Commons Amendments (Hansard, 21 October 1969)

§ THE LORD CHANCELLOR

My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth agree with the Commons in Amendment No. 1, and if no noble Lord objects I would invite the House to consider Amendments Nos. 1 to 8 inclusive, since they deal with the same matter, though with two aspects of it. As your Lordships know, at the moment the jurisdiction of the county court lies in claims up to, but not exceeding, £500. It is of course necessary to have some form of penalty for people who insist on bringing in the High Court an action which ought to have been brought in the county court, because that places a bigger expense on the defendant. Under our existing legislation, with the limitation of £500 it is provided that if someone begins an action in the High Court 1616 which could have been brought in the county court and fails to recover as much as £400, he is to be awarded only the amount of costs which he would have got if action had been brought in the county court, while if he does not recover as much as £75 he gets no costs at all. As your Lordships know, this Bill increases the jurisdiction of the county court from £500 to £750, and obviously there have to be increases in those two figures. In the Bill as it left your Lordships' House the £400 became £600 and the £75 became £150, which was substantially in accordance with the ratios laid down by both Lord Justice Winn's Committee and Mr. Justice Payne's Committee on the enforcement of judgment debts.

As to the £600, a strong view was expressed in Committee in another place—not in the least on Party lines, but a large majority of the Committee from all parts of the House—that £600 was too high. What they said was that this will place too grave a difficulty in the way of those who have to advise clients, because they may advise somebody to bring an action in the county court and the county court judge may say: "I should have awarded £750, but as you brought the action in the county court I cannot give you more than £750"; and they would be blamed by their client for not having brought the action in the county court. If, on the other hand, they brought the action in the High Court and were awarded £595, that would only carry county court costs, and the client would have to pay the difference.

The Committee said that from many points of view it is more difficult to gauge the total amount of damages in some of the small injury cases than in the more standardised large cases—it depends so much on what impression the witness makes on the judge and so on—and it really requires too good shooting for lawyers positively to say: "This case is somewhere between £600 and £750 ". The Committee felt that that limit was really too small. I saw a deputation of Members from another place of all Parties, who said that they would like the £400 increased to £450. But subsequently (as your Lordships know, this is a Government which is always ready to listen to views and change their mind), I thought it right to authorise my right honourable friend the Solicitor General 1617 to accept a figure of £500. I hope your Lordships will think that that is a sensible sum.

The difference between £75 and £150 also gave rise to disputes, but of an entirely different character. After the Bill left your Lordships' House I had for the first time strong representations from the sheriffs. As your Lordships know, the sheriffs levy execution in the case of High Court judgments and bailiffs in the case of county court judgments. There is a large number of debt collecting actions brought in the county court. If and when there is Parliamentary time to implement the recommendations of Mr. Justice Payne's Committee, then all this debt collecting work will be taken out of the High Court and put into the county court, and each county court will have an enforcement officer. But until that is so it remains with the sheriffs, and they have satisfied me that the effect of increasing the figure from £75 to £150 would be to make it virtually impossible for them to carry on. They quite realise that if and when the recommendations of Mr. Justice Payne's Committee are implemented they will in effect cease to exist for their present purposes, and their employees will no doubt become employees of the bailiffs. But meanwhile they have other duties to perform—attending assizes, empanelling juries and so on—and an increase from £75 to £150 would deprive them of about half their total debt collecting work, which would go straight to the county court, and, in a sense, before the county court arrangements had been made to receive them. It was for those reasons that an Amendment was acepted in the other place to increase £75 to only £100.

Amendments Nos. 2, 4 and 5 simply substitute the figure of £500 for £600: Amendments Nos. 1, 3, 6, 7 and 8 merely substitute £100 for £150. Unless any noble Lord objects, I will accordingly move that this House doth agree with the Commons in their Amendments Nos. 1 to 8.