Courts and Tribunals Fees

Robert Neill Excerpts

Monday 4th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure and a privilege to speak to the motion and raise the issue arising from the report by our Select Committee. This is the first time that one of our Committee’s reports has been debated on the Floor of the House in this way.

I begin by expressing my appreciation to all the members of the Committee for the constructive and diligent way in which they have approached the work of the Committee and this report in particular. It was undertaken in an entirely collaborative and non-partisan spirit. As is perhaps appropriate for anything that touches upon the law and justice, we have endeavoured throughout to base our conclusions on the evidence that has come before us. I am grateful for that. The report was agreed unanimously, and I hope that that will weigh with the House and with Ministers when they consider it.

We had significant assistance from the evidence, both written and oral, that we received from witnesses. It is particularly worth noting that in this case we were assisted by the evidence of very senior members of the judiciary—the Master of the Rolls, the president of the family division, and the senior president of tribunals. When they speak, their views ought to carry very considerable weight indeed.

There is no doubt that over the past few years, fees for litigants bringing cases have spread and increased across our civil courts, the family courts and tribunals, and there have been a number of proposals for further increases. When we set up the inquiry, we identified four objectives to be looked into. First, how have the increased court fees and the introduction of employment tribunal fees affected access to justice? How have they affected the volume and the quality of cases brought? Secondly, how has the court fee regime affected the competitiveness of the legal services market in England and Wales, particularly in an international context? Thirdly, we particularly wanted to look at the effect on defendants of the introduction of the criminal courts charge, about which I shall say more. Fourthly, we wanted to examine the impact of the increases in courts and tribunals fees announced in “Court and Tribunal Fees”, Cm 9123, published on 22 July 2015, and subsequent proposals.

I am grateful to the Government for moving swiftly on the criminal courts charge. The evidence was clear that it did not work and was, if anything, counterproductive, arguably costing as much to administer as it would ever bring in. We therefore decoupled the issue from the main part of the report and brought it forward swiftly. I am grateful to the Government for their prompt response and for moving to accept our recommendation and abolish the charge.

In fairness, the Secretary of State for Justice and his ministerial team deserve great credit for that. We should not criticise politicians when they are prepared to change their minds. I think it was John Maynard Keynes who famously said, “When the facts change, I change my opinion.” The Government listened to the evidence and removed the criminal courts charge. I hope they will be as expeditious and responsive on a number of the other matters we raise in the report—as a West Ham supporter, I am always an optimist.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

I compliment the hon. Gentleman on an excellent report, but would it not be fairer to say that the Secretary of State changed? I do not know whether that is one of Keynes’s principles. The facts did not change at all; some light was suddenly shone on what was always a mad scheme, and a change came about. However, I do not want to detract from the credit that is owed to the hon. Gentleman’s Committee.

[Robert Neill]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for the spirit in which he made his contribution. I am a friend of the current and the former Secretary of State, and giving credit to those who responded to the evidence is perhaps the appropriate and balanced way to deal with the issue.

It is worth looking at a little of the chronology of one of the matters I am going to turn to. As well as having significant witnesses from the judiciary, we heard evidence from the trade unions, the business community, the Bar Council, the Law Society and a number of individuals and interest groups. We had four oral evidence sessions between November 2015 and February 2016, the last of which was on 9 February, when we heard from the legal profession and then from the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for North West Cambridgeshire (Mr Vara).

We then waited, because we were anticipating the promised post-implementation review of the impact of employment tribunal fees, which had formed an important part of the evidence that was put before us. We knew that the review had been commissioned some time back, so we waited—and nothing came forward. In the end, on 25 April, the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab), who is on the Front Bench and who had taken over responsibility, courteously responded, but he was unable to give any indication of a publication date. I have to say that we do not regard that as satisfactory.

It was against that background that, rather than waiting for the two months the Government normally have to reply to a Select Committee report to lapse, we thought it right to bring our report to the House today in this estimates day debate.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend tell us whether we have yet received that report?

