Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Lord Faulks Excerpts

Tuesday 10th January 2012 Lords Chamber

Reading this amendment, I cannot see how it can be resisted. If for some reason there is a shortage of available expert evidence because the pay is insufficient to attract eminent men into the witness box, the fact that this amendment was written into primary legislation would certainly be a wake-up call to the Ministry of Justice.

[Lord Faulks]

My Lords, most Members of this House would approve of the idea of having good-quality expert evidence in cases. In the area in which I practise there have been considerable strides forward in that regard. Although the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, speaks of hired guns and undesirable practices, it should be known that much has improved in this area, not least thanks to the major contribution of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, the CPR, the exchange of experts’ reports, experts’ meetings and a sensible control of the questions that are asked, so I would not like the House to get the impression that the world is a jungle where experts are concerned. Litigation is much more orderly than it was and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris, is quite correct that good experts often produce settlement and good results.

While I certainly applaud the sense the amendment, which is to encourage good-quality experts, the reason why they are sometimes not available is not simply because of money. There are difficulties simply in finding the right experts for the right cases because they have other commitments. Let us take paediatric neurology, for example, an area that is particularly important in clinical negligence cases. Very few are available, and they are very often not available for many months. In other words, there are factors that are not easily within the reach of any form of legislative provision. While approving the general spirit of the amendment, I would countenance some wariness in enshrining this in any legislative form.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords, as everyone who has spoken has said, it would self-evidently be a false economy and prejudicial to justice if the Government were not willing to spend the money that they genuinely need to spend in ensuring that the expert evidence required is available to the courts. I ask my noble friend Lord Beecham, who moved the amendment, and the Minister—if, as he surely must, he agrees with the thrust of the amendment at least—what their views are on the appropriate methodology under the amendment. Does my noble friend consider that there should be some sort of standing body independent of the Ministry of Justice that would have the task of keeping this issue under continuous review and to report from time to time? I would have thought that it would be a continuing necessity for the Lord Chancellor to have the benefit of such advice so that he can be sure that the taxpayer is not being asked to spend more than is genuinely necessary under this head, but equally to be sure that sufficient resources are being provided. How does my noble friend or the Minister envisage that this function should be carried out? Perhaps they could say something about the practicalities of ensuring that that takes place, as that would be helpful.