Civil Proceedings, First-tier Tribunal, Upper Tribunal and Employment Tribunals Fees (Amendment) Order 2016

Debate between Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood and Lord Beecham

Wednesday 20th July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Beecham (Lab)]

My Lords, I intended to begin this speech by welcoming the multitasking noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, to his first debate as a Justice Minister. It appears, however, from the published list of departmental Ministers that he is not in fact a Justice Minister but is, in effect, assisting the department. He deserves ministerial ranking within the Ministry of Justice and the House deserves that the spokesman for such a department should be accorded that status. The noble and learned Lord follows in the train of many distinguished Scottish Peers such as the noble and learned Lords, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, Lord Irvine of Lairg, Lord Falconer and Lord Wallace of Tankerness, to name but a few of those who are still with us. I am confident that the noble and learned Lord will not emulate the notorious 18th-century Scottish judge Lord Braxfield. He replied to counsel defending a man charged with sedition who observed that Jesus Christ was, like his client, a reformer:

“Muckle He made o’that—He was hangit”.

There is a biblical injunction which proclaims:

“Justice, Justice shalt thou pursue”.

To this the Government add an addendum: providing that thou canst pay in advance a fee equal to or greater than what would be required to ensure that the full cost or more of court and tribunal proceedings can be recovered for the benefit of the taxpayer. Access to justice, a principle which the Government purport to embrace, is however increasingly treated differently from access to other areas of public provision such as health or education, at least for the time being. Yet access to justice is crucial to the rule of law on which this country properly prides itself. Already eroded by savage cuts in legal aid and advice under the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act, it is now being eroded by a further round of significant increases in fees.

What makes matters worse is the way in which the Ministry of Justice has handled the issue. The latest round of increases was announced more than a year ago, subject to consultation. One of the most controversial areas has been that of employment tribunal fees, in relation to which the Government had last year commissioned a review, including a report on the impact of their earlier imposition of substantial charges, which they said would be completed by the end of 2015.

As paragraph 56 of the Justice Select Committee report pointed out, the review’s report was stated on 7 October by an official of the department to be in the hands of the Minister and that,

“it was hoped that the Minister’s position would be known by the end of the year”.

It was not. An FOI request for a copy of the report was declined on 29 December, with the comment:

“The review is currently underway and will report in due course”.

Successive requests were made to the then Minister, Mr Vara, on 9 February and 31 March, the latter seeking publication or at least the supply of a copy in confidence to the committee, without success. Nothing transpired and now Mr Vara has expired, politically speaking. Perhaps the Minister could tell us if and when the report will be published, for this is a sensitive and highly contentious area.

There has been, in the committee’s words, a “startling drop” in the number of applications as a result of the imposition of fees of the order of 70%. The committee was disinclined to accept as an explanation for this fall a greater reliance on conciliation, as to which the Senior President of Tribunals said that there was “clear behavioural material” indicating that employers were,

“avoiding engagement with conciliation processes”.

The committee concluded that the existing fee system,

“has had a significant adverse impact on access to justice for meritorious claims”,

not least in relation to claims by pregnant women for detriment or dismissal. What confidence, then, could one have in the range of new and increased fees imposed in this and other areas? There is to be an increase from £410 to £550 for divorce proceedings. Given that there is now no legal aid, this flat-rate charge will impact relatively more harshly on less well-off petitioners, at a time, of course, of acute emotional stress. The President of the Family Division, Sir James Munby, accused the Government of,

“battening on to the fact that there is a captive market”,

and,

“putting up the fees until it becomes another poll tax on wheels”.

Even more objectionable is the astonishing increase of 600% in fees to the Immigration and Asylum Tribunal—the original proposal was 100%, which is steep enough for some of the most vulnerable people here—which is likely, as the Law Society points out, to lead to more people overstaying illegally and risking criminal prosecution. Even under the present system, fees were remitted in only 5,600 cases, out of 41,000 applications. Then we have a 10% increase in the fees for civil claims, increases in fees levied in tribunals such as the general regulatory chamber, the property chamber and the tax chamber, and the particularly invidious increase in the fees for judicial review proceedings, where, after all, the Government themselves might well be the defendant. At the other end of the spectrum, the Justice Committee warned that increases in fees for money claims might well damage this country’s interests as a leading provider of legal and judicial services to foreign litigants, and thereby be self-defeating.

It was interesting to read the speeches of two Conservative MPs when this order was debated in the Commons. In addition to the forensic exposition of the chair of the committee, Bob Neill, John Howell criticised the Government’s failures to discuss changes with the judiciary and to adduce evidence for their proposals. Victoria Prentis endorsed the Justice Committee’s critique and referred to the 31-page guidance booklet provided to claimants seeking fees remission as exemplifying the problem. Research by Citizens Advice has demonstrated that only 29% of employment tribunal applicants were even aware that there was a remission scheme.

