Lord Sadiq Khan was wrongly convicted of not paying car tax on a car he did not own
Magistrates are calling for reforms to be made to the Single Justice Procedure after Mayor of London Lord Sadiq Khan was wrongly convicted of not paying car tax. The DVLA wrongly prosecuted Lord Khan in the fast-track court process thanks to an unpaid bill on a 24-year-old Nissan Micra, for which he received a conviction and a court fine.
However, the case was reopened and overturned after being reported by the Press Association. As a result of their investigations, it was found that the mayor did not own the car, which had likely been wrongly registered in his name.
His case was dealt with in a private hearing by a single magistrate – a court system which has already been criticised for harsh convictions and injustices to pensioners and vulnerable people.
The Magistrates’ Association first called for reform of the Single Justice Procedure (SJP) in March 2024, saying its members at courts across England and Wales felt they were under-trained on their legal powers, felt rushed in to decisions, and were uncomfortable with the lack of transparency in the SJP system.
In the wake of the Lord Khan case, Catherine Feast, chief executive of the Magistrates’ Association, reiterated their call for government changes to the way the courts operate. Particularly, she said magistrates believe there should be a fundamental change to the SJP system so that prosecutors review a case once defendants have had the chance to enter a plea in writing, when the mitigating circumstances of an offence may have become clear.
Ms Feast said: “At a time of mounting court backlogs, the SJP means thousands of defendants don’t have to attend court for minor offences, resulting in more efficient use of court time, enabling the magistrates’ courts to devote more time to more serious offences, which ultimately means speedier justice for victims. We have long recognised it is not perfect and, in 2024, we called for reform of SJP after some of our members expressed concerns.”
Ms Feast said some improvements to the SJP system have been made since their criticism in 2024, adding: “More SJP data is now available, which supports better monitoring and transparency.”
She also hailed the role of journalists in bringing to light the internal workings of the SJP system, helping to “demystify the process, as well as highlighting examples where the process has not worked, and the harm that this can have on some of society’s most vulnerable people”.
She added: “We continue to push for further improvements and know there is additional work ongoing in relation to this. We are still clear that prosecutors must see all pleas and mitigations from defendants before cases are heard by the magistrate, and that improvements must be made for the vulnerable, including those with learning difficulties, communication challenges, or who may be less able to engage with the process.”
The Government announced last week that proposed reforms to the SJP would be announced “shortly”, but did not set a timetable for change. It conducted a consultation on reform between March and May last year, but has not brought forward plans for substantial changes in the following 16 months.
The SJP allows magistrates to sit in private to decide on low-level criminal cases, often taking decisions on their own and on hundreds of cases per sitting. It is estimated the system, which was invented in 2015 to cut costs, deals with about 800,000 criminal cases each year.
Lord Khan was prosecuted and convicted in late August by a magistrate sitting in Herefordshire, at a hearing conducted behind closed doors. Basic details of the conviction featured on a spreadsheet of about 20,000 cases also conducted that week.
The Press Association highlighted that the mayor had been wrongly convicted by making a disclosure request for the paperwork which had been considered by the magistrate.
Last week, a 58-year-old grandmother from Swindon, Wiltshire, was convicted after she forgot to insure her broken-down car while caring for her daughter, who has stage 4 cancer. A magistrate decided to convict the woman after seeing the letter of mitigation, and chose not to refer the case back to the DVLA to check it was still in the public interest to proceed.
In a second case, a 42-year-old woman from Cockermouth, Cumbria, was convicted in the SJP of not taxing a car after she had sold it. The case went ahead even though the woman spelled out in her letter that she believed she was a victim of fraud, when the buyer of the vehicle pretended to register it in his name and she began to receive penalty charge notices for the car.
In a third case, a 50-year-old man from Potters Bar, North London, told the magistrate he had missed letters from the DVLA about his car payments while he was in prison, and had not had the chance to settle the case outside of court before it reached a conviction.
Last week, a Ministry of Justice spokesperson said they were “reviewing what more can be done to support vulnerable defendants, and further detail on proposed reforms to the SJP will be set out shortly”.
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