HL Deb 31 January 1963 vol 246 cc473-83

6.14 p.m.

Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.

THE LORD CHANCELLOR

My Lords, I do not think I need take up much of your Lordships' time in moving the Second Reading of this Bill. It aims simply at counteracting the effect of the increase in rateable values on the jurisdiction of the county courts in actions relating to land. The County Courts Act,

to take the first step to correct an abuse. Anybody who claims to have regard for the ordinary consumers of this country—and I have spent a lifetime dealing with consumer matters—must recognise that there is no Party political content in this at all. I would ask your Lordships to give support to this Bill so that all the finer points of detail may be dealt with in the proper place, and that is in Committee. I honestly believe that this Bill will be a boon and a benefit to a great number of poor people in this country.

6.10 p.m.

On Question, Whether the Bill shall be now read 2a?

Their Lordships divided: Contents, 29; Not-Contents, 35.

CONTENTS
Airedale, L. Latham, L. Rusholme, L.
Alexander of Hillsborough, E. Lindgren, L. St. Davids, V.
Amulree, L. Lucan, E. Shackleton, L.
Attlee, E. McNair, L. Shepherd, L.
Champion, L. [Teller.] Merthyr, L. Strang, L.
Chorley, L. Meston, L. Swanborough, B.
Francis-Williams, L. Milverton, L. Taylor, L.
Henderson, L. Nathan, L. Waleran, L.
Hughes, L. Ogmore, L. Williamson, L.
Kenswood, L. Peddie, L. [Teller.]
NOT-CONTENTS
Ailwyn, L. Devonshire, D. Lothian, M.
Amherst of Hackney, L. Dilhorne, L. (L. Chancellor.) Mancroft, L. [Teller.]
Ampthill, L. Dundee, E. Massereene and Ferrard, V.
Ashbourne, L. Elliot of Harwood, B. Merrivale, L. [Teller.]
Boston, L. Ferrers, E. Newall, L.
Carrington, L. Goschen, V. Newton, L.
Chesham, L. Grenfell, L. Norrie, L.
Colville of Culross, V. Hailsham, V. (L. President.) St. Aldwyn, E.
Colyton, L. Hawke, L. St. Oswald, L.
Conesford, L. Horsbrugh, B. Somers, L.
Denham, L. Jellicoe, E. Tweedsmuir, L.
Derwent, L. Lambert, V.

Resolved in the negative, and Motion disagreed to accordingly.

1955, gave county courts jurisdiction to entertain any action relating to land where the net annual value for rating of the premises does not exceed £100. By next April rateable values will have increased by over 300 per cent. since the county court jurisdiction was fixed in 1955. Unless a corresponding increase is made in the jurisdiction of the county courts, many houses and business premises which were formerly within that jurisdiction will fall outside it. Any legal proceedings concerning them will have to be brought in the High Court, and much inconvenience and extra expense will be caused to the parties. Clause 1 of the Bill accordingly provides for a corresponding increase of 300 per cent. in the jurisdiction of the county court in actions relating to land. The present limit of £100 in net annual value for rating is to be raised to £400. This will be done by substituting £400 for £100 in the relevant sections of the County Courts Act, 1959 (which has now replaced the Act of 1955).

Clause 2 of the Bill deals with the right of appeal in actions relating to land. Before 1955 there was, generally speaking, no right of appeal from a county court judgment except on a point of law. A party could not appeal on a question of fact, as he can in the case of a High Court judgment. The County Courts Act, 1955, increased the jurisdiction of the county court, but in order to preserve the right of appeal on fact in cases which would previously have been brought in the High Court, it provided that there should be a right of appeal on fact in cases within the increased jurisdiction of the county court. Among these were actions relating to land with a net annual value for rating exceeding £60. This was roughly equivalent to an annual value or rent of £100, which was the previous limit of the jurisdiction of the county court in actions relating to land. Since rateable values will have risen by 300 per cent. since 1955, the figure of £60 should now be multiplied by four. I think, however, that your Lordships will agree that it would not be very convenient to substitute a figure of £240: that would be an odd sum which it would not be easy to remember. It seems better to specify a round figure and to err on the low side, so as not to cut down the existing right of appeal on fact. Clause 2 will therefore substitute £200 for the figure of £60.

