Civil Court Fees (Hansard, 13 March 2000)

§ The Lord Chancellor (Lord Irvine of Lairg)
My Lords, I doubt your Lordships would be best pleased if I took up time literally listing all the organisations which have responded. I shall write to the noble Lord with a comprehensive list. However, 15 interest groups have responded, including the Consumers' Association, the TUC, the Law Society, the Advice 1280 Services Alliance and the Civil Courts Users' Association. Ten managers of a range of court groups have responded, as have 12 firms of solicitors and local law societies and six court user organisations and individuals. There has also been an extensive response from the judiciary. The total of 76 responses has therefore been comprehensive.

§ Lord Goodhart
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord for that Answer. What is the Government's response to the call for a moratorium on the proposed increases in civil court fees which has been issued jointly by the Advice Services Alliance, the Consumers' Association, the Law Society, the Legal Action Group, NACAB and the Public Law Project? Does the noble and learned Lord accept the argument put forward by these and other organisations that the proposed increases in the court fees will seriously inhibit access to justice, particularly for those whose incomes are only just over the fee exemption limit?

§ The Lord Chancellor
My Lords, I do not accept that argument. I shall be signing a new fees order, probably today. It will take effect from 25th April. It is necessary to continue to follow the policy of full cost recovery. I shall listen with great care to the responses to the consultation. I shall publish an analysis of responses by the beginning of April. When I arrive at preliminary policy conclusions, I shall consult on them. However, the government policy of full cost recovery remains.

§ Lord Ackner
My Lords, does my noble and learned friend agree that it is quite wrong for access to justice to be seriously prejudiced by excessive civil court fees? Can he tell us the extent to which the number of civil actions has fallen—if it has fallen—since the principle was accepted by the Government that court fees should be sufficiently high even to cover the cost of milk for the office cat?

§ The Lord Chancellor
My Lords, let us not forget that the main deterrent to going to law is not court fees but lawyers' fees. To argue that the current level of court fees is a deterrent to litigants is rather like arguing that people are deterred from buying a new car by an increase in vehicle excise duty.
My present judgment is that there is nothing wrong with a general principle that those who can afford to do so should pay a fair fee for the use of the courts to resolve their disputes. I listened carefully to the representations that were made criticising the allocation fee in defendant claims up to £1,000, and I have recently announced the abolition of that allocation fee.
The taxpayer, however, pays in full the court fees of parties who are in receipt of a range of benefits: working families' tax credit, disabled persons' tax credit, income support and others. Thus the taxpayer pays in full, or where remissions apply in part, the court fees of those for whom payment of the full fee would constitute undue hardship. Also there are categories of litigation, such as Children Act and domestic violence applications, where the fees are set 1281 about 40 or 50 per cent beneath the true cost. We should also remember that the taxpayer pays in full from the Legal Aid Fund the court fees of those eligible for legally aided representation.