§ Colonel DAYasked the Attorney-General whether he is aware that the Report of Mr. Justice P. O. Lawrence's Committee (Command Paper 2358) made no provision or recommendation as to the following out-of-pocket expenses of poor persons, which could not be affected by decentralisation, namely, a husband's liability in matrimonial proceedings to pay or secure his wife's costs, whether or not he is a poor person admitted to proceed under the poor person's rules, and the costs of service and obtaining evidence abroad, and which have been estimated by the secretary of the poor person's department to amount, in an average case, to at least £25; and what steps are proposed to enable a poor person, under either the old or the proposed new scheme of legal aid in the Supreme Court, being entirely without 2252W means, to pay or secure his wife's costs or have service effected and evidence obtained abroad?
§ The ATTORNEY - GENERALThe amount of deposit required under the present Rules in a divorce case is £5. The cost to a poor person petitioner (whether wife or husband) is found in practice, in the great majority of cases, to be less than that amount, and the difference is returned to the petitioner. It is to be expected that the amount of the costs (whether wife's or husband's) will be considerably reduced on an average by decentralisation. Rare cases occur where greater cost is necessarily incurred, and, as I have repeatedly stated, it is not proposed to make any grant from public funds towards the expenses of those costs.