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Government proposals to allow television broadcasting from Crown Courts in England and Wales is a key step in supporting transparency in the justice system, according to top barristers.

Under the new legislation, sentencing remarks of High Court and Senior Circuit judges would be available for the public to watch online for the first time, a move welcomed by the likes of Adrian Waterman QC at Matrix Chambers. "I think justice is open and if it's open it ought to be seen," he said. "Transparency, save in very rare circumstances, must be a good thing."

Speaking to Law.com's U.K. arm Legal Week, Waterman acknowledged there are some risks but believes that the transparency principle outweighs them: "For example, sentencing remarks are often quite long, and having them filmed might increase the temptation to introduce soundbites in the news," he said. "But that's not qualitatively different to what happens now. Judges always take great care in delivering sentencing remarks."

"For my part, I'd like to see trials generally televised, not just the sentencing remarks."

25 Bedford Row's Henry Dickson said that he largely sees the positives in the idea, as open justice is the "whole mechanism by which courts are meant to function, but the reality is that they don't". He added that the proposed scheme "pretty much avoids all the cons there could be".

"The cons of filmed trials can be seen in the U.S., when lawyers become celebrities. It's the idea that everyone involved in the case may be discouraged to give suitable accounts, and the same goes for jurors and any fear they may have of public perception. Being on show is entirely unhelpful.

"By limiting [it] to sentencing remarks only, the pressure is only on a judge whose remarks are recorded verbatim anyway."

"The scheme that they're proposing pretty much avoids all the cons there could be."

Dickson added: "It's right that we are cautious about any significant changes to the trial process, but this could have been done earlier".

Some hope that the move will also lead to better public awareness of the issues of underfunding within the criminal justice system.

But there is still resistance to the idea of trials being televised.  Waterman said "the direction of travel" is that all parts of a trial will be televised, not just the sentencing remarks. "There will be mixed feelings as that's a more radical change. People may fear that it would change the character of the trial process and make it more of an entertainment."

Dickson added that while it is possible, televising all cases will prove difficult practically. "The cost of televising cases compared to how much of the public will watch the cases is perhaps the downside of making the investment to televise all of them.

"I don't think this will become the standard in every criminal case".

Implications for corporate crime

Michael Potts, senior partner at Byrne and Partners, does not anticipate this triggering a change in the corporate crime arena. "If it were to be broadened and come into corporate crime cases, then that allows greater scrutiny of the process and might call into question the public's point of view whether they regard those sentences as robust enough in context of wrongdoing," he says.

Potts added that an area of interest for cameras in corporate crime proceedings would be that of deferred prosecution agreements, where the court orders a fine.

He describes cameras in courts as "slightly concerning" because "you don't want it to become a show". He does note however that it is "more real on camera than just on print".