Judge blasts lack of legal representation at committal for breaches of injunction

A judge has jailed a woman for breaking an injunction by begging, but strongly criticised her lack of legal representation at the hearing as "wholly unsatisfactory".

The case arose between Festival Housing, a social landlord, and Marie Baker, who lives in Worcestershire. 

District Judge Mackenzie, sitting at Worcester County Court in February, said he had considered not allowing the case to proceed because of Ms Baker’s inability to find representation.

He said in Festival Housing Ltd v Baker [2017] EW Misc 4 (CC) (the judgment published on Bailii on 19 April) that Ms Baker was alleged to have twice breached an injunction prohibiting her from begging in Worcester, and in particular from two named elderly people.

The judge said: “I am disturbed and concerned that Ms Baker attends before me today without the assistance of any public funding or a solicitor. 

“I am particularly concerned about that because on any view, Ms Baker is a fragile individual; has difficulty reading and writing; difficulty in understanding, though I have no evidence or indication to indicate to me that she lacks capacity to deal with matters. She is, however, a fragile and vulnerable individual and that makes it all the more regrettable that she has not got legal assistance.”

He had come very close to concluding that Ms Baker’s human rights were irrevocably impinged, so that a fair trial could not take place without her having legal advice, but decided “she can have a fair hearing, and that every opportunity has been afforded to her to prepare a case with assistance from a solicitor, but through no fault of her own, she has not been able to secure that”.

The judge said he was conscious that in earlier proceedings, particularly those before His Honour Judge Plunkett in September last year, when a Committal Order was made for, effectively, three months, that Ms Baker did not have access to a solicitor at that stage.

He noted how from the point at which the present run of breaches had came before him (December 2016) efforts had been made to try and secure a solicitor for the defendant but all those efforts had failed.

At one stage a solicitor in Redditch had been found who seemed prepared to take Mr Baker on, but was unclear about his ability to get legal aid.

District Judge Mackenzie said: "Three of four years ago, the President of the Family Division made it clear that legal aid in these sort of cases, though it is for a civil contempt, is criminal legal aid. That has caused some difficulty, because of the way legal aid works with solicitors getting fragmented franchises for dealing with specific types of work.

"This court has experienced, on more than one occasion, great difficulties in getting a solicitor who is prepared to deal with criminal legal aid for a committal in breach of Housing Act injunctions. It has proved somewhat difficult."

The judge added: "It proved an impossible position for Judge Plunkett last September and it has proved impossible now to secure a solicitor for Ms Baker, despite efforts taken by the claimant and by the court and Ms Baker’s own efforts. It is wholly unsatisfactory that the system conspires against a vulnerable individual like this, so that she cannot get the legal aid and solicitor assistance that she really needs."

District Judge Mackenzie said the two breaches of the injunction “if not trivial, are at a very low end of the scale and something which the court would be very loathed to send Ms Baker to prison for, if anything else could possibly work, but this court cannot simply give repeat injunctions and allow people to go continuing begging, continuing to persist in a nuisance to the population, without some real teeth being given to the injunction.   

“I am afraid whilst I am very reluctant to send Ms Baker to prison for a lengthy period of time, I have got to mark the blatant repeat breaches of this injunction with something meaningful.” 

Ms Baker was sentenced to 26 weeks in jail, reduced by two weeks already served on remand.

The court heard that Ms Baker was excluded from an area of Malvern and that Fortis Housing, part of Festival, would seek to prevent her from returning to its accommodation, “given the difficulties that have been experienced previously in this case”.

Mark Smulian