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Talk 200 is a new lecture and podcast series from The University of Manchester, launching to mark our bicentenary: 200 years of making a difference.
This year we’re reflecting on our past, celebrating our present and looking to the future – and Talk 200 invites listeners to be part of the journey.
Our podcast host, Manchester aficionado, author, and University alumnus Andy Spinoza will be joined by a diverse line-up of guests from our community – pioneering academics and notable figures, inspiring staff, alumni and students – to discuss topics such as health, digital and AI, climate change, and equality and justice.
[Music]
Hello and welcome to Talk 200, a lecture and podcast series to celebrate The University
of Manchester's Bicentenary Year.
Our 200th anniversary is a time to celebrate 200 years of learning, innovation and
research.
200 years of our incredible people and community. 200 years of global influence.
In this series, we'll be hearing from some of the nation's foremost scientists,
thinkers and social commentators, plus many other voices from across our university
community
as we explore the big topics affecting us all.
In this episode, Nazia Afzal, Chancellor of The University of Manchester and
former Chief Crown prosecutor for Northwest England, discusses inequalities in access
to justice
and the steps towards fairer treatment in the legal system.
Discover the limits to equality within our legal system and how, in the face of recent
scandals in the UK and overseas,
we can widen access to justice.
Good afternoon and welcome to this special event.
The second of our Talk 200 series of exciting lectures and podcasts,
which are going on throughout 2024, our university's Bicentenary Year.
This one's especially significant as it falls within our Bicentenary Festival,
Universally Manchester. We hope that we'll see you at other events across the weekend.
I'm not only delighted to welcome those who have joined us in person for this event,
but also those joining online.
Our 200th anniversary is an opportunity to reflect on our past,
celebrate our present and look to the future.
And the Talk 200 series invites listeners to be part of the journey.
Building on the success of our lockdown lectures and the annual Cockcroft Rutherford
lectures,
this series features some of the nation's foremost scientists, thinkers, historians and
social commentators,
as well as many other voices from across the community.
Talk 200 is a chance to celebrate our people,
inspiring staff and students, pioneering academics and notable figures.
Through the lectures and podcasts, we have a diverse lineup of guests
who are providing insights on a range of themes central to our university's purpose and
values,
including social responsibility, groundbreaking discovery and civic engagement.
The Talk 200 series will comprise of four in-person and live-streamed lectures
and six recorded podcast episodes which you'll be able to access on our Bicentenary
web pages
and the usual podcast channels.
The first live lecture was with Professor Chris Whitty,
looking at the main drivers of inequalities and disparities in health.
That's available to watch again via our website.
Our next lecture will be with our brilliant professor, Mike Shaver.
This time it will take place in London, so look out for that one.
Our distinguished alumnus and Manchester aficionado, Andy Spinoza,
is hosting the podcast for this series,
topics so far being innovation in Manchester and energy and climate change,
with contributions from our leading academics in this area.
So be sure to seek them out and tune in.
We're delighted to begin today with a lecture from Nazir Afzal OBE, our
esteemed Chancellor and former Chief Crown Prosecutor for north-west England.
Most recently, Nazir was chief executive of the country's police and crime
commissioners.
During his 24-year career in these roles, he has prosecuted some of the most
high-profile cases in the country and advised on many others,
leading nationally on several legal topics, including violence against women and girls,
child sexual abuse and honour-based violence.
He had responsibility for more than 100,000 prosecutions each year.
His prosecutions of the so-called Rochdale grooming gang
and hundreds of others were groundbreaking and changed the landscape of child
protection.
His lecture today, ‘The limits to equality - access to justice and scandal’,
will discuss inequalities in access to justice and steps towards
fairer treatment in the legal system.
Once Nazir has given his lecture, we will move onto a panel discussion
in which a selection of experts will further discuss issues within this topic.
Chaired by Claire McGourlay, professor of legal education
in University of Manchester, the panel will then delve into the disparities
in access to justice and discuss how we can possibly chart a path
towards fairer treatment within the legal sphere and the challenges that poses.
