CLAUSE 9.—(Power to require reference to High Court.) (Hansard, 14 November 1927)

§ Colonel WEDGWOOD

I beg to move, in page 5, line 30, to leave out the words, " subject to rules of court."

We are dealing now with the only rights of any person aggrieved under this new Bill. I need hardly tell the House that a new Bill like this before very long will find many people aggrieved. We British subjects still have some right, and this Clause deals with those rights. It deals with them exactly as one would expect the Board of Trade to deal with the rights of individuals in this country, that is to say, it does its best to deprive them of any possibility of securing an appeal from the decision of the President. The Clause itself runs: If any person is aggrieved by the refusal of the Beard of Trade to register a film, or to register a film as a British film, or by a decision of the Board to correct the registration of a film, the matter shall, subject to rules of Court, be referred by the Board of Trade to the High Court for determination. That looks as though the subject has an appeal to the High Court. Unfortunately, it means nothing of the sort. I wish we had more lawyers on this side to explain the matter, because they would do it more ably than I can,, but I understand this is the position, and I hope the right hon. and learned Gentleman will correct me if I am wrong. When a case is sent to the High Court subject to rules of Court, those rules of Court in most cases refer the matter to the 784 arbitration of some barrister, who really treats the case as an arbitration case, and from whose decision there is, in this case, no appeal. Instead of the subject having the right of appeal to the High Court, all he really has is the right of appeal to some barrister in what amounts to an arbitration Court. Not only that, but the rules of Court are very numerous, very complicated,, and very apt to change. There are already rules in existence to such an extent that a volume of 2,500 pages is needed to contain them. The High Court will draw up rules in this case covering a few more hundred pages. They can be changed without Parliament knowing anything about it. Consequently, the aggrieved subject cannot know the law. His lawyer will find it very difficult to discover under what procedure the case will be heard, or rather will have to keep up to date with an agility which only very highly paid lawyers can manage, so that the smaller exhibitors will find it very difficult to secure anybody who knows the law. May I read, as I am not a lawyer, what has been sent to me on this point: It may not be known to the House that, where a High Court Judge has a case of this kind before him, it is a rule of the Court to refer it to an Official Referee, probably some barrister. This is a rule under the Arbitration Act of 1889 issued in 1889 and 1892. These rules are supposed to be simple, but few, if any, lawyers understand them. It seems to me better therefore to leave out these words and leave to the aggrieved citizen the normal method of 785 appeal to the High Court, which is supposed to protect him against injustice of any Department. Not only in this Act, but in many others, we are getting more and more to depend upon the administrative action and ipse dixit of a department and to deprive the individual of his lawful access to the Courts to right his wrongs. That often does lead to increased efficiency. It is much easier for the Department, but it does detract from the rights which the citizens of this country have had up to now, which they hold very jealously, and which we in this House should do our best to protect.

§ The SOLICITOR-GENERAL

If it were not for the wealth of imagination which the right hon. and gallant Gentleman has managed to display on this Amendment, it would be possible to dispose of it in half a minute. The only object in including these words is to enable the Lord Chancellor or rather the Rules Committee, composed of two Judges, and of representatives of the solicitors' branch of the profession, to make rules to specify a time limit within which notice must be given. It is a complete mare's nest to suggest that such eases would go to a barrister. They will go tp a Judge. Official Referees decide such matters of fact as complicated financial questions. I hope the right hon. Gentleman will take it from me that there is no possibility of anybody else deciding these cases except a Judge or Judges of the High Court, and that that assurance will be acceptable. If not, I will give him more information when the House next meets.