This is not the only area of the Ministry of Justice’s responsibilities in which such changes and increases in fees are being made. The Government are proposing substantial increases in probate fees for estates over £50,000, which will increase from a flat rate of £215 on estates over £5,000, to £20,000 on estates of £2 million or more, an increase of 9,200%. Currently the cost of running the Probate Registry is £42.5 million, and the fees produce £41.5 million. Therefore, it virtually pays for itself, and it is disingenuous to suggest that the increase in probate fees is in any way related to full cost recovery. If the Government wish to raise the £250 million they plan to receive from this fee increase, they should do so by adjusting inheritance tax by an appropriate percentage. This would avoid the ludicrous outcome of the new level of fees for an estate of £2 million being the same as for an estate of £20 million or £200 million.

In addition to the impact of the financial changes embodied in this order, we must not forget the issues raised last week when the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, secured a debate on the impact on the rule of law of the cuts imposed on our justice system. One significant area of concern was the growth in the number of litigants in person, which leads to delays, adjournments and longer hearings, substantially reducing the efficiency of the system. These problems are worsened by the reductions in court staff, with full-time equivalent numbers down from 17,829 in 2013-14 to 16,286 in 2015-16, a reduction of 10%.

The Government’s record over access to justice, which stretches back to the coalition period, has favoured the interests of the powerful, from employers to insurance companies and others, as the cuts to legal aid and their actions over fees testify. Moves towards fixed costs in civil claims and clinical negligence cases echo the same approach. It will be interesting to see whether the Prime Minister’s claims for compassionate conservatism translate into action. The Government’s justice policies will provide an early test. I beg to move.

[Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood (CB)]

My Lords, this is the third time the Lord Chancellor has exercised the power afforded by Section 180 of the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 to prescribe what we all know now as enhanced court fees—fees which exceed the cost to the Courts & Tribunals Service of doing that for which the fee is being charged. On each occasion, the draft order has attracted, as today, a regret Motion in this House, and each time I have spoken to support that regret Motion. On the last occasion, on 15 March, I was the only speaker in the debate apart from the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, who moved the regret Motion, and the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, who resisted it. Today, alas, the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, is no longer in his place, but we are of course lucky enough to have as his replacement the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, who is a personal friend—I hope I am allowed to say this—and indeed a neighbour.

That said, with a new Lord Chancellor now in office—one perhaps not overburdened with previous experience of issues concerning the rule of law and access to justice—I return briefly to some of the things I said about the earlier enhanced court fees orders. First, there is a real case to make for objecting even to the principle of full cost recovery. The justice system exists for the benefit of society as a whole, and one may reasonably question why courts should be any more liable to self-finance than, for example, the police service, the fire service or any other public service. But put that thought aside: enhanced fees go altogether further than mere full cost recovery, and are hugely more objectionable. By definition, they are calculated—in both senses—to make a profit. They amount, realistically, to selling justice—on the face of it, contrary, as we all know, to Magna Carta, but regrettably now sanctioned by Section 180 of the 2014 Act.

As I observed in earlier debates, that Christmas tree of an Act contains 186 sections and 11 schedules, and occupies no fewer than 232 pages of the Queen’s Printer’s copy of the legislation, so it was small wonder that by the time we got to Clause 180, our usually impeccable and meticulous scrutiny of legislation had perhaps become somewhat lax and careless. The Government seek to justify enhanced fees on the basis that they are needed, according to paragraph 7.2 of the Explanatory Memorandum for the previous order,

“in order that access to justice is protected”.

But this rationale is, I suggest, entirely disingenuous, as it effectively turns that vital principle on its head. Of course Her Majesty’s Courts & Tribunals Service must be funded properly, so that it provides access to justice. But it manifestly does not follow that any part of that funding should be achieved by profiteering from certain selected parts of the service, least of all when that profiteering will hinder access to justice by discouraging at least some of those who would otherwise use these selected services.

Lord Dyson, Master of the Rolls, who retires next week—I express the hope here today that his courtesy title will be speedily translated into a full Cross-Bench peerage—in his oral evidence to the House of Commons Justice Committee on enhanced fees, emphasised that access to justice is the critical point here, and that,

“ordinary people on modest incomes … will inevitably be deterred from litigating”.

As the Justice Committee concluded in paragraph 46 of its report,

“the introduction of fees set at a level to recover or exceed the full cost of operation of the court requires particular care and strong justification. Where there is conflict between the objectives of achieving cost-recovery and preserving access to justice, the latter objective must prevail”.