[Robert Neill]

No, we have not, and I have to say that we used quite strong language about that in our report, because we were, frankly, disappointed. What happened does actually go against the spirit of courtesy, openness and co-operation I have seen from the Ministry of Justice team throughout the year or so I have chaired the Select Committee, and I hope it is an outlier. I hope the Minister will give us an indication of why the review report has taken so long and when we will get it. I know it is sometimes not easy to agree these things across Government, but it is pretty clear that the data required for the analysis were collected a long time ago, and, as we say in our report, there can be no reason why at least that factual material cannot be published forthwith, even if the Government are not yet in a position to respond, because the more informed the House and the public are, the better. That is an area of regret, and that is why today’s debate is important and timely.

Let me touch on some of the principles we are concerned with. The levels of various courts and tribunal fees have been politically controversial. We all need to bear it in mind that a balance must be struck between the cost to the public purse of administering a justice system, which is an integral part of any civilised society and of the rule of law, and how much can reasonably be recovered from litigants. We say that, in principle, we do not object to the idea that there should be some financial discipline on those who choose to go to law—those who choose to litigate—in deciding whether that is a wise decision for them to make. We do not have a problem with the principle of a certain level of a fees. Equally, however, we must bear in mind the comments that have been made consistently ever since Magna Carta but were recently elegantly captured by the late Lord Bingham of Cornhill in his book, “The Rule of Law”—which I always think should be compulsory reading for anyone in the political sphere—in which he says, in essence, that the accessibility of justice is as much a part of the fundamentals of the rule of law as clarity of the law itself. He says that justice is not a commodity—it cannot be commoditised in the way that, perhaps, other services can be. It is important to get the balance right. That is where we have some concerns that I will now turn to.

We accept that there is no problem, in principle, with fees for litigants. We know that there are financial pressures on the Ministry, which is not a protected Department. I understand the pressures that Ministers were under when these decisions were taken. We think it is entirely legitimate to find a number of means of reducing the number of vexatious claims. That could be done as part of the financial discipline we referred to, but it could also be done by changing the substantive law to raise the threshold or by making changes to court procedure. That is a legitimate part of the mix. But—we then have to say a number of “buts”, looking at the evidence —the answer to what is a reasonable charge in striking this balance will vary depending on a number of factors such as the effectiveness of fee remission, the vulnerability or otherwise of the claimants, and the degree of choice that they have. There is a distinction, for example, between someone who chooses to litigate over a commercial contract dispute and someone who is charged by the state with an offence, or someone whose marriage has broken down and has no other recourse, in order to have the marriage dissolved and move on with their life, than to go to the courts. The degree of choice is an important issue that must be considered carefully in each case.

There is an argument for trying to recover, as far as one can within that balance, some of the costs that fall on the public purse. In some cases, it may be possible to recover all the costs, but that cannot be an absolute. We were particularly struck by the fact that in some cases there are fees that exceed the full cost of the operation of the court; they are sometimes referred to as “enhanced fees”. We take the view, consistent with Lord Bingham’s formulation and with a public policy approach that we have had in this country for decades, that making a profit from the justice system, in effect, albeit one that is intended to be used elsewhere, requires particular care and a strong justification.

[Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)]

Surely the Ministry of Justice should not be making a profit out of justice. Getting rid of tribunal fees and having equality of access to justice is about making sure that everybody in this country can be productive, particularly women, who can be discriminated against—it drives up productivity and boosts the economy.

[Robert Neill]

We do not go so far as to say that it follows that there should never be fees in any particular class of case—that includes employment tribunal fees—but we do say that a balance has to be borne in mind. I suppose that one could conceive of an argument—we did not rehearse it in detail in our report—whereby an enhanced fee might be recycled within the system. If, for example, some of the fees were being used to cross-subsidise, as it were, other elements of the family jurisdiction, then there might be something in that, but we do not have any evidence that that is the case. The hon. Lady makes a fair point, which is consistent with our report, about the undesirability of going down that route.