Our superb panellists tonight include exonerated postmaster Tom Hedges,
barrister and advocate Thalia Marragh, who was played a leading role in the UK
COVID-19 inquiry and the Grenfell Inquiry and Suzanne Gower, who is a PhD lecturer,
PhD researcher and lecturer here and former managing director of the legal charity
appeal, a great collection of expertise.
Without further ado, can I please ask Nazir Afzal to make his way to the stage.
Thank you very much indeed Luke, and thank you so much for all of you attending and
also those of you watching
Online, who include Thalia's family in Montego Bay, Jamaica.
You can rest assured that's where most of us would like to be tonight, but
nonetheless welcome to you as well. It's a real pleasure to be able to share a few
my thoughts on this. My thoughts have germinated, I think, in the last
decade or so. I left prosecuting in 2015 and one of the reasons I left
prosecuting was I felt that every prosecution was a failure because somebody
had been harmed to get to me and I wanted to move more into the
sphere of prevention and ultimately trying to see whether we could actually
improve the system that I was part of. That in itself is the problem that we
call the criminal justice a system rather than a service because when you
have a system you're only, only focused on process, how things are done, you
know, arrest, charge, conviction, sentence… That kind of thing.
Rather than the people in it, the humanity which I think is missing and
we're going to hear undoubtedly from people I've taught this
afternoon around when it goes wrong and it does go wrong
more frequently than perhaps we appreciate. When I first became a lawyer a
long time ago, 1989, one of my first cases, or first
group of cases I was dealing with was the West Midlands Serious Crime Squad
which is a police officers that were, there's no way, other way putting it,
putting it, they were fitting up suspects. They were writing
confessions for them on statements and then submitting it and I worked for a
firm of solicitors called Glaziers who back then were doing some great work
in miscarriages of justice and I learned my trade working with
my partners and others in that field and recognised then that was
there was more needed to be done but again I focused entirely on prosecution
when I moved into prosecution and I didn't realise what it was that was
happening in our system. Additionally, you know, I worked in central London
for 20-odd years, pretty much early on in my career as a
prosecutor we had Stephen Lawrence's terrible murder and the
immediate aftermath of that or the lack of an aftermath, namely no
prosecution for 15 years. That I think in itself again was a steep
learning curve for all of us around it, perhaps justice doesn't follow
automatically. It needs some actual, you know, put something
being done about it rather than expecting somebody to do their job
and I think we, I can't have this conversation without,
I'm not going to be party political because we're in a general election
but to try and describe where we are now as a country when it comes to our
justice system, we have a broken justice system. It is broken in every respect.
We have lost half a million years of police experience. That’s 20,000 police
officers times 25 years. We've lost 600 courtrooms, we've
lost 800 police stations, we've lost thousands of probation officers
and victim support workers, there is poor morale throughout the system,
the lowest public confidence I think in my 30 years in working in the justice
system, the conviction rate for sexual offences you know is 1.8%,
turn it around, that means 98.2% of those accused of sex
offending will not be charged with a crime. There have been increases in domestic
abuse, increases in violence against women and girls, low police
detection rates, online fraud is going unpunished, hate crime is going up,
knife crime is going up, prisoners failing to rehabilitate,
the longest time, now, ever, from offence to charge
in all of my years, the highest delays in trials being
finalised, the highest backlogs in trials being heard
and NGOs are suffering because they just don't have the resources.
That's where we are right now. So when we're discussing, as we are
discussing what's wrong with our system, we have to recognise
where we are right now is not going to make it any better
because if anything it's going to make things worse.
And I tried to understand or try to appreciate, I have the good fortune
Thalia, I know worked with the Grenfell families, so did I. I carried out the review
of London Fire Brigade culture about 18 months ago and I had the
privilege of meeting the Grenfell families and I saw in them, 72
people, 72 families, quite frankly, who felt that the
country had let them down and there was nothing that would come from that,
and we've, what, 7 years in now and to date there has not been one person
arrested, never mind charged. And so they wonder about accountability.
