A court official who claims he was unfairly dismissed after raising concerns about a magistrate working from his home in Portugal is suing the Ministry of Justice. Chris John, a former legal adviser at Reading Magistrates’ Court, alleges he was sacked in retaliation for whistleblowing.
Mr John said he was “shocked” to discover that magistrate Phil Taylor was dialling into court from his home near Lisbon to decide on criminal cases. He argued that Mr Taylor’s decisions on low-level crimes under the Single Justice Procedure (SJP) could be unlawful and invalid. Mr John raised his concerns with Justice Secretary David Lammy and Courts Minister Sarah Sackman, leading to an investigation that concluded magistrates should not dial in from outside the UK.
However, Mr John claims he faced resistance to a wider probe into SJP practices, including the use of Microsoft Teams for hearings and magistrates joining from unknown locations. He says he was “bullied” and shunned at work after refusing to participate in SJP sessions he believed were unlawful, and was ultimately dismissed in a campaign of retaliation.
Mr John told the Press Association that in July 2024, he was assigned as legal adviser to Mr Taylor in an online SJP session, where the magistrate revealed he had been working from Portugal “for years now”. Mr John said his employer took no action to establish how many cases Mr Taylor had handled from abroad or how this arrangement was allowed.
During the pandemic, the law was changed to permit remote SJP hearings via Teams, but those provisions were withdrawn in 2022. Mr John argues that courts have continued the practice without proper legal basis, potentially invalidating thousands of convictions. He also claims he was moved to Guildford Magistrates’ Court in October 2024, where a manager was “content for me to be bullied” after they disagreed on the legality of remote hearings.
Mr John was suspended after an incident in July 2024 when he intervened in an altercation between police and two youths at court. He says he pushed a youth away to protect officers, and received a letter of thanks from Surrey Police’s chief constable. However, he was dismissed on March 13, 2025, after a disciplinary hearing that went ahead without him, despite his request for an adjournment due to his mother’s cancer diagnosis. His local MP, Sir Jeremy Hunt, has raised questions about the SJP system.