The situation provides a contrast with the speed with which the Government acted over both the criminal courts charge, quite rightly, and the new proposals for higher fees ever since the employment tribunal fees were introduced, with some controversy. The Department made those proposals with great speed, but it has been remarkably tardy in producing its review of the impact of those employment tribunal fees. That is why we conclude that, although a legitimate balance has to be found in the interests of society, where the objective of achieving cost recovery and the principle of preserving access to justice are in conflict, it is the latter—access to justice—that has to prevail. In a sense, that is a restatement of the point made by the late Lord Bingham of Cornhill, and I would have thought that most Members saw the logic of that.

Other members of the Select Committee will wish to make particular points, so I will touch on a few of the major matters. I have already referred to the quality of the evidence from the Ministry of Justice, particularly that in relation to employment tribunal fees. Ultimately, the Department may not have the evidence; if that is the case, it should say so, rather than pretend otherwise.

It is worth giving a flavour of some of the comments we received about the evidence base. The Master of the Rolls, Lord Dyson, described the Department’s research as “lamentable”. It is pretty serious when the head of civil justice in this country talks in those terms. The chairman of the Bar Council described the research undertaken in relation to the domestic effects of fees as “insignificant”, and the president of the Law Society said it was “poor”.

I appreciate that the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton has only just started the job—I do not blame him or any of his colleagues personally—but the truth is that the Government did not produce adequate evidence. On the face of it, it seems to have been a “wet your finger and hold it up in the wind” job, rather than being based on significant research. We do not think that that is satisfactory.

Perhaps things would have been different if the Government had brought forward their review. We might have been less critical if we had seen the evidence that they have collated but not yet made available. As it was, we had to base our conclusions on the evidence that we had, which I am afraid went significantly in another direction. It is ironic that, by not providing that material, the Government have not been the best of advocates of their own cause.

I am not going to say that everybody had difficulties with employment fees. In their evidence to us, the Federation of Small Businesses and Peninsula Business Services said that it was reasonable to have the objective of discouraging weak and vexatious claims. That was certainly the Government’s assertion when they introduced the fees, but hard material to support that view has not yet been forthcoming. We must bear in mind the comments of the senior president of tribunals, Sir Ernest Ryder, who said that it was simply too soon to say whether that has happened. If that is the case, and if the valuation is not yet available, now is not the time to be rushing similar increases in other parts of the civil and family and immigration jurisdictions, which I will turn to later. I will leave it to others to go into more detail about employment fees, as I know they will.

[Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the distinguished Chair of the Justice Committee for allowing me to intervene on him. If there is very little evidence to suggest that there were vexatious claims in the employment tribunal system and if the number of claims in some regions has dropped by a quantum of about 80%, is it not possible to make the opposite argument that fees are a block to justice and that, to get access to justice, they will have to be lowered? If this is about cost recovery, the number of employment tribunal cases is now so low that no costs are being recovered at all.

[Robert Neill]

That is why we made the point that we need to have a much better evidence base before we go forward with like increases in other areas. We did not rule out the fact that a fee may be appropriate in some cases, but we need better evidence to know the proper level to pitch it at and whether there are any unintended consequences—whether it will deter not just unworthy claims, but, as we fear, meritorious claims as well. A particular concern raised was that the employer and the employee claimant would get into a war of attrition, depending on who has the deepest pockets. That is not really consistent with the “equality of arms” argument that we have always regarded as being central to our justice system. Funnily enough, it may tend to make cases more protracted than they need to be, when the swiftest and earliest possible settlement would, as a general rule, be in everybody’s interests. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his point. We were much assisted in our inquiry by evidence on the matter from the Law Society of Scotland, and we are grateful for its assistance.

