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Ms Joan Walley (Stoke-on-Trent, North) rose--
Mr. Boateng: The Minister has had his turn. I give way to my hon. Friend
Ms Walley: Does my hon. Friend agree that it is not simply that people have to pay £10 to attempt to get justice through a county court, but that they may have to apply five or six times at £10 each time? That is what concerns people who are being denied justice. The Minister laughed when my hon. Friend referred to that.
Mr. Boateng: My hon. Friend is right. That is why not only the Law Society, the Bar Council and the Advice Services Alliance, but the National Association of Citizens' Advice Bureaux and the National Consumer Council are speaking with one voice against the Government's proposals.
Mr. Streeter: I have a simple question for the hon. Gentleman. To reverse the court fee increases would cost
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taxpayers £50 million. In the unlikely event of a Labour Government, would they reverse those increases at a cost of £50 million? If he is not saying that, his criticisms lack credibility. This is where realpolitik comes into play.
Mr. Boateng: The Minister knows that the Opposition have been absolutely clear. We have prayed against the increases in court fees and we and others have called for a cost-benefit analysis of the increases, because we are not satisfied that the increases are in the best interests of the court service and of our citizens. There is no question of maybe--I will make the position clear: we have no intention of reversing the increases, because that would pile injury on injury. Having expended the money to bring about the change, required court staff to make adjustments and budgeted for the process, there is no point in causing even greater loss to the Treasury.
Opposition Members are concerned that in future no court fees increases should be imposed which cannot be justified by a cost-benefit analysis. We say that the current increases are not based on a cost-benefit analysis, but are the result of Conservative Members' dogmatic and doctrinaire approach to the law and to justice, because they regard the court service and justice as a business. Opposition Members do not regard them as a business, but as a public service. That is the difference between Conservative and Opposition Members.
Mr. Alex Carlile:
Is the answer to the very good question of the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, North (Ms Walley) that a Labour Government would be opposed to increases in court fees but would not do anything about them once they had been imposed? That seems to be what the hon. Member for Brent, South (Mr. Boateng) is saying. The House, the profession and the clients are entitled to an answer, yes or no, from the Labour party.
Mr. Carlile:
If the hon. Gentleman will restrain himself for one moment and listen, I think that he will agree that the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, North is entitled to a yes or no answer from her Front-Bench spokesman to a very important question.
Mr. Boateng:
The hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Carlile), of whom I am very fond, and who speaks for the Liberal party, really must drag himself above the level of "Focus", his local free handout.
Mr. Carlile:
Yes or no? I want an answer to the question.
Mr. Boateng:
No, we know that every remark uttered by the hon. and learned Gentleman, who is a party spokesman, has a party political purpose--of course it does.
Mr. Boateng:
The hon. Gentleman should not pretend for one moment that his concern in asking that question is anything other than pressing his own party advantage.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Janet Fookes):
Order. I remind the hon. and learned Member for
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Mr. Boateng:
The answer--which I give without any provocation or prompting--is that we do not intend to reverse the increases, even though we are opposed to them. We do not believe in the philosophy that underpins them, and we do not intend to carry on with that philosophy. However, the increases have been made and the budget has been set; it would therefore be quite irresponsible to reverse them, and we do not intend to do so.
We do intend, however--this is another difference between Conservative and Opposition Members on this issue, as on so many others--to ensure that we do not introduce proposals, whether for increases in court fees or for any other proposed reform, that have not been properly costed and subjected to a cost-benefit analysis.
Mr. Streeter:
We have done that.
Mr. Boateng:
If the Minister has done that, why has he failed, time after time, to tell us how much the Bill will cost, or how much it will cost to implement the Woolf proposals? We have given him that opportunity before, and I will give him the opportunity now. I will happily sit down and allow the Minister to tell us how much the Bill will cost.
