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Mr. Streeter: I apologise to the hon. Gentleman for mentioning in response to his intervention that the £250,000, to which he is referring again, was for the rule committee. That sum is in fact for the Civil Justice Council.
Mr. Anderson: I noticed the inadvertent mistake, but thought it prudent not to intervene at that point.
There are no costings in the Woolf report. All of us recognise that, come what may, no crock of gold will appear after the election. This important reform will have to take its place alongside all other pressures. Although it will involve short-term expenditure, it is clear that, in the medium and longer term, there should be substantial savings to the public purse.
I could detain the House on a number of points of detail, such as consumer representation, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Brent, South referred; the difficulties that might arise in the fast-track procedure; the
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The debate is important; its subject is likely to affect very many of our citizens. It is sad that there are not many more Members present, which is perhaps a reflection of the fact that it has become more and more difficult for lawyers to find their way, or to want to find their way, into the House. When I first entered the House, rather too long ago, very many heavy civil practitioners would have spoken in such a debate.
Sir Ivan Lawrence (Burton):
It is difficult to find in the House any members of the Bar who have any practice at all, such are the pressures of modern legislation.
I hope that I can take it from what the hon. Member for Swansea, East (Mr. Anderson) said that we should not expect an ambush in the Lobby. Oh dear, I notice that the ogre at the feast, the right hon. Member for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar), is walking into the Chamber, assessing the possibilities of an ambush. I can inform him that many of my hon. Friends are even now populating the Tea Room and various other Rooms, and are ready to run back into the Chamber to vote.
I commend the hon. Member for Swansea, East for not indulging in the windbaggery in which his hon. Friend the hon. Member for Brent, South (Mr. Boateng) indulged. We are getting used to being told that the Labour party will make things clear, but it never does. Labour Members huff and puff like the hon. Member for Brent, South, who raised his voice in anger at the court fees provisions, which are, of course, not directly relevant to the Bill. When he was asked the simple question, "Will Labour pay the money?" we did not get the answer.
I should like Labour's Chief Whip, the right hon. Member for Garscadden, to know just what a valiant effort his hon. Friend made to protect the Labour party's integrity--notwithstanding a tartan tax, a council tax, a young children's tax and a windfall tax, all of which could pay the £50 million for the court fees--because otherwise the right hon. Member for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown) would have had his guts for garters, as of course would the Opposition Chief Whip. I am afraid we must sidestep such issues in order to take this important piece of legislation seriously.
I congratulate my right hon. and noble Friend the Lord Chancellor and my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary on realising that, in this modern world of extensive rights and the extending perception and demanding of rights, we simply must have a civil justice
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What makes an elderly system expensive and prohibitive is its complexities and old-fashioned practices and attitudes. Once the problem was identified, it was obvious that Lord Woolf had the precise capabilities for sorting it out. The Woolf report has achieved just that, with the help of most able assessors.
Everyone concerned with the exercise, from my right hon. and noble Friend the Lord Chancellor and Lord Woolf downwards, must be congratulated on not only making comprehensive recommendations but getting them so nearly right that there is hardly any legitimate complaint from any direction. I hope that that is not because the area from which complaints and criticism is most likely to come is not convinced that the Woolf proposals will ever, effectively, see the light of day. That is a possible but--I hope--unlikely explanation for the silence of the genuine non-windbagging critics.
This Bill, as a first step, starts the process of improving access to justice according to Woolf. We have the amalgamation of court procedures and how to access them in one book. We have extended case management, which includes identifying and better defining the issues earlier; identifying the right court earlier; penalising time wasting; easing some of the unsatisfactory rules of evidence; and encouraging alternative methods of resolving disputes, so that litigation may become the last resort and not the first. All that is to be implemented by the end of 1998.
The Bill got off to a good start in the other place. It was improved there, especially by the inclusion of the Civil Justice Council, which the Lord Chancellor accepted. The Bill answers the headlines such as the one that appeared in The Independent on 4 December 1996:
The Bill and the Woolf proposals are not the end of the matter, as is obvious from our debate. For the proposals to work, judges, counsel and solicitors will have to be trained and retrained at some cost. Judges will have to make more time to read cases, which happens in the criminal courts--where I work occasionally--only with much difficulty.
One of the main avenues of justice is legal aid. Unless we improve the legal aid rules and make it more widely and more fairly available, the system will not much improve, however impressive Lord Woolf's contribution to improving access to justice. Improvements in the system and in legal aid are the twin pillars of improved access to justice. However, those and other effects of Woolf will almost certainly mean more money, and no one and no party is keen on that. That fact may prevent us from getting too euphoric about Woolf, and therefore about the Bill.
For example, information technology always sounds as if it will reduce costs, but I am not sure it always does. I worked on a fraud trial with the help of computers and it was great fun, but I am sure that old-style booklets with coloured pie charts would have been cheaper, better and probably quicker.
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One element that shines out from Lord Woolf's report, and its implementation in the Bill, is the degree of consultation and co-operation that has been not only permitted but encouraged between the many interested parties, including the Bar, solicitors, the Bench, consumers, operators, the Government and civil servants--the list at the back of Lord Woolf's report is endless.
A lengthy consultation does not, of course, always mean a good outcome, but absence of consultation usually leads to a bad outcome. The speed with which we introduce some criminal legislation sometimes leads to unnecessary aggravation and doubtful results, as the Government are currently experiencing with the Police Bill and the Crime (Sentences) Bill. I am sure that the two main problem areas in those Bills could have been solved with more consultation and agreement among all concerned before they were launched. The present example of consultation and co-operation in civil legislation may in time spread to criminal legislation.