Against that background, we made all due allowance for the fact that there has been some change in the substantive law, for the improving economic situation, for the previous downward trend in tribunal cases and for the ACAS conciliation schemes. Those things could account for some of the drop, but we were looking at a drop of about 70%, and we found no evidence to suggest that it was accounted for entirely or substantially by those matters, so we were led to the conclusion that the clear majority of the decline was attributable to the level of fee. That is why the matter needs to be looked at seriously and we need the factual information immediately.

We set out certain indicative thoughts about the sorts of changes that might be made; they are indicative because we do not have the evidence to go further than that. We think that this is an important issue, which really cannot be kept back for much longer.

[Andy Slaughter]

I commend the hon. Gentleman on many of the recommendations in the report, but—as I would, I suppose—I want to highlight one that I think is slightly problematic. The Justice Committee went along with the decision of the independent commission on freedom of information to disallow appeals from the Information Commissioner to the first-tier tribunal, despite the fact that 20% of those appeals are successful. Would the hon. Gentleman like to look at that again? The Select Committee stated in its report:

“We see no reason to disagree with the Commission’s view.”

Has the hon. Gentleman simply gone along with the view of the commission? What is his reason for making that decision?

[Robert Neill]

Simply that there was no compelling evidence presented to us to the contrary. We followed the evidence, as we did in the other matters. It is not because we are afraid of pulling our punches; as the hon. Gentleman has seen, we have not pulled our punches in some areas. We simply did not find any evidence to suggest that that assessment by the independent body was wrong.

I will move on quickly to some other matters. There has been particular concern about the impact of employment tribunal fees, but certain other matters have also been brought forward. The April 2015 increase in fees for money claims should, in our judgment, be reviewed. That may seem rather remote and arcane, but it is very important, because it affects the international competitiveness of London and the UK as a jurisdiction of choice, especially for commercial litigation. That is a great strength of this country, and some figures released today by the Legal Services Board highlight its significance. Legal services and their related supply chain contribute something like £35 billion towards this country’s GDP. Legal services exports have increased by some 33% over the past eight years, and something like 10% of the legal profession have instructions from overseas clients.

At the same time, there are pressures on the British jurisdiction and threats to its exclusiveness. We have already seen, in places such as Singapore and Dubai, courts operating on the basis of English common law but outside our jurisdiction. It is worth observing that very recently in Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, an English-language court was established. We should be very wary of biting off the hand that feeds us—or, to use another metaphor, doing anything to kill the goose that lays the golden egg—by reducing the value of the British legal system and its attractiveness to litigants nationally and internationally.

We think that the Government should review the increase in fees for money claims, and they should certainly not resurrect the proposal to double the £10,000 cap or remove it altogether. They were right not to proceed with that when it was originally proposed, but they did not rule it out for the future. We are saying that they should not think about going anywhere near it, at least until they have had a proper review of what has been done.

Another point, which goes back to an issue that has been raised already, is about the increase in the divorce petition fee from £410 to £550. Given that the cost to the state of the average straightforward divorce petition is about £270, that is a mark-up of about 100%. We find it difficult to see how making a 100% profit out of divorce cases can be justified, when it is an entirely captive audience because there is no other way to get divorced than going to the courts. We say very clearly that the increase should be reversed.

Our view was fortified by the trenchant evidence from the president of the family division, the right hon. Sir James Munby. It is pretty unusual for a senior member of the judiciary to speak in such terms to a parliamentary Committee or any other body. Sir James said, rather tellingly, that he was concerned that the Ministry of Justice was

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

and that it was

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

That is pretty strong language. I would put it slightly differently. We say that there is a risk that it will become a “divorce tax”. That cannot be just and we strongly urge Ministers to look at it again most urgently.

