Legal Aid: Family Courts

Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts

Monday 13th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord McNally]

My Lords, one of the Government’s proposals, which I think has some merit, is to attempt to move away from a culture in which the taxpayer pays for litigation, particularly in family disputes. Many studies have shown that the litigation route to settling family disputes exacerbates the dispute and causes lasting harm to all sides of the family, particularly the children.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

My Lords, as a judge who tried a large number of family cases in which both sides were litigants in person, I can confirm that such cases will take much longer. Does the Minister realise that there is a hard core of people who fight over their children and who will not agree through mediation? I would be delighted to take part in consultations with the Government on what will happen.

[Lord McNally]

My Lords, I fully appreciate the noble and learned Baroness’s long and great experience in these fields. Certainly, some cases may be lengthened by the fact that neither side is legally advised, but the intention, as I said at the beginning, is to try to move a large number of such cases away from the court system into mediation and other forms of settlement. I fully accept her point that family disputes can become so bitter and intractable that resolution is very difficult, but that still does not argue the case for the taxpayer funding both sides in that kind of dispute.