And that's the question that I keep asking myself is whether or not
there really is accountability in our system. And of course the experience of
people like the Grenfell families, like the Hillsborough families,
like the infected blood families, you know, you can go on and list them.
You know, the disproportionate or unfortunate use of joint enterprise,
there are so many different ways in which
miscarriages of justice occur, where people are brought into the system
and the system just follows the process without anybody
saying stop, let's have a look. And of course, then it links into
something I know others will touch on this afternoon, is that the
accountability must come from a legal duty to tell people what's going on.
You know, we often use the firm, why aren't there any whistleblowers?
You know, why should there be whistleblowers? The system itself
should call itself up to scrutiny. There should be, as we,
undoubtedly we'll discuss, a duty of candour, where people are mandated
to speak up about what's going wrong in their systems. Right now, as I speak to
you, I'm now carrying out the independent review of the Nursing and
Midwifery Council, and my report is due on the 9th of July, would have been
a couple of weeks earlier, but there was something happening on July
the 4th, which has delayed that. But again, you've got, and that is the
world's largest regulator, 808,000 nurses and midwives,
and you will hear, unfortunately, I can't give you more detail,
that have there been a duty of candour, have whistleblowers been protected,
we wouldn't be where we are today, and where the NMC is today.
So what's wrong? What's wrong with our system? There's so much wrong.
There is an inequality of arm, inequality of arms. So there are those who, you know,
we talk about legal costs being really expensive,
we're then reliant upon people working pro bono, people working for nothing.
Legal costs are expensive, the high legal fees that we have are preventing low
income individuals from obtaining representation.
That can't be right. At the same time, the state or these large
institutions, such as the post office, have all the resources,
I'm assisting somebody, I can't talk about, against somebody in power right now,
and that person in power has said in no uncertain terms to this person,
I have all the means at my disposal to keep this going forever, and you haven't.
And that shouldn't be right. There should be an equality, an equality,
an equality of arms to enable people to be able to represent themselves,
or be represented through that. Before that, there's the access to legal aid itself,
the access to legal aid has been struck down over the last few years.
It's now, there are so many unrepresented defendants appearing in our courtrooms,
and they are what they're doing, they're often pleading guilty because that's the easiest
thing to do. You'll hear more about that later from Tom.
Race and ethnicity is another challenge when it comes to inequality.
You are 9 times more likely if you're a black person to be stopped and searched by a
police than a white person. You are as a black person, more likely to be arrested,
more likely to be charged, more likely to be convicted, more likely sentenced to prison
than a white person on the same evidence in this country. Well, that surely can't be
right.
Then we've got the more general things around language barriers. You know, we've had a
massive impact on
the availability of interpreting services. So many cases fail now because the interpreter
is
not there, or on many occasions I've seen judges and district judges and magistrates
say to the defendant, "we can adjourn this case to get you an interpreter, but let's go
ahead anyway."
And that person doesn't understand a word that's been said to them.
I could talk about gender bias. Again, I don't have enough time, but you have to
recognise it.
We do recognise it, I mentioned the 1.8% figure when it comes to victims of sexual
violence.
That there is a bias in the system when it comes to women and the way that they're
treated,
and a lack of understanding from legal professionals really about what's happening
within the family,
what's happening when it comes to sexual violence, what's happening when it comes to
domestic abuse,
1 in 4 women in this country suffer domestic abuse, 1 in 5 women in this country suffer
sexual assault, 2 women every week are killed by their partners and ex-partners,
10 women every week take their own lives because of the abuse they're suffering.