Immigration and asylum tribunals are another important issue. There are concerns over whether our immigration and asylum system and the appeals system are abused. There must be safeguards to ensure that proper cases are properly heard. Someone with a legitimate claim must have a decent chance of challenging the decisions of the state or of any Executive body. Equally, it is in everybody’s interests that weak and unmeritorious cases are weeded out. Nobody has a problem with that. Our concern is that fees have been brought in with remarkable swiftness, without a significant evidence base.

In July 2015, the Government consulted on doubling the fees in the first-tier tribunal from £80 to £160 for an application for a paper determination and from £140 to £280 for an application for an oral hearing. In December 2015, after the consultation, it was confirmed that that would go ahead. Only a few months later, in April this year, a further consultation was brought out, without any review of the impact of the last set of increases, proposing a sixfold increase in the fees in those jurisdictions, so that there was full cost recovery. It was proposed that an application for a paper decision would cost £490 and an application for an oral hearing would cost £800.

We have the same concern that I have raised more than once: there is no apparent evidence base to support that increase. If there were, we might have taken a different approach to it. Making that increase does not seem justified when the people involved are, by the nature of these cases, vulnerable. That is why we express considerable concern over the proposals.

I am surprised that the Government have adopted that approach, given their experience with employment tribunal fees and the criminal courts charge. The idea is to have full cost recovery. The problem is that we are dealing with people who are by their nature—particularly those in the asylum system, but also those in the immigration system—very unlikely ever to have any means to recover even a decent percentage of the cost against, let alone the full cost. The Government will end up in exactly the same position as with the criminal courts charge. They are setting themselves an objective to raise money that they have no hope of raising because the people they are trying to get it from do not have the means—it is getting blood out of a stone. We think that it is pointless to pursue an unachievable objective. That is why we urge the Government to think again.

I have endeavoured to outline what is a detailed report. I hope that it is useful to the House. Given the nature of its technical but important topic, we make no apology for its detail. These are issues that impact not just on our system, but on individuals, because every piece of litigation involves an individual somewhere. The Government have had ample time to consider the report, so I hope that we will have a substantive response from the Minister in which he says when the information will be published, what they will do about the increase in divorce fees, what they will do about the realism or otherwise of moving to full cost recovery in the immigration and asylum chamber, and what they will do about the other significant pieces of evidence that we have detailed in the report. I am grateful for the House’s indulgence.

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[Mr Djanogly]

The hon. Lady talks about unfair advantage, but I am not sure how she defines it, particularly if it is a single employer. Most of the FSB’s membership are two-person companies. If the hon. Lady is saying that it is unfair if it is one employer against one employee, I would say it was not. The answer to her question is that it would depend on the circumstances.

There grew a culture of settling claims, even weak claims, so that they would simply go away. The fact remains that there is more to business confidence than statistics. If the indirect impact of fees has been to change this perception among business owners, which I feel it has, fees have made a significant contribution to an economy that is delivering the creation of the highest level of employment the UK has ever enjoyed. We should be cautious about meddling with that.

The big change from when I was a Minister in the Ministry of Justice is the use of ACAS conciliation. I should be interested to hear more from the Minister, but the figure of 83,000 claims being dealt with by ACAS at an early stage sounds very promising indeed. It was the policy of the last Labour Government and then of the coalition Government and this Government that alternative dispute resolution should be promoted as a cheaper, quicker, more consensual and less stressful form of sorting out problems, including employment disputes. I shall be interested to hear whether the Minister has plans to extend the use of ADR further still.

I note that, on access to justice, the Justice Committee’s report is rather limited to looking at the status quo—fees versus remissions, which seems to have a feeling of trade union influence.

[Robert Neill]

Will my hon. Friend comment on our specific proposal that there should be an uprating of the remission threshold to take account of inflation? Otherwise, there will be a risk of fiscal drag. That is one of a number of specific points we make about remission.

[Mr Djanogly]

It is useful to look at that, perhaps along with a wider review of the way in which remissions are working. A new system has been put in place, and I accept that such things need review.

