Plans for secretive online magistrates court hearings axed in media victory for open justice

Controversial plans to allow tens of thousands of court hearings each year to take place in private have been axed after a media campaign to protect open justice. Boris Johnson’s Conservative government pushed through proposals in 2022 for a new system which would move some criminal hearings out of the courtroom and online instead.

The Online Plea and Allocation system would have allowed court officials and lawyers to exchange private messages in the early stages of a criminal case, taking key decisions in the absence of public scrutiny. It was suggested defendants could even indicate their pleas to the charges online, instead doing it openly in a public court hearing.

The plans faced a fierce backlash, with more than 100 journalists, editors, and academics signing an open letter in 2022 condemning the idea as “justice in the dark”. Despite the opposition, the idea was approved by Parliament and passed into law in the Judicial Review and Courts Act. As recently as November last year, the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) said the new system would be created.

But on Tuesday, it was revealed that plans for Online Plea and Allocation (OPA) have now been axed. The MoJ’s £1.3 billion courts reform programme started in 2016 and is due to close next month. The digital systems needed for OPA to become a reality have not been built, and it has been confirmed there are “no plans to do so“.

The original plans for the new system anticipated transparency and ‘open justice’ would be delivered in the same way as the Single Justice Procedure (SJP), a system which allows low-level crimes to be dealt with by magistrates in private. SJP was invented in 2015 as a cost-cutting measure, with court hearings reduced to online exchanges of documents. The media has the right to request access to the documents, but the public is almost entirely excluded.

The Labour Government has now pledged to overhaul the SJP system, after The Standard’s award-winning investigation revealed a system riddled with injustices and deep flaws, and a lack of transparency in decision-making. If implemented, OPA would have allowed magistrates courts to abolish first appearances in some criminal cases, to take decisions in private.

They would have decided – behind-closed-doors – whether a case should be allocated to the crown or magistrates court for trial, taken indications of pleas, and established the bail conditions that applied. Reporters feared criminal cases would slip into the justice system unnoticed, without a formal court hearing where defendants traditionally enter the dock to confirm their identity and hear the charges read out for the first time.

Journalists regularly attend first appearances in the magistrates courts, to report on new cases entering the system and hear firsthand some of the details of the allegations. When the media first challenged the OPA, they warned “the open justice principle is being heavily compromised”, it could leave journalists in a “legal grey area” when matters have not been set out openly in a courtroom, and it would likely lead to a dramatic reduction in the amount of court cases being reported to the public.

“Any changes that make it harder for journalists to access hearings, not only have knock-on consequences for the public that are worrying. They also have the potential to affect the ability of students to gain the practical, first-hand experience of legal proceedings that is critical for their professional development.”.

Sian Harrison, then-Press Association law service editor, added: “Without first hearings in magistrates’ courts people would never learn key details, undoubtedly in the public interest, from cases involving serious offences.”. The Conservative government rejected attempts in 2022 to amend the Judicial Review and Courts Act, to write in specific provisions for the media to be able to gain access to information on court hearings if they are dealt with in private.