The reason why rateable values will be so much greater on April 1 than they were in 1955 is that the new valuation lists will be based on present rental values. In 1955 they were still based on pre-war rental values. As these were roughly three-fifths of those operating immediately after the war, the County Courts Act, 1955, provided that the premises which were not separately rated should be taken to have a net annual value for rating equal to three-fifths of their value by the year. A similar provision appears in Section 200 of the 1959 Act. In view of the new basis of valuation, such premises should be taken after April 1 to have a net annual value for rating equal to their full value by the year. Subsection (1) of Clause 3 accordingly deletes the reference to three-fifths from Section 200 of the County Courts Act.

My Lords, it is axiomatic, as every schoolboy knows, that the whole is greater than the part, but Section 200 of the County Courts Act may in certain circumstances, as it now stands, produce a different result. If unrated premises are treated as having a net value equal to their full value by the year, it is possible, where they form part of a rated hereditament, that they may have to be given a notional rateable value exceeding the actual rateable value of the whole hereditament. This may happen, for example, where the part is let at a rent which includes a payment for furniture or services. Thus a situation could arise in which the part has to be treated as having a rateable value exceeding £400, although the whole hereditament has a rateable value of less than £400, with the paradoxical result that the county court would have jurisdiction to entertain an action relating to the whole of the land, but not one relating to the unrated part. To prevent such a situation from arising, subsection (2) of Clause 3 makes it unnecessary to assess the value of unrated premises forming part of a hereditament with a net annual value for rating not exceeding £400. The part will simply be treated as having a rateable value equivalent to that of the whole.

The only other clause with which I need trouble your Lordships is Clause 4. This clause concerns the very important jurisdiction of the county court under the Landlord and Tenant Act, 1954, and related Acts. Part II of the 1954 Act enables the tenant of business premises in certain circumstances to apply to the court for a new lease. Where the rateable value of the property does not exceed £500, the jurisdiction of the court is exercised by the county court. Here again the jurisdiction should be raised by 300 per cent. so as to take into account the increase in rateable values since the date when it was fixed. Clause 4 will accordingly substitute £2,000 for the figure of £500 in the Landlord and Tenant Act.

My Lords, to sum up, this Bill does no more than restore the jurisdiction of the county court to the real level at which it was fixed eight or nine years ago; and I hope that your Lordships will agree that it would clearly be undesirable if the county courts were deprived of a substantial part of their existing jurisdiction in possession actions quite fortuitously as the result of the increases in rateable values. I trust, therefore, that your Lordships will be prepared to give this Bill a Second Reading so as to facilitate its passage into law by the time the new valuation lists come into force. My Lords, I beg to move that the Bi11 be now read a second time.

Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(The Lord Chancellor.)

6.22 p.m.

LORD CHORLEY

My Lords, on behalf of noble Lords who sit on these Benches I am glad to give this Bill a welcome. The noble and learned Lord has explained that, for technical reasons in connection with the new rating valuations, it is necessary to increase the jurisdiction of the county court in three different types of case in the way he has shown the Bill does and which he has explained to us. Quite apart from this rather technical side of the matter, the county court is, of course, a most important court. Certainly we on these Benches are particularly concerned that the county courts should play their full part in the administration of justice in this country. Undoubtedly, they are manned now by a very competent group of judges. So far as I can make out, the standard there is very much higher than it was not so many years ago.

I have found it rather difficult to understand why in 1959, when in actions of tort and contract and in other respects the fall in the value of money was recognised by a considerable extension of the jurisdiction of the court in that type of case, in these cases in which land and tenancies are involved the figure was retained at £100, at which it had stood for quite a long time. I think that that really was a mistake. But this Bill will remedy that. Obviously there is everything to be said for it, and, so far as I can see, nothing to be said against it. It might have gone further than it has, particularly in regard to the second type of case which the noble and learned Lord explained to us, but, in all the circumstances, I am quite sure that this Bill ought to be passed.

6.25 p.m.

LORD OGMORE

My Lords, I am disappointed with this Bill. I naturally support it as far as it goes, but I do not support it with the even limited fervour of the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, who has just spoken. The noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor, in moving the Bill, told us that it does no more than restore the jurisdiction of the county court to the extent fixed eight or nine years ago. So, in other words, we have gone fast to get to the same place: we have not moved forward at all.