The report totally overlooks the changing nature of the funding of legal claims now and possibly in the future—for instance, the use of loans to fund claims, or the use of no-win, no-fee agreements and insurance to fund claims. It assumes that the burden of risk is simply to be shared between claimant and defendant, which is unreflective of reality. What about the risk of claims being shared between insurers, lenders, lawyers—and, yes, even trade unions? For instance, should we not investigate what level of risk they should all take on board, before the taxpayer has to step in? Neither Opposition party statements so far, nor the Justice Committee report seems to be looking at the broader issues in an area where we need innovative ideas and an assessment of the wider marketplace. I would therefore be grateful to hear the Government’s views.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Dominic Raab)]

I congratulate the shadow Justice Secretary, the hon. Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon), on his new position and welcome him to the Opposition Front Bench. I pay tribute to the work of the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter), who held our feet to the fire assiduously over many weeks and who I am sure will continue to do so from the Back Benches.

I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) for his Committee’s important report and work on court and tribunal fees and charges, and hon. Members from across the House for their invaluable contributions to this debate. The Government will respond to the Committee’s report in due course, but I welcome this opportunity to address some of the issues it raised. I will try to respond to as many as is practical in the time allocated.

As hon. Members will appreciate, the principal reason for raising fees is financial—there is no getting away from that. The shadow Justice Secretary said that he would get rid of all the fees. He was a little thin on how he would pay for them, but perhaps that does not matter too much to the Labour party. The raw truth is that the Ministry of Justice is not a protected Department. We have a very challenging financial settlement, so we must reduce its annual spending by 15% in real terms, which means about £1 billion in cash terms by 2019-20.

It is worth remembering that this is not just about cuts; we are also committed to this approach precisely so that we can invest £1.3 billion to modernise our prisons, and more than £700 million to transform our court system. Achieving those dual financial objectives inevitably requires difficult decisions. There is no ducking them. We have to look at every area of the Department’s finances, and I am afraid that there can be no exceptions for the courts.

To ensure that the courts and tribunals are properly funded, and access to justice is properly protected, increases to court fees will be necessary. The cost of our courts and tribunal system to the taxpayer is unsustainably high, and it is only right that those who use the system pay more to balance that burden with the taxpayer.

[Robert Neill]

In coming to that conclusion, has the Department carried out research into or a survey on the costs to the court system of delays caused by persons appearing unrepresented as litigants? Should not that also be taken into account as part of the equation? What data does the Minister have?

[Mr Raab]

My hon. Friend raises a perfectly legitimate point. If he is willing to be patient, I will write to him with any precise details that I have.

In its report, the Committee accepts the principle of charging court users a contribution towards the cost of operating our courts. Whatever the specifics, I think that that principle is accepted. It is a question of balance between taxpayer subsidisation and user pay. I welcome the Committee’s finding in that regard.

Under the Treasury’s “Managing public money” rules, fees for public services should usually be set at a level designed to meet the cost of those services. However, Parliament has granted, through the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014, a power that allows the Government to set court and tribunal fees at a level above the cost of the service. The income from those fees must be used to fund an efficient and effective system of courts and tribunals. When setting these fees, the Lord Chancellor must have regard to a number of factors, including the need to preserve access to justice. I assure hon. Members that we take that requirement seriously. The idea that somehow a profit is being made is not accurate according to the law, let alone the practice.

I will now turn to the specifics of employment tribunals. I appreciate the concerns expressed both by the Committee and by hon. Members across the aisles. Those who have spoken today have mentioned in particular the impact of fees on employment tribunals. When fees were introduced, there were three main objectives. The first was to transfer a proportion of the cost of the tribunal from the taxpayer to those who use it, where they can afford to pay. The second was to encourage people to consider other ways of resolving disputes, in particular the ACAS conciliation services, which are provided free of charge. There has been virtually no mention of them in this debate. The third objective was to protect access to justice. I do not think that anyone could disagree that those are legitimate aims to pursue.