But I can assure you that judges, magistrates, professionals in the system don't
routinely
consistently know what they're dealing with. And they don't seek expert advice and
guidance and
support when they should do. And where they look for it, the NGOs aren't there
anymore,
or the NGOs aren't properly funded. I'm the patron of 9 women-led NGOs all working in
this field,
and they spend probably half their time trying to fundraise. I'd rather they spend 100% of
their time
trying to help the victims that they are meant to be supporting or they are supporting.
Then there is the geographic inequality, the rural versus urban. If you're living in a rural
environment, say in Cumbria, I remember when I was Chief Prosecutor for Northwest
England,
in Cumbria we, as in the Ministry of Justice, closed lots of magistrates' courts. It made
it a 50-mile journey for some people to travel to a magistrates' court for a hearing,
with no transport, nothing like they could have on the tube in London. So you have those
kinds of
issues which undoubtedly will impact upon them. And of course when you're in a close-
knit community
in a village somewhere in whatever part, the reality is if you make an allegation against
your partner, for example, this is a real case, everybody in the village tries to dissuade
you
from going ahead. And that's another issue that we just don't have any research on or
we have any
understanding of. Infrastructure, I've touched on it, there isn't any infrastructure in
remote
court when it comes to access to justice in certain large parts of our country. There's the
other
inequality around educational awareness. There's legal literacy in this country, I'm afraid
is really
low. That's why you see people on social media saying the law says this, when it doesn't.
And they go to social media when they don't have the means themselves to know what
the law should
Be or they wait for Martin Lewis to tell them on his program or something. You know,
what we need to
have is access to information. You should have access to information. It should be legal
literacy
in your curriculum, enables you to understand from a very early age what your rights are,
potentially what you could do differently, where you can seek guidance and seek
support. We thought
we solved disability access. You go to any courtroom in the country and think about how
difficult it
is for somebody who's disabled to be able to access either the courts or the legal
offices.
The accommodation itself outdated. So many of our courtrooms in this country, they've
got
roofs leaking. They're falling apart. And the idea that somebody who's got disability can
come in
and do so without being impeded is absolute nonsense. So we've got significant issues
there
around simply the way we treat disabled people in our system. Never mind how the
prisons deal
with them. Immigration status, I can't go without mentioning immigration status. We still
have no
recourse to public funding for so many people, particularly women who are suffering
abuse. They
don't have the ability to access legal services for free. And that means that, again, the
perpetrator
can abuse them knowing that's the case. And there are fair repercussions because of
immigration
status. If you are the victim of modern slavery, technically, you are the victim. Therefore,
you should be treated as a victim and you be provided with support. But they're
frightened
and undoubtedly should be frightened given the public discourse that if they come
forward,
they will simply be deported from the country and the perpetrator who's put them in that
position
will undoubtedly walk free. And of course, immigration law itself is complex. I thank God
I'm not doing
immigration law but that changes like every other week. Criminal justice bills every year,
literally. There's tinker. There's tinker with the criminal law like nobody's business. And
the
promise of a Rural Commission that was given in 2019 manifesto, by the way, never
came off.
And so we're still tinkering with the legal system. But all that does is make it even more
complicated
for the average citizen, never mind the average citizen, for the average lawyer.
The youth and elderly, young people, not only are they subjected to potential national
service,
they're also being told to literally suffer. They undoubtedly are treated poorly by the
services that were there for them on there anymore. Children's services, youth services
are struggling to provide all manner of support both to the victims and to those
accused.
And the system has a lack of understanding, really, of particularly youth issues. But
also,
elderly, the elderly themselves have additional barriers which are not being faced. And
there's
technological, technological barriers. The digital world, now these days, more and more
post-COVID,
you know, will do the hearing on Zoom. What the hell is Zoom? I don't have Wi-Fi. You
know,
all those kinds of things that we seem to think that we've taken for granted. Digital
technology
is not there. The infrastructure is not there. The system, you know, when I tried to bring
In digital printing 12 years ago in the CPS, I did. I said, what we would do is we'll send
our file digitally to the court. The police said, no, no, we can't do it. We'll have to send
you a
paper copy. The judge said, we need a paper copy too. The whole idea, just, no, but the
system
wasn't working as a system. And I'm afraid that's still the case. Every element of digital
technology
seems to take forever when it comes to the criminal justice system or the justice system
more generally.
