£896 a night judges lodgings

Lodgings for High Court judges are costing taxpayer's an astonishing £896-a-night but an unpublished government study has concluded that the exclusive properties provide "fair value for money".

Lord Chancellor Derry Irvine has failed to publish the study which examined the cost of the 32 properties used by High Court judges while they are hearing cases on the district court circuits.

But investigations by a Labour backbencher have revealed that the properties, complete with butler-service, tennis courts and snooker rooms, cost an unprecedented £5.6million to maintain last year even though every judge's room stood empty for more than 40 weeks.

Lord Irvine has continued to keep his study into the issue secret, but for the first time it has been discovered that his department came to the conclusion that the lodgings "continue to provide the best balance between meeting the needs of the judges on the one hand and obtaining fair value for money on the other".

The revelation has amazed former criminal barrister Paul Stinchcombe, now Labour MP for Wellingborough, who has vowed to call a debate in Parliament about the issue in the New Year.

He told the Evening Standard: "I am not surprised there is a legacy of lavishness, but the Lord Chancellor undertook this review looking to make savings and he has had to have details dragged out of him.

"There are many unanswered questions, but the basic information is that last year it cost £5.6 million to put up 80 judges in property worth over £10 million with two dozen butlers, three snooker rooms and a tennis court.

"Every night's accommodation cost over £800, four times as much as it would to stay in a fourstar hotel. The judges have the best claret and port, a policeman on the door and the Lord Chancellor's Department seems to give answers deliberately designed to obfuscate."

Many details requested by Mr Stinchcombe have been "published" by being placed in the House of Commons library rather than made freely available for public scrutiny.

The review, which took more than two years, was given to Lord Irvine in November last year, but has never been published. Last year, a spokesman for Lord Irvine said he "recognises the cost of judges' lodgings to the taxpayer and is determined to maximise the value for money that they provide".

But having considered issues such as "appropriate standards of security, privacy and comfort", it has now emerged that the review ruled out using leading hotels and recommended no change.

In a wide- ranging review of the criminal courts published in October, Lord Justice Auld concluded that judges' lodgings should be sold where they did not provide value for money and maintained where they did.

Now Lord Irvine has given a vague indication to MPs that he is ready for the matter of judges' lodgings to be "taken forward in the context of the relevant recommendations of Lord Justice Auld's report".

Mr Stinchcombe was critical of his failure to set out publicly exactly what that means and said he would now call on the Lord Chancellor to publish the secret review and set out precisely how he intends to proceed and whether the worst value properties will be sold.

The homes that are worth £10m