§ Mr. T. JOHNSTONasked the Secretary for Scotland whether he is aware that, since July, 1922, a litigant in the Court of Session is subjected to a charge 233W of 10s. per hour for the time his or her counsel is speaking; and if, seeing that this method of raising revenue from litigants in a Court of Law is not applied to litigants in the Courts of any other part of the Empire, he will take the necessary steps to relieve poor people from this impost?
Mr. GRAHAMI have been asked to reply. The fee referred to is, I understand, only exigible when the speech is on evidence or in a jury trial. It is in substitution for a fee or fees for each witness examined and formed part of the recommendations of the Committee on Court Fees, which was presided over by Lord Blackburn and which reported as recently as 1922. While I admit that the principle of this fee is a new one, I have no evidence that it presses unduly on litigants, and its abolition, which I should deprecate after so short a period, would necessitate the imposition of alternative fees to yield an equal revenue. The cost of the Scottish Courts exceeds the amount raised in fees.