And of course, I mentioned internet access or lack of it. And we need to expand all of
these
services. You know, I'm a very strong believer whether you like it or not in live streaming
of
all court cases. But for those there were clearly there were vulnerable victims or
or vulnerable victims or witnesses. I think unless you shine a light on what happens in
our courtrooms,
you don't know what's happening in our courtrooms. I think that would be the game-
changer
to my mind about, you know, when we talked about, when Tom talks about his
experience in the Post Office
scandal is one way of putting it, the hard words, harder words I would use,
in many of you, it was a television series that suddenly got the government to take this
seriously
because they saw a visual representation of what happens. Yet others have been writing
about it,
talking about it for months and years and years and years yet it didn't seem to have the
same
traction. I think that by shining a light, literally a visual light, on what happens in
courts is the answer. When I talked about, I wrote about it in the Times a few months
ago,
a lawyer contacted me and said, "Nazir, if I want to be an actor, I'd have gone to RADA."
And he totally misunderstood. It's not about him, it's about you, the citizen, the public
gallery,
which is where you're meant to go, you don't go. They're empty. You don't know what
happens in your
name and my personal view is that you should have the access to do so. Now, two
minutes, I will
finish in two minutes by giving you some of the answers. Expanding legal aid, pro bono
work needs
to be celebrated. I would say it should be mandated for legal firms. Some of them do it,
some of them pick and choose where they do it. Daugherty Street don't, they do the
good ones.
Most of them simply pick and choose the sexy stuff and the other stuff that needs to be
done.
Anti-discrimination programs, I've held so many judges to account. I've got judges
struck off
because of their abuse and their racism in a courtroom, but that's handful. There is
hardly any
accountability for judges and lawyers and those in law enforcement when it comes to
implicit and
cultural competency. The diverse representation is not there. I, 20 judges approached
me 5 years,
4 or 5 years ago. They can't speak. I had to speak on their behalf. They said that they're
being bullied within the judicial profession, that there's nobody speaking for them and
they,
and they, it's quite simply because the system itself isn't diverse enough. Simplified
legal
Processes, more alternative dispute resolution, more mobile courts, more legal clinics,
greater
usage of technology, more accessible facilities, more community education, more
school programs,
more multilingual resources, more interpreter services, greater support for NGOs,
please.
They are the backbone of our legal system, of our representation and our citizens'
experience,
more community legal clinics, more integration of services rather than working in silos,
better data collection so that you know where you know where you are and how bad
things are
and whether improvements are happening. I will assure you that there will be another
miscarriage of justice in 5 minutes time. There will be another tomorrow and there will
be another
day of tomorrow and maybe Sunday is a day off but no, Monday they'll be one. The point
is the
system is broken. The point is I have no confidence that the people that are meant to be
running it
are running it for your benefit, the citizen, and that's why we have to hold their, well, hold
their
feet to the fire. We've got to present them with the answers but also ensure that they
respond
to our questions and we've got to shine a light on what's going on and not allow the
terrible
scandals and the thousands and tens of thousands of people that are suffering day in,
day out because
of the misuse of our system. We need to ensure that they are listened to and the system
works
for all of us. Thank you.
Okay, thanks, Nazir. Can I now invite our panellists to come to the stage please and you
can take a seat
after telling us all about the things that we need to change in our justice system.
To stay up to date with everything Talk 200, be sure to follow and subscribe to the series
on the podcasting platform of your choice. Head to manchester.ac.uk/200 to find out
more about the
series and all the activity taking place across our bicentenary year. Use the hashtag
#uom200 to
engage with Talk 200 and our wider bicentenary celebrations on social media. Thank
you for joining
us for this episode of Talk 200, a University of Manchester series.
(upbeat music)