Civil Procedure Rules (Hansard, 29 March 2001)

§ The Lord Chancellor

My department has today publishedEmerging Findings: An Early Evaluation of the Civil Justice Reforms, which sets out the evidence we have so far and plans for further evaluation. The paper shows that the reforms have been generally welcomed and appear to be working well.

The key findings from the report are:

overall there has been a drop in the number of claims issued, in particular in the types of claim where the new Civil Procedure Rules have been introduced;
anecdotal evidence suggests pre-action protocols are working well to promote settlement before issue and to reduce the number of ill-founded claims;
the system of claimants offers has been welcomed by all interested groups as a means of resolving claims more quickly;
there has been a rise in the number of cases in which Alternative Dispute Resolution is used, suggesting that, since the introduction of the Civil Procedure Rules, parties are more likely to try alternative means of settling claims;
the use of single joint experts appears to have worked well. It is likely that their use has contributed to a less adversarial culture, earlier settlement and may have cut costs;
the time between issue and hearing for those cases which go to trial has fallen;
it is too early to provide a definitive view on costs with statistics difficult to obtain and conflicting anecdotal evidence.

Copies of the report have