The main concern about employment tribunal fees has been the large fall in the number of claims immediately after fees were introduced, but it is not that surprising that the volume of claims has fallen. It is obvious that more people will use a service if it is free than if they have to pay to use it. It is also worth reminding hon. Members across the House of a few key facts. First, help is available for those who cannot afford to pay, through fee remissions. Under that scheme, someone who is eligible for help may have the fee waived either in part or in full. We have taken steps to make sure that more people are aware of the help available, and that has led to a marked increase in take-up under the scheme.

Secondly, and crucially, the introduction of the ACAS early mandatory conciliation service has been a success, with more than 83,000 people referring their disputes to ACAS in the first year. As many people are using the ACAS conciliation service now as were previously referring their disputes to the ACAS voluntary service and the employment tribunals combined. That is important, regardless of whether the dispute ends up with a meritorious claim succeeding; it is valuable that potentially divisive disputes can be settled in that way.

[Mr Raab]

I will come on to that, if the right hon. Gentleman will bear with me for a few moments, because there are a lot of other points to get through. The point—this has been missed almost entirely in the debate—is that we are seeing the right kind of behavioural change.

Thirdly, the tribunal has the power to order the respondent to reimburse the claimant with his or her fee, if the claim is successful. Finally, on top of that, the Lord Chancellor has an additional power to remit fees where there are exceptional circumstances.

I appreciate that the Committee and hon. Members have not been shy in criticising the delay in completing the review. It is true that when we announced the review in June last year, we had hoped to finalise it by the end of the year. That simply was not possible and it is clearly important that we take time to carefully consider all the relevant material. It is regrettable that it has taken longer than planned, and I am sorry about that. I have looked into the situation and we will get the response published as soon as possible.

In our evidence to the Committee, however, we made it clear that, while we hoped that the review would be completed swiftly, we could not give a firm commitment on timing. I reassure hon. Members and the Chair of the Committee that the review is very close to completion, so I hope to be able to make an announcement in the near future.

[Robert Neill]

If the Minister will forgive me for saying so, his predecessor told us in February that he hoped we would have it “sooner rather than later.” What has caused the delay? Has the material been fully assembled in his Department, and why can it not be published?

[Mr Raab]

I thank the Select Committee Chairman, who is being as tenacious and assiduous as ever. We are in a position to make the announcement in the near future. I do not think it is right to split the evidence and our response to it. Hon. Members in this House and the public expect us, when we produce the evidence, to be able to say what we think about it. If he is patient with us, he will get both in reasonably short order. On top of the apology that I have already given, I want to make it clear that it will be coming as soon as is practicable.

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[Robert Neill]

With the leave of the House, I will briefly respond to the debate. It has been a thoughtful debate, and I am grateful to Members from all parts of the House who have contributed. There is not time for me to refer to every hon. and right hon. Member who has contributed, but I am especially grateful to members of the Select Committee from both sides of the House who have contributed to the debate for the work that they have done. It is also right for me to say that I am grateful to the Committee staff for the work that they have put into preparing the report. I congratulate the hon. Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon) on his appointment to the post of shadow Justice Secretary, and I wish him a long tenure of office, if that is a wise thing to do, one way or the other.

I appreciate the Minister’s response. I may continue to press further, but I take him at his word, because he and his fellow Ministers have always been entirely straight in their dealings with us. I hear his word that we will have the response soon, and I cannot stress enough how important that is. I am grateful that he is not proceeding immediately with the divorce fee increases. I hope that we will be able to persuade him that that should not happen at all, but I will take whatever is available. I appreciate that this is a detailed matter, and I hope that we can go forward with more detail in due course. I must confess that I do not think that this issue will be solved constructively by voting against the estimates in a symbolic fashion, but that is a matter for individual Members to decide. I am grateful for the House’s time and the consideration that Members have given to the report.

Question deferred (Standing Order No. 54).