Title (Hansard, 20 October 1969)

§ Mr. Percival
We have examined many of the technicalities of the Bill at great length, with some changes, few enough, I hope with some advantage. It is right that Bills such as this, which seem so technical that they cannot possibly be of interest to anyone except a lawyer, should be recognised as Bills which have as much effect on the individual layman as does most of the other legislation which goes through the House.
I am one of those who take the view that there is nothing more important than the proper administration of justice and that the House has a good deal to answer for in the headaches which it provides to those who have to administer justice when it passes legislation of such a character that sometimes more time is spent in working out what it means after it has left the House than was spent while it was going through the House. I hope, therefore, that it will be felt that the time spent in examining the Bill and doing our utmost to get it right has been well spent.
I echo a plea which I made on the first Amendment today, which I hope and believe is relevant to Third Reading —that if the Bill is given a Third Reading I hope that we may call a short halt in what we are doing to courts and in connection with the administration of justice 822 and have a comprehensive look at what we are doing. In the Bill we do a little relating to the jurisdiction of the county courts, a little relating to appeals to the House of Lords and a little relating to interim payments.
In the background we have the several reports to which I referred earlier. I do not think that we have yet implemented all the recommendations of the Evershed Committee. Some of them come near to what we are doing here. The Winn Committee recommendations are, in part, implemented in the Bill. It is said that the Payne Committee's recommendations are in part adopted in this Bill. I venture to doubt that—

§ Mr. Speaker
Order. If the hon. and learned Member has doubts about whether they are in the Bill he cannot talk about them on Third Reading.

§ Mr. Percival
That will teach me to be accurate, Mr. Speaker. If I left out the word "doubt", I suspect that I would still be in order.
If we give the Bill its Third Reading, do let us stop and consider what we have done in relation to all the other recommendations that are before us in connection with associated matters. The one fear I have about the Bill, the one reason why I have doubt about giving it the Third Reading, is that I think that it has tended to deal piecemeal with isolated parts extracted from these various recommendations that are before us. I shall not allow that to deter me from giving a Third Reading to the Bill, because I hope and believe that what is in it may be of some use, but I hope that if we give it the Third Reading the Government may then pause, and ask, "Where has passing this Bill got us?"
That should be asked particularly in relation to all the other recommendations that are before us. Let us, then, perhaps have a statement from the Government on how all these recommendations that are before us can be correlated and fitted in with this Bill in such a way that we have time to think about them before the next piece of legislation relating to the administration of justice comes before us, so that we shall not overlook things through haste. In this instance, at least one part of what we did had to be reconsidered because various practical aspects had been overlooked.
823 With that reservation, and hoping that despite the doubts I have expressed what we are doing may be of service to the community in improving the administration of justice, I welcome the measure, and hope that it will get its Third Reading.

§ The Solicitor-General
The discussions we have had on the Bill, with its very detailed and, at times, technical aspects, have often been fascinating for those of us who took part in them. I would like, if I may, to thank hon. Members on both sides who have contributed so much to these discussions. It is only right that I should pay my tribute to the co-operativeness and patience which are perhaps the outstanding characteristics which the hon. and learned Member for Southport (Mr. Percival) has brought to bear on the points to which we have given consideration, because I am aware that all too often, as it must have seemed to him, I have felt obliged, to resist recommendations that he made.
As the House is aware, the Bill is extremely varied in its provisions within the field of the administration of justice, and I do not propose at this stage to do more than make a passing reference to arguments that have been fully rehearsed. One of the main objects of the Bill is to encourage more cases to be brought in the county courts. I think that the increase in county court jurisdiction to £750 is a sensible and, indeed, an inevitable provision in view of the movements that we know of in the value of money.
We have argued at some length in Committee how far the various costs sanctions should go to give effect to the recommendations of the Payne and Winn Committee with regard to the jurisdiction of the county courts, and I hope that at the end of the day it will be agreed that the result will be to give a substantial measure of relief to the High Court without imposing undue burdens on the county court judges.
824 The opportunity has been taken at the same time of doing away with the provision whereby a solicitor could not employ another solicitor as his agent. The increase in the equity jurisdiction is the first for 103 years. This provision, and the other detailed provisions in the county courts will, I hope, be welcomed generally as a useful step forward.
It is, perhaps, not before time that the proposals to introduce a leapfrog procedure have been implemented. There will now be a convenient and less expensive way of taking a case to the House of Lords in the type of circumstances where appeal to the Court of Appeal would in any event have been wasted.
The provisions in the Bill which will enable mental patients to have wills made on their behalf by the Court of Protection have not given rise to detailed discussion during the Bill's passage, but that may have been because it is difficult not to realise that this is a fair and reasonable addition to the powers of the court in the exercise of its jurisdiction over the affairs of those who are mentally ill.
Part IV of the Bill contains a considerable number of miscellaneous provisions and I do not think that it would be appropriate for me to go into them in detail at this stage. I might refer, however, to the implementation of the very useful recommendations of the Winn Committee contained in Clauses 20, 21 and 22. The provisions in Clauses 20 and 22 will relieve the position of litigants who necessarily have to wait for a considerable time before receiving the benefit of damages which may be outstanding to them.
As I have said, this is necessarily a technical Bill. It is, however, a Measure which represents a substantial advance in its field, and it is for this reason that I ask the House now to approve it.