Oral Answers to Questions

Nigel Mills Excerpts

Tuesday 18th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Frazer]

My Department is making a lot of efforts to ensure we have the right deal. We have received £17 million for EU Brexit preparations. We have over 110 full-time employees, including newly recruited employees, working across deal and no deal. I would say, as the Lord Chancellor said in his FT article at the weekend, that the Conservative party is ensuring the future of our country, whereas the leader of the Labour party is just trying to make political points to ensure a general election.

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

5. What steps the Government are taking to make it easier for people to initiate legal proceedings.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Lucy Frazer)]

The Government are simplifying many application processes, making it much easier to initiate proceedings. Once a decision to get divorced has been made, one can now petition for a divorce online. Probate can be applied for online and a money claim can be issued, for up to £10,000, using our online courts process.

[Nigel Mills]

Will the Minister go a little further and say how she can make it easier for people to participate in proceedings once they have initiated them?

[Lucy Frazer]

My hon. Friend makes an incredibly important point. It is important not only to be able to initiate proceedings easily, but participate in them. Recently, we had early testing of full video hearings held in a tax tribunal, enabling the applicant and the respondent to not have to travel to court or take any time off work. In fact, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs was based in Belfast in those cases and the applicants were elsewhere in the country—and, in one case, in Greece. That small scale evaluation shows that participants found them convenient and easy to understand. They will not be appropriate for every case, but this is technology we need to consider.