Mr. Streeter:
The hon. Gentleman will realise that the main cost features of the Bill are for training and the implementation of the appropriate computer systems. Next year's training budget is about £3 million, and the budget for computer technology for the county courts alone is £5.5 million. All that training and technology will be geared to making a success of the Woolf reforms.
Mr. Boateng:
The Minister has not told us where the money will come from.
Mr. Streeter:
It is in the budget.
Mr. Boateng:
If it is in the budget, what will be cut to pay for it? When the Lord Chancellor was asked that question, the Government displayed a remarkable reticence about where the money would be found. The Minister's own strategy document tells us that there will be transitional costs in implementing the reforms. Is he saying that the only transitional costs will be those that he has identified today? Is that what he is saying? There is suddenly an unexplained reticence on that point.
Mr. Streeter:
I shall be replying to the debate, and I shall of course deal with the issue of resourcing.
Mr. Boateng:
We may take it, therefore, that inquiries will by then have been made and that an answer will be given. Or perhaps there will be no answer: if there were an answer, we would have heard it.
Mr. Boateng:
We have no intention of getting on with it.
Mr. Streeter:
That is obvious.
Mr. Boateng:
I make it clear that we have no intention of getting on with the Bill or with the proposals without
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Sir Ivan Lawrence (Burton):
Reducing tax allowances.
Mr. Boateng:
The hon. and learned Member for Burton (Sir I. Lawrence) mutters from a sedentary position about reducing tax allowances, so there it is: there have been 22 tax increases since the most recent general election, and the increase in court fees is just another tax. The next time my right hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor produces a briefing on Tory tax rises, we shall have to include increased court fees as a tax rise, because that is precisely what they are--a tax on the poor and the under-privileged when they seek justice.
We have come to expect Conservative Members to impose taxes on people who go on holiday and those who want to do business. Now there is a tax on people who go to court to seek justice. The Government should be ashamed of themselves for introducing a Bill in that context.
How do the Government propose that the Bill should be implemented, and what training and information technology will be provided to ensure that it is successful? The Government have signally failed to realise the likely fundamental impact of these radical--a word that the Minister used, albeit in a rather tentative manner--proposals? He described them as radical, and they will indeed make a real difference to the way in which the civil justice system operates.
Have the Government considered establishing pilot projects to test implementation of the Bill's provisions? We welcome the fact that in another place the Bill was improved in one important respect, with the inclusion of what is now clause 6, which establishes the Civil Justice Council. That proposal was one of many which emanated from Lord Irvine of Lairg, the shadow Lord Chancellor.
The advantage of the Civil Justice Council is that, as an advisory body with functions related to promoting the aims of the civil justice system, it will be in a unique position to comment on any pilot schemes established to ensure that the Bill is effected in such a way as to achieve the objectives hoped for it. The need for such pilot projects is vividly illustrated by the impact that the Bill will have on fast-track procedures in relation to personal injuries. At this point, it would be right for us to outline some of our concerns about at least one of the recommendations made by Lord Woolf in his important, landmark report.
When it comes to personal injuries and claims designed to achieve a remedy for those who have suffered such injuries, Lord Woolf's report is perhaps lacking in the sense that he was precluded from addressing substantive issues of law reform. To that extent, therefore, an important opportunity for radical and positive reforms to personal injury law--linking the reform of the substantive law to reform of procedure--has been lost.
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There is a real danger that the recommendation on the introduction of fast-track litigation in cases worth less than £10,000 will in fact lead to injustice for victims of personal injuries. There is a danger that there will be a shift of the cost burden away from those most able to bear it--those backed, very often, by the considerable resources of an insurance company--on to those least able to bear it, such as the worker injured in the course of his employment or the person who sustains an injury on the sidewalk as a result of local authority negligence; we all see such cases at our constituency surgeries. In other words, the cost burden could be shifted on to the small person who comes to court with a relatively modest injury in terms of the quantum of damages to be awarded, but who finds himself at a disadvantage as a result of being placed on the fast track, with all its limitations. We seek some assurances from the Government in that regard.
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