The reason for the introduction of this Bill to-day is merely that, as the noble Lord has said, the rateable values of property in this country are going up, on the whole, to about four times what they were previously. My own assessment of the position, so far as I have been able to assess it after looking at premises in my own area and at others I know, is that house property is going up about three and a half times and shop property is going up about four times. That varies, of course, according to the different localities in the country, town and rural districts, and it varies as to whether houses are new or old; but that, I would have thought, was the broad basis upon which to go. If that is so all we are doing in this Bill is to restore the situation to what it was in 1959 by just giving the county courts the jurisdiction they had then. I do not agree with the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, when he says that this will remedy the situation.

When the Bill came before us in 1959—and on previous occasions; I have spoken in this House over years on county court Bills—I said that we ought to extend the jurisdiction further. The noble and learned Lord's predecessor was to some extent sympathetic with regard to this point of view, and extended the jurisdiction to a limited extent; and he also did something about the appointment of county court judges to the High Court.

I have had experience in my time of the High Court and of the county court, and I have the greatest admiration for the county court and for the judges in the county courts. The noble Lord, Lord Chorley, said that at any rate some of them are perhaps a little more erudite than they were in the old days. But they are a fine body of men who get through an enormous amount of business, and who are acquainted with their locality. They get to know the leading people in the locality, they get to know the type of business done there, and they can become considerable figures in the locality. This is very different from judges coming to Assizes and hearing civil cases where they know very little about the situation. I am not talking about the criminal side now—there are certain advantages, I think, in having criminal cases tried by somebody who knows little about the local situation. I am talking about the civil side. In that respect I think the county court judge has a great advantage over the High Court Judge.

High Court cases either have to be tried on Assize or they have to be transferred to London, with all the expense that this entails. Now if one just goes over the margin—that is to say the margin between what is admissible in the county court and what is admissible in the High Court—it means that the expense becomes enormously greater. For one thing, one has to employ counsel—maybe two counsel, leading counsel and junior counsel—as well as solicitors. For another thing, one has to come to London, which involves expense. You have to employ London agents; to bring your witnesses to London; if you live in the country, you have to stay in London yourself. When one has regard to all these factors one sees how important it is for the public to have justice on their own doorstep. And that is where justice should be. The idea that justice is something remote, something which is terribly expensive—I know that there is now legal aid; but, after all, some people do not qualify for it, and others have to contribute a great deal towards the cost—should, to my mind, no longer be part of our judicial and legal system.

It is true, of course, that we have very eminent Judges in the High Court, and there are certain classes of case which one would naturally prefer to be tried in the High Court—specialist cases, Admiralty cases, and all that sort of thing. There are certain classes of cases which naturally one would prefer to be tried in the High Court: cases where there are legal principles of great magnitude. But to my mind that is the distinction between the two, and not the value of the particular land or contract. In other words, it should not be a monetary distinction which decides whether one goes to the county court or to the High Court: it should be according to the complexity, the legal complexity, of the matter. We should then begin to see that we got some sort of sense in the administration of justice. At the moment it can act very unfairly to the local people.

Not only is litigation far less expensive in the county court; it is also far simpler. The High Court, particularly the Chancery Division, is still far too complex; there are far too many interrogatory proceedings before one gets to trial. When one regards the very simplified form of process in the county court one realises that the High Court could learn a good deal from it. One looks at the enormous White Book for High Court practice. One hears all the arguments, all the technical details, all the time it takes to bring a case to trial: often it takes years to bring a case. It is all very cumbersome and, in these days, old-fashioned. We must get away from it; we should get back to the old idea of the Court of Piedpoudre where the judges would sit in the market-place and give their decision. Very often, what the parties want is a decision as quickly as possible; and the high elaborations of lawyers are not always to their advantage or to their taste.

We have this first-class band of county court judges, and many of them could, with profit, I believe, be elevated to the High Court. I have pursued this matter in your Lordships' House for many years, and I feel that many of these county court judges should be elevated to the High Court because, for one thing, they could bring to it a great mass of experience of the law as it applies to the ordinary litigant. The trouble with the High Court is that some of the Judges, though they are very high and eminent lawyers, sometimes have not a great deal of experience of the law as it is applied and used in day-to-day transactions. They may have been great specialists. They may have been very eminent Silks who have been briefed only in cases of great complexity. Sometimes, but not in all cases, they are not used to the rough-and-tumble of the administration of the law which those who have practised in the country know. I have practised in London and in South Wales, and therefore I can speak with some knowledge of the difference between the various courts and the attitudes of the judges to these various matters.