How right it plainly is. As for the particular enhanced fees proposed by this order, I can find no “strong justification” for them, not by reference to the particular services for which it is proposed to exact them, still less by reference to the principle of access to justice. The order is indeed to be regretted. If the House is divided, I shall certainly support the amendment.

Investigatory Powers Bill

Debate between Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood and Lord Beecham

Wednesday 13th July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Beecham (Lab)]

My Lords, a range of subjects appears to be covered both by the amendments and by today’s debate. I think we are all looking forward to the noble and learned Lord’s response to the issues of principle, which it is clear are very much in your Lordships’ minds. I draw particular attention to the report of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, which went so far as to say that,

“we do not see the need for a power to target lawyer-client communications”,

and that the amendment it sought would remove that provision from the Bill because it was deemed unnecessary in view of the iniquity exception. It would be interesting to hear the Minister’s reaction to that, but much of what we have heard today has been about the detailed workings of the Bill.

One of the main substantive issues is the position of the judicial commissioner in whatever processes ultimately result—that seems to me the critical aspect on which we would welcome some guidance from the Minister on the Government’s intentions. If it is still deemed necessary in some form or other to deal with the problem, as the Government see it, of legal privilege, there must surely be at least the safeguard that the decision should be made by a judicial commissioner rather than by a civil servant or Minister of the Crown. That measure of independence and of judicial experience seems fundamental to any acceptable proposal to move along the lines that the Government seek to pursue. Again, it would be helpful if the Minister were in a position today to clarify whether, whatever other details might be subject to debate, that important principle is one that the Government accept.

[Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood]

I was not intending to say anything this afternoon, let alone on this amendment, but following what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, and the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, have said, it occurs to me that if one widens out the provision that is the subject of Amendment 48 to introduce some essentially non-legal consideration, one would have to make it subject also, as routinely across this legislation, to ministerial approval. They must be answerable for that non-legal aspect. I therefore suggest that this might be a situation in which one should have two primary decision-makers, not therefore judicial oversight but judicial primary decision-making on the legal aspect—such as whether it is in truth a legal professional privileges situation and whether, in so far as criminal purpose is relied on, that is satisfied. However, in so far as the wider terrorism situation is being addressed, the justification for all that should initially be put at the ministerial door as well.

Social Action, Responsibility and Heroism Bill

Debate between Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood and Lord Beecham

Tuesday 18th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Beecham]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 2, moved by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, and to my Amendments 3, 5 and 9, which deal with the issue of judicial discretion in applying to any claim within the province of the Bill the provisions that the Bill sets out.

At Second Reading, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, averred that the change the Bill seeks to make in the provision of the Compensation Act 2006 that the court “may” take into account the factors that the Act spells out, to one which declares it now “must” take such matters into account will, in his words,

“actually make no difference whatever”.—[Official Report, 4/11/14; col. 1559.]

Perhaps that is a suitable epitaph for the whole of the Bill, it might be thought.

The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, from whose company I must unusually and regretfully depart on this occasion, seeks to replace the Compensation Act’s provision of “may” with this Bill’s “must”, presumably therefore reflecting the view of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown. The view that the two are the same, however, is not the Government’s view, as the Minister made clear at Second Reading, when he reminded the House that,

“the difference between ‘may’ and ‘must’ … caused the House to be divided on more than one occasion”.—[Official Report, 4/11/14; col. 1576.]

He also reminded us that there is a difference between the provisions in this Bill and the provisions in the Compensation Act.

To the extent that the obliteration of that difference could represent yet another and in this case, given its source, inadvertent legislative attempt to fetter judicial discretion—one of many such attempts made by this Government, some, alas, successfully—the Committee should resist that proposition. The JCHR in one of its more damning and dismissive, albeit characteristically elegantly phrased, reports published in recent years echoed its concerns about similar provisions in relation to judicial review in the Criminal Justice and Courts Bill. We have seen a succession of measures designed to fetter judicial discretion. I fear that, for all the intentions to the contrary, the noble Lord’s amendment might encourage that process. I therefore hope that, on this occasion, he will not object to my taking a different path, but it will be interesting to hear whether the Minister has changed his view since that expressed at Second Reading.

[Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood (CB)]

My Lords, I shall deal briefly with the suggested distinction between “may” in the 2006 Act and “must” in the present Bill which, as the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, has said, I touched on at Second Reading. The Minister submitted then that this was a significant distinction and he compared it to the critical difference between those same two words, “may” and “must”, on which the Government the previous week had been defeated three times when the House divided on three clauses in Part 4 of the Criminal Justice and Courts Bill, all about judicial review. With respect to the Minister, for whom I have the highest regard, this was an uncharacteristically and thoroughly bad point and an inept comparison, because of course there was all the difference in the world between saying in the original Clause 70 of the Criminal Justice and Courts Bill that the High Court “must” refuse in certain specified circumstances to grant judicial review relief and saying, as on amendment to that Bill Clause 70 now does, that the court “may” refuse to grant relief. It is a completely different position in a Bill like the one now before us where the provision is simply about the court having regard to a particular consideration.

