THE GUARDIAN IS SOFT ON CHRIS GRAYLING
"Eroding"
access to justice is too generous a word to describe to the
introduction of a surcharge in the Magistrates Courts by Chris Grayling,
the Minister of Justice, of up to £1200 without any consultation just
before the election.
"Abolishing"
access to justice would be closer to reality. It devastates the poorest
citizens who cannot pay for a TV licence, a bus or a train ticket, or
whose children are persistent truants; they are are prosecuted as criminals.
Simultaneously
the jobcentres are stopping people's incomes with a sanction from one
month to three years. Sanctions are draconian punishments by the
jobcentres without a fair trial.
If
the magistrates are to take into account that loss of means and any
vulnerable circumstances in setting a proportionate fine there has to be
a trial. But the guilty and not guilty sanctioned persons are unlikely
to go to court and risk the new surcharges.
They
will therefore be fined £200 plus £150 costs in their absence, which
they cannot pay. The enforcement process then leads to the bailiffs on
the doorstep demanding immediate payment of the fine plus costs of £350
plus their fees of £265.
The surcharge should suspended immediately.
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