Judicial Standing Orders (Hansard, 17 October 1995)

§ The Lord Chancellor (Lord Mackay of Clashfern)
My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
On 12th June the House agreed the third report from the Select Committee on House of Lords Offices which, among other things, recommended a significant increase in the fees payable by those bringing appeals to your 672 Lordships' House. In addition, the House agreed to the imposition of a fee for bringing a petition for leave to appeal to the House.
In the discussions which took place before the recommendations were made, some concern was expressed lest the new level of fees should deter those who might otherwise wish to bring an appeal or a petition for leave to appeal here. The great majority of cases which reach your Lordships' House are brought by organisations which are unlikely to be affected by the increase. It is also true that in the case of individuals who appeal here, the great majority are legally aided. However, it is possible that an individual who does not qualify for legal aid, but whose financial resources are nevertheless not great, might wish to appeal to or to petition your Lordships' House. It is in order to provide for such an eventuality that I ask your Lordships to agree to an addition to the Standing Order, the terms of which are set out on the Order Paper. I believe that the wording sufficiently expresses its purpose and scope. The amendments to the schedule are consequential upon the decision of the House on 12th June. I commend the Motion to the House.

§ Lord Lester of Herne Hill
My Lords, I very much welcome the amendments and their object which is, as I understand it, to reduce any possibility of unnecessary or unreasonable interference with access to justice in cases litigated in this House. Your Lordships may not be aware of the size of the problem. The increase in fees which your Lordships approved is truly astronomical. Without wearying the House with all the figures, perhaps I may give just three examples. The petition of appeal fee is, as I understand it, to rise from £68 to £500; the notice of appearance fee is to rise from £8 to £100 and the waiver of security for costs fee is to rise from £17 to £100. I hope that my arithmetic is correct because the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor is a very distinguished mathematician as well as jurist.
I give those figures because there has been, as the noble and learned Lord indicated, widespread concern. I should like to clarify whether the language of the discretion which is being conferred on the Appeal Committee is wide enough to cover somebody who does not qualify for legal aid but who has not been refused legal aid. I assume from what has just been said by the noble and learned Lord that although the wording is couched in terms of a refusal, the discretion is wide enough to cover somebody who is ineligible for legal aid but who will suffer real financial hardship because of fees of this level.
673 The other point on which I should be grateful for clarification is as follows. In view of the massive increases in fees and of the very great costs being imposed on litigants by the existing procedural rules which require, for example, 15 copies of the case to be lodged and for them to be paginated in a particularly expensive and, in my respectful submission, unnecessary way, will the noble and learned Lord and his advisers consider, with the Lords of Appeal in Ordinary and other relevant public officers, whether those costs might be looked at to see whether they could be reduced so that our supreme judicial authority, of which we are all very proud, does not inadvertently impose unnecessary barriers on access to the determination of cases?

§ The Lord Chancellor
My Lords, so far as concerns the first point, I take it that the wording is broad enough to cover anyone who is not entitled to legal aid and who would be refused it, for example, on financial grounds if they applied for it. I should not have thought that it would be necessary for a formal application to be made in that situation.
On the second point, I am very happy to consider, with my noble and learned friends the Lords of Appeal in Ordinary, any procedural simplifications that the noble Lord, Lord Lester of Herne Hill, has in mind. However, if one looks at the general picture to which he referred, it is important to observe that the costs in legal services associated with appeals to this House are large in comparison with the fees that are here in question. For example, the average taxed costs on bills in party and party taxation in this House in 1993 were of the order of £27,000, and in 1994 they were of the order of £33,000 when the fees charged for the facilities of the House, including of course the services of the Lords of Appeal in Ordinary (usually five in number), were about £500. What the House has decided to do is to go some distance towards making the fees for those facilities in this House somewhat more realistic.