It is notable that when the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton, who promoted the 2006 Bill in Committee, resisted what was then a proposed amendment from “may” to “shall”—which is much the same as “must”—she said:

“The reason why we said “may” rather than “shall” is that when a court looks at a negligence claim it takes into account all the circumstances of an individual case; those circumstances, of course, vary dramatically from one case to another, as all those who are members of the legal profession will know far better than I. It would not be appropriate to require the courts to take the factor in Clause 1 into account in all cases, which would be the effect of changing “may” to “shall”. In some cases, it will just not be relevant, so by making that change we would be trying to make the courts do something that in the normal course of their activities we would not expect them to do—which is, to take into account factors that have no relevance at all. So we have said that they may take them into account, but we are not requiring them to, because of the range and variety of cases”.—[Official Report, 15/12/05; col. GC200.]

A little later she contrasted a negligence claim against an accountant, where the concept of a “desirable activity” would of course be irrelevant, with an injury suffered at Girl Guides or on a school trip, where a “desirable activity” becomes a highly relevant concept. Frankly, it would have mattered little, even in the cases where it was quite irrelevant, if the courts had in fact been bound to have regard to this irrelevant consideration before then summarily discarding it. So too here: it can make no material difference to the outcome of any case whether the word used is “may” or “must”. That is the central point, as I made plain at Second Reading. There is no real difference between this Bill, the 2006 Act, and indeed the common law as it was already developing without the need for any statutory intervention at all. Accordingly, for my part I am quite indifferent to both of these competing Amendments 2 and 3. Rather, in common with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, I object to the Bill as a whole. If the House eventually divides on Report, I shall vote that none of these provisions should stand part.

Crime and Courts Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood and Lord Beecham

Tuesday 18th December 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood]

My Lords, I, too, feel compelled to say just a word in support of this amendment. I support it for the reasons already eloquently given by my noble and learned friend Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers and other noble Lords and have no intention of repeating those. I echo, too, his tribute to the present chief executive of the court, Jenny Rowe, who has worked tirelessly in setting up the court and progressing it over the three years that it has existed. I confirm—because I remember it all too well—what my noble and learned friend Lord Woolf said about the problem that the present wording of the legislation caused with regard to the chief executive’s role at an earlier stage in the court’s life.

On the critical point at issue, I respectfully suggest just this to your Lordships: constitutionally, it is no more appropriate for the Lord Chancellor to appoint the chief executive of the Supreme Court merely after consulting with the president of that court than it would be for the president of the Supreme Court, after merely consulting with the Lord Chancellor, to appoint the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Justice. The separation of powers means just that—the judiciary is not the Executive.

[Lord Beecham]

My Lords, I speak with diffidence as, I think, the ninth lawyer to speak in this debate—albeit from the junior branch of the profession—to add my support to the amendment moved by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Phillips. For the avoidance of doubt, I should say that my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer, who is not in his place tonight, would have supported this amendment, were he here. He has made that very clear. My noble and learned friend Lord Goldsmith is right to say that the legislation under which the present situation obtains was imperfect. It is now an opportunity for the House and, I hope, the other place, to correct what was a mistake—forgivable, but nevertheless a mistake. The independence of the judiciary, particularly that of the Supreme Court, must be at the heart of our judicial system. It is timely that we are discussing this amendment tonight, because in the House of Commons today the Justice and Security Bill is being debated. The role of the judiciary in relation to certain proceedings, which we have debated at length in your Lordships’ House, is very much part of those discussions. In addition, there are proposals in the air around judicial review and, again, the role of the judiciary in a particularly important and sensitive area of law.

Perception counts for a good deal in these matters. I entirely endorse the views of all but one of the noble Lords who have spoken tonight, that it is important to reinforce the independence of the judiciary. That independence has not in substance been threatened over the past few years, but there is always a risk that at some point it might be, and that in any event it might be perceived to be an issue on the part of the public. I do not know whether the noble and learned Lord will seek to test the opinion of the House if the Minister cannot provide a clear, unequivocal response to the suggestion here. Frankly, I cannot think why it should take any time at all for there to be discussions about the issue, which seems to me perfectly straightforward. If the noble and learned Lord seeks to test the opinion of the House, again, I will invite my colleagues to support him through the Lobbies.