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A court official who says he was sacked for whistleblowing about a magistrate who was dialling in from his home Portugal is suing the Ministry of Justice for unfair dismissal.
Chris John said he was “shocked” to find magistrate Phil Taylor was working from his home near the Portuguese capital of Lisbon to decide on criminal cases at Reading Magistrates’ Court.
The court legal adviser raised concerns about the unusual work-from-home set-up, arguing Mr Taylor’s decisions that day on low-level crimes in the Single Justice Procedure (SJP), as well as thousands of other convictions and sentences he has overseen remotely, could be rendered unlawful and invalid.
Mr John took his complaints to Justice Secretary David Lammy and Courts Minister Sarah Sackman, while senior judges and officials investigated the matter and concluded that magistrates should not dial in to hearings from outside the UK.
However, Mr John said he faced resistance to the idea of a wider investigation into SJP practices, including using MS Teams links to administer justice and magistrates dialling in to court from unknown locations.
He says he was “bullied” and shunned at work after refusing to sit on SJP sessions that he believes are unlawful, and argues he was ultimately sacked in a campaign of “retaliation due to my whistleblowing”.
Chris John is suing the Ministry of Justice for unfair dismissal (PA)
Mr John told the Press Association he was allocated to work as a legal adviser to Mr Taylor in an online SJP session in July 2024, and the magistrate revealed he was dialling in from Portugal to decide on convictions and sentences for more than 100 defendants, in an arrangement he said had been going on “for years now”.
“I was seriously concerned that Mr Taylor must have undertaken thousands of SJP cases whilst being at home in Portugal, yet my employer took no action to either establish the number of cases undertaken or establish how Mr Taylor had ever been allowed to conduct hearings from Portugal”, he set out, in employment tribunal case.
“No action was taken my employer to correct the mistake made by inadvertently allowing Mr Taylor to sit remotely from abroad.”
Mr John says he “became increasingly concerned that my employer was ignoring the law”, and said he tried to blow the whistle on courts being issued with quotas for the number of SJP cases that had to be dealt with each day.
During the pandemic, the law was changed to allow SJP court session to take place on MS Teams and with the magistrate appearing remotely from home.
But those provisions were withdrawn in 2022, and Mr John argues that courts have continued the practice of remote hearings without having a proper legal basis, potentially rendering many thousands of convictions as invalid.
Mr John was moved to Guildford Magistrates’ Court in October 2024, and says a manager, Andrew Przedborski, was “content for me to be bullied” after they disagreed about the legal basis for remote SJP hearings.
He was suspended after an incident in July last year when he intervened in an altercation at court between two youths and police officers, and believes his ultimate dismissal was linked to his whistleblowing complaints.
Mr John took his complaints to Justice Secretary David Lammy and Courts Minister Sarah Sackman (PA)
In his complaint to the tribunal, Mr John says police officers were detaining a violent youth defendant, and he stepped in when he saw the boy’s friend going towards the officers.
“The youth made contact with my arm, kept moving forward and I pushed him away with my hand on the side of his neck and thumb under his chin to force him away from the police officers”, he said.
“I believe the youth struck me in the chest and I continued to try and get him to the end of the corridor.
“The youth was detained by an adult male who continued to hold onto the youth as he was still trying to get to the police officers on the floor.”
Mr John says he did not face a police investigation over his own actions, and received a letter of thanks from Surrey Police Chief Constable Tim De Meyer for stepping in to help the officers.
But he was suspended from his role as a legal adviser by the Ministry of Justice, and ultimately sacked on March 13 this year.
He says footage of the incident was unlawfully shared and then deleted by court staff, a matter which has been reported to the Information Commissioners Office.
The dismissal was confirmed at a disciplinary hearing that went ahead without him despite him requesting an adjournment because his mother had been diagnosed with cancer.
His local MP, Sir Jeremy Hunt, raised questions about the SJP system and work from home magistrates with Ms Sackman, who confirmed officials investigated a complaint about the magistrate sitting from Portugal.
She set out in response: “The Senior Presiding Judge’s advice to the judiciary is that magistrates and judges should not participate in court proceedings by live link outside the territory of the UK.
“This is because states might object that only its judges can make judicial decisions in their territory.
“Whilst permission might be sought from a foreign state, this would only be contemplated in the most pressing circumstances and the most serious cases, which would never arise in magistrates’ courts proceedings.”
The Ministry of Justice has previously confirmed that it does not retain records of where magistrates are located when they take part in SJP sessions remotely (PA)
A message was circulated to court officials to remind them that magistrates cannot sit from abroad.
But Ms Sackman also insisted: “I am told that there are no grounds to suggest that any case where this member of the judiciary conducted remote hearings from abroad was unlawful and would therefore need to be nullified.
“Court orders are binding unless and until they are overturned on appeal.”
The Ministry of Justice has previously confirmed that it does not retain records of where magistrates are located when they take part in SJP sessions remotely.
When contacted about the tribunal case, the department said it has no evidence of a widespread issue of magistrates appearing via livelink, and echoed the minister’s words that hearings should not be conducted while abroad but would nonetheless still be valid.
A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: “Magistrates carry out vital work serving the delivery of justice in England and Wales.
“There is clear guidance that they are expected to take part in court business only while in the UK.”
The SJP system has faced sustained criticism in the last few years about its secrecy, with magistrates deciding on cases in private with no public or media access.
The system, which deals with around 800,000 low-level criminal offences each year, has been dubbed “conveyor belt justice” by campaign group Transform Justice over concerns that magistrates are taking decisions on convictions and sentences quickly and without proper examination of evidence.
The MoJ conducted a consultation last spring on possible changes to the SJP system, including greater transparency, but no conclusions or recommendations have followed since it ended last May.
The first hearing of Mr John’s tribunal case is due to take place on Thursday.