THE fight to save Bolton Magistrates Court from closure has been raised in the house of Lords.

The Government denied there was a court closure programme as peers from all parties protested about the closure of magistrates courts in many areas of England and Wales.

The protests were led by solicitor and broadcaster Lord Phillips of Sudbury (Lib Dem), who said courts were closing at the rate of five per cent a year. There were now 435 magistrates' courts in England and Wales.

Lord Phillips, opening the debate, referred to plans to close the magistrates' court in Bolton, with its 267,000 population, as well as the court in neighbouring Salford, with a population of 225,000.

He added: "Local papers, understandably, won't send reporters out of their areas to centralised courts. And the effect is a major loss of local case reporting."

Local newspaper reporting, he argued, acted as a "real constraint on misbehaviour" as well as serving the cause of public education. Lord Phillips blamed the closures on cash cuts by central government.

The Lord Chancellor's junior minister, Baroness Scotland of Asthal, insisted, in her reply to a short debate in the Lords: "This is not a court closure programme, but where two courthouses are close together and the work can be accommodated in one of the courthouses, it makes good sense to have only one court house.''

Lady Scotland stressed that closures were a matter for the local magistrates' court committee. The Lord Chancellor became involved only if the paying authority, the local council, objected to closure.

Bolton Council is opposing the closure plan and has appointed a professor to study the impact any closure would have on local justice.

As reported in the BEN, the Greater Manchester Magistrates Courts Committee (GMMCC) wants to close Bolton Magistrates Court claiming they are too expensive to modernise.