When the Home Affairs Select Committee considered the subject of legal aid--principally criminal legal aid--two or three years ago, we were struck by the comparative lack of co-operation between the Law Society and the Bar Council. One of our recommendations was that they should get their acts together. No such criticism is possible of the Bill, and I hope that co-operation and the opportunity for reflection will be the norm in the future.
Mr. Alex Carlile (Montgomery):
This is an important Bill that should, and is likely to, change the operation of civil litigation for the better. I am sure that all hon. Members have experience of constituents who have relatively small claims and who are afraid of going to law. They expect their Member of Parliament to wave a magic wand that would avoid the need to go to law. Often, we cannot do so. We have to tell them that their only recourse is to go to court and the best we can do is to recommend a competent solicitor. There are one or two such in the House today and I can see at least two on the Conservative Benches.
We steer our constituents in the right direction, but often they do not go to the solicitor because they remain afraid of litigation. They have two main fears. The first is the formality that they believe they will face in the courts because the rules were designed by lawyers for lawyers, not for the public. The second is, of course, the cost of going to court. Barristers, such as myself, who have conducted civil litigation find no pleasure in telling clients who are brought to see us that the cost of litigation for a relatively small claim simply is not worth the candle. We have to tell them that any claim for a few thousand pounds is not worth pursuing because of the risk that they might have to pay costs. That is not acceptable. If somebody has a claim for £3,000, £4,000 or £5,000, surely the civil
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Small claims have become a very risky business. We must also bear in mind the fact that legal aid is not limitless, and nobody can pretend that it is. It could be better targeted in some areas and there is always room for improvement in a complex system. Reforming the civil procedure rules could help us to target legal aid on those cases where legal aid is really needed.
I applaud the efforts of Lord Woolf. He has already rightly been described as a remarkable judge. He is clear-thinking and he has produced excellent reports. He has also been flexible--he has listened to the representations made to him and made many changes to his preliminary ideas. He has responded to the concerns of consumer groups, of the profession and, of course, of the Government. I believe that he has produced a blueprint for a civilised civil justice system, which was certainly improved in the other place. I join the hon. Member for Swansea, East (Mr. Anderson) in commending the other place for introducing the Civil Justice Council, and the Government for accepting that important amendment.
When Lord Woolf was kind enough to ask for my views on certain aspects of his proposals. I suggested that he was slightly too tentative on the wise use of legal aid, and that the small claims procedure could be used for a more extensive range of cases. My experience as a constituency Member of Parliament of the small claims procedure is that, on the whole, district judges run it well.
The new breed of district judge, like the new breed of circuit judge sitting in the county court, is fully capable of sensitive judicial case management. As long as constituents present their cases in a measured, balanced and rational way and write down the basis of their claim, they tend to come back satisfied with the way in which the district judge has tried the case, sometimes even when they have lost or failed to recover the full amount of their claim.
I do not accept for one moment that there are special complexities in personal injuries actions. I have conducted many such actions over the years, for both plaintiffs and defendants, for trade unions on legal aid and for private clients who simply come through the doors via solicitors, and it has long been my view that the small claims procedure and the limit for those claims could be extended and that district judges could easily save the legal aid fund a great deal of wasted money by dealing with claims of a higher value. If that were done, legal aid could be much more specifically targeted where it is deserved.
I do not believe that plaintiffs making relatively small personal injuries claims would be substantially disadvantaged if they had the assistance of a better-trained court staff and the judicial case management that a district judge--usually a solicitor with long experience of preparing cases--is able to offer.
I applaud the introduction of an extended provision for pre-action discovery, which will be extremely useful, especially in cases of alleged breach of contract or in the
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There is no doubt whatever that there is much dissatisfaction among staff in county court offices throughout the country. They work extremely hard, often under great pressure, and try to manage offices and courts, often without replacements for those who leave. If the Woolf reforms are to work, whichever Government implements them will have to ensure that staffing levels are brought to a proper establishment.
We must remember that, under the Woolf system, court staff will have to give an awful lot more advice to people handling their own actions, who will perhaps have been given guidance, but not detailed legal advice, by consumer advice centres--citizens advice bureaux and the like. There must be enough staff to deal courteously and quickly with members of the public, and to do that successfully the staff will have to be trained.
At the moment, it is extremely rare--it sometimes happens in country towns--for the court staff to be willing to take the time to advise in person a litigant making a small claim to put into that claim phrases such as "breach of contract", "interest", "damages", "pain, suffering and loss of amenity" and all the other phrases that trip off lawyers' tongues with such ease. Court staff will have to be properly trained to give such basic advice without compromising the essential impartiality of a court officer.
It is extremely important, as we go down this exciting road in developing the civil courts, that we should not close county courts, so that the system becomes more user-friendly but the user cannot get to the system because it is too remote. In mid-Wales, where I live and have practised for many years, and which I will represent until the general election, and in north Wales and all rural areas, the provision of reasonably accessible county courts is important; it is worth paying for, because it gives the fundamental access to justice that people require.
In early discussions of the Woolf proposals, there was a fear that there would be far fewer centres dealing with civil proceedings. That proved to be unfounded, after Lord Woolf listened carefully to representations. I hope that the Minister will express a commitment to retaining as many county courts as possible, so that people living in the remoter areas of England and Wales will be able to have access to those courts and to use their facilities.
I deplore the level of the fees increases, which will make some litigation extremely difficult to afford. The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, North (Ms Walley) was absolutely right to raise the matter earlier. I also deplore the way in which her question was responded to by the hon. Member for Brent, South (Mr. Boateng).
"Foxing Woolf . . . Efforts to put radical civil justice reforms into practice are being hampered by a lack of co-ordination".
Such criticism has no foundation now that the changes in the other place have been accepted.
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