her client to go forward.

Off she trots up to the witness stand and is asked to give the oath and read her statement. Never is she asked to even confirm to the court who she is.

No check, just a quick “is that your statement and have you read it” from her lawyer, nothing from the judge. I could have been reading that for all that it seemed to matter.

My experiences that day led to the Sun, for who I was working that day, putting an official complaint in to the justice ministry, I didn’t ask them to, but they did and I’m very grateful.

This week I’ve been back, happily this time I was able to get the names of the lawyers and the judge even checked who was actually talking to him.

However that was all pretty irrelevant when I discovered I wasn’t even to hear the statements that the day was based around.

Normally in a tribunal the witnesses will read out what they have to say in a pre prepared statement. Both sets of lawyers have had this for a while and ask questions around this in examination and cross-examination.

But not this time.

The tribunal launches straight into examination, leaving three journalists sat in the middle of everyone completely lost as to what was going on.

Later on I asked one of the lawyers why this happened. “Most tribunals are starting to do this now, it gets things done faster,” is the reply.

“Can I have a copy of the statements and the skeleton argument then?” I ask, quite reasonably I thought.

“I’ll have to see about that, come back to me tomorrow and I’ll have an answer.”

So that was that, nothing has been forthcoming from either side or the court to actually tell any members of the public what was going on. For all I know there weren’t any statements to start with and the whole thing's a sham (I'm sure it's not).

To make matters worse this is a complex case, a pre tribunal hearing to work out if there is actually a case to answer.

Anyone without a copy of the ‘bundle’ (tribunal speak for the evidence), which is in this case made up of six huge folders of statements, regulations and investigations, has to try and work out what’s going on from the lines of questioning.

What’s wrong with that? Everything I say. How can you have open justice when no one knows what’s going on? How can the media keep an eye on it and report on what goes on when someone tries to stand in their way?

It’s not just confined to tribunals either. Magistrates court clerks and ushers seem increasingly unaware that by law they have to tell a reporter the name of the Magistrates.

“They’d rather not say, they don’t want it published” is a reply I’ve had more than once.

Fortunately I was taught media law at university. So while I don’t have a copy of the journalists law bible, McNae, available from all good bookstores, on me I can recite the law to them explaining that they have to.

It doesn’t always work though, and in the case of court clerks I’m talking about people trained heavily in the law to reach their position. Clerk's have a vital role in advising Magistrates if needed, they have to know what's going on.

I once ended up sat in my car phoning the reception and explaining the law to them before I could get a simple name I was entitled to know from Worcester Magistrates court.

How can it be that the very people we look to to make sure there is justice in this country don’t seem to know the most basic of laws?

The justice system in Britain is built on the concept of open justice. That the public can go along to see what's going on for themselves.

Increasingly this idea, central to everything in a court, seems be kicked to the corner.

Talk of introducing trials without juries behind closed doors for those cases containing sensitive information terrifies me, and should terrify you as well.

Next step away from that is a quick trip to Guantanamo bay with no chance of a trial by your piers or a summary execution soviet style, bye bye fair trials.

Who needs open justice? You do.