Draft Non-Contentious Probate (Fees) Order 2018

Gloria De Piero Excerpts

Thursday 7th February 2019 General Committees

[Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. There is fierce opposition to these proposed changes, from legal experts, charities and legislative bodies. The Government plan a probate fee hike from the current flat fee of £215—or £155 if the application is made by a solicitor—to a sliding range between £250 and £6,000, depending on the value of the estate. The changes encompass fee increases to a level that is nearly 28 times what some people currently pay. The House of Lords Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments and the Law Society, among many others, have joined a chorus of condemnation of the proposals.

Apart from the staggering increase in costs, the proposed fees have no bearing on the actual cost of the service provided. The services involved in a grant of probate are fundamentally the same, regardless of the value of the estate. The proposals are clearly disproportionate and excessive, but they also make a mockery of the long-standing principle that fees for a public service should recover the cost of providing it, and no more. I am frankly shocked that more Conservative Members are not fighting to maintain that fiscal convention.

Combined with the Government’s conviction that funds raised through the changes can be reinvested elsewhere in the struggling justice system, the proposals represent what the Law Society identifies as

“a tax on grieving families”.

The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee has likewise suggested:

“To charge a fee so far above the actual cost of the service arguably amounts to a ‘stealth tax’”.

It is true that Government cuts have left the justice system in crisis. Prisons are overcrowded, the probation service is overstretched, courts are closing and people across the country are excluded from access to justice because of devastating cuts to legal aid. It is also true that time and time again the Opposition have called for the investment and resources that the justice system needs to operate properly. It is unacceptable that, through these changes, the Government intend to place the burden of covering those costs on the shoulders of vulnerable, grieving people.

[Catherine West]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Does she agree that all these problems began when the Ministry of Justice was led by someone known commonly in the press as “failing Grayling”—

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

In the context of this SI only, please.

[Gloria De Piero]

My hon. Friend is right and we have been warning about those very things, but our warnings appear often to have fallen on deaf ears. What is more, the fact that these fees amount in practice to a tax raises serious questions over whether the changes exceed the authority of the Lord Chancellor. The power to impose taxes lies with Parliament, yet in the eyes of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee,

“cross-subsidised charges are normally classified as taxes.”

This order thus constitutes a misuse of the fee-levying power. The Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments has likewise asserted that there is

“real doubt as to whether the Lord Chancellor may use a power to prescribe non-contentious probate fees for the purpose of funding services which executors do not seek to use”.

There are clearly concerns about both the nature of the proposals and their practical effect.

The charity sector has also warned of losses—a point my hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd South made—to the tune of nearly £10 million a year. Cancer Research UK has cautioned that the stealth tax will diminish donations made in wills. What assurances can the Minister provide to the charity sector that any changes will not have an adverse financial impact on charities? Can she confirm whether these increases in fees break convention? I have read the 2014 Act and conclude that it says something quite different.

Does the Minister acknowledge that grieving individuals will be footing the bill for cuts made elsewhere in the justice system, even in service areas that they do not use? Can she provide an estimate of the numbers of people affected by this change each year, and to what overall value? Does she recognise the concerns raised by a huge number of legal experts, parliamentary bodies, the public, the media and the charity sector that these charges amount to little more than a stealth tax on grieving people?