The final point I would make is this. In the county courts solicitors have a right of audience, and many become highly experienced and very able; and, of course, it is much cheaper for a litigant to employ a solicitor than a solicitor and a barrister or a solicitor and two barristers. I believe that many of those solicitors should be enabled to be appointed, if the Lord Chancellor thought fit, to the county court bench. I should not like to say that no solicitor has ever been appointed to a county court bench, but I do not know of one. There have been cases where barristers who were formerly solicitors have been appointed, but I do not recall one appointment of a solicitor.

The predecessor of the noble Lord at present on the Woolsack broke fresh ground in appointing solicitors as stipendiary magistrates, one in London and one, I think, in Liverpool. At the time I welcomed this. It was a healthy move. I should like to see a similar development in the appointment of suitable solicitors to the county court benches. I am not, myself, an applicant and I am not pressing this from any personal point of view, except that I have seen the system work and I know this could be an advantage. After all, solicitors are registrars in courts and sit at minor matters and hear cases. I should like to put in one more plea for the common training of barristers and solicitors. It is quite absurd that this country should be one of the only countries in the world to have two separate professions of law which are trained in quite different ways and which have really no connection between them.

I feel the time has long passed when there should be one system of legal training. If it is then desired to have two separate branches of the professions, one the equivalent of the advocates' branch and the other the equivalent of the general practitioners' or solicitors' branch, then that decision should be taken by the law student after he has qualified, and not, as now, before he begins to study. There are many cases in my own experience where it is obvious that a man has entered the wrong profession and it is hard for him to turn over after he has qualified and has had years of experience. He has to disbar or dis-enrol himself and then pass the final examination. This is nonsense. I know I have in this instance the sympathy of the noble Lord on the Woolsack. Both he and his predecessor have expressed sympathy for this point of view. I hope that this will be the case in future, and this will make it even easier to appoint solicitors to county court benches, because then all would have had a common basis of education. That is all I have to say. I would reiterate that I am disappointed that the opportunity has not been taken to extend this excellent—

LORD LINDGREN

My Lords, may I interrupt before the noble Lord sits down? I did not want to interrupt his main theme. During the course of his observations he said that the rateable values of domestic hereditaments have gone up three and a half times, which is correct. He also said that the rateable values of shop and business premises have gone up four times. Is that correct? Actually shop and business premises were rated at 80 per cent. of their current values and are now going up to 100 per cent. Domestic premises were at 1939 values and have gone up three and a half times. Really, shops and businesses have only gone from 80 per cent. of their current value to 100 per cent. current value.

6.37 p.m.

THE LORD CHANCELLOR

My Lords, as I hope I indicated, this is a Bill with a limited object and a Bill about which there is some urgency. If it is not enacted before April 1 then the cases which could be tried at the county court at the present moment will not be triable there after that. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, and the noble Lord, Lord Ogmore, for the tributes they paid to the county court benches, and I join with them in their admiration of county court judges. I was sorry to hear the noble Lord, Lord Ogmore, venture to criticise the Judges of the High Court Bench. I do not think there is any justification for that. However, I am not here to debate that. I suppose it can always be argued where the line should be drawn between the High Court and the county court jurisdiction. There will always be room for argument about that, and different people will take different points of view. I do not share the view expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Ogmore, on this matter, and it is not the fact that if a case cannot be tried in the county court it inevitably has to come to London. There are opportunities for trying it at assizes.

In considering this question of jurisdiction in the county court it is very important to keep in mind the original idea that lay behind the creation of the county courts: that they should be the poor man's courts. If we enlarge the jurisdiction too much, then there comes a time when there is a real danger of their ceasing to possess that character. I am not expressing a view at this moment—it is not relevant to the Bill under consideration—as to whether or not there should be some increase in jurisdiction, but I think it is a factor to be borne in mind and to which a great deal of attention should be paid, that the county courts should not cease to maintain the character and reputation they have had so long as the poor man's court.

The other points that the noble Lord, Lord Ogmore, raised I do not think relate to the content of this Bill. He gave expression to views which I somehow feel he has taken the opportunity of expressing on similar occasions. I hope he will not take it from my silence with regard to them that I assent to the views he has expressed. He knows my opinion about lack of training. I go with him to some extent in that, but not to the full extent of the ideas he has expressed to-day. Of course, it does not rest with the Government or upon the views of your Lordships' House, but I hope that real progress will be made for starting a system of common education for members of both sides of the legal profession. I thank your Lordships for the reception which you have given to this Bill.

On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.