Courts and Tribunals (Online Procedure) Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Beith and Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 10th June 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd]

I accept that, but I think it is part of the terminology used. That is why, in the intervention I made earlier, I said that it is important to appreciate the difference between a simplified procedure and the way the court works. Unfortunately, despite everything the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, did to try to simplify civil procedure, the White Book has grown from 2,000 to 3,000 pages.

We need to go back. It is an unfortunate tendency of lawyers to ossify everything. This is an attempt, using electronic means, to make access to justice easier and to simplify it, but we plainly need safeguards. I am sure the best safeguard of all is the concurrence of the Lord Chief Justice, which I am sure would solve most of these problems yet allow access to justice to use 21st-century methods to make it cheaper and—if I may, with some trepidation, say so in this House—to conduct litigation without the need to deploy expensive lawyers.

[Lord Beith]

My Lords, the weakness in this part of the Bill seems to be that there are no limitations on or barriers to the total extension of the online procedure to all civil, family and tribunal proceedings. Nobody is actually suggesting that, but the absence of any barriers means that we can stray into that territory before there has even been a serious debate about how we could use online procedures in some of these areas. It is fairly obvious for small money claims and promising in a number of other areas, but the Bill is so wide that its lack of any specified criteria or other limitations is worrying.

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[Lord Beith]

My Lords, the noble and learned Lord has reminded me that it is well known that the application system for the US ESTA visa waiver scheme has a number of such sites which exact charges, to which people are not liable because of the very modest charge on the official site itself. I will simply point out that HM Courts & Tribunals Service is already working on this sort of thing. There are 18 locations in which it is providing face-to-face digital support, or at least is said to be providing it. The Government have been working this up on the pilot schemes, so it seems to me another ideal opportunity, which the Minister should not neglect, to accept that the Government are actually on the right lines on this.

It would be rather more reassuring if the Bill contained some obligation to provide this kind of support. If it is not there, the Bill will be open to the charge from many people that it is creating a new system without ensuring that people can use it. The means are beginning to be developed by the Government, so I hope that they provide some statutory basis for them.

[Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd]

I make two brief observations. First, I support the introduction of the amendment by the noble Lord, Lord Marks, and emphasise that HMCTS provides a lot of advice on various areas and, because it is now jointly accountable to the Lord Chief Justice as well as to the Minister, its independence ought to be seen. Secondly, if Amendment 13 is adopted, I would hope that due regard is paid to the provisions of the Welsh Language Act; subsection (5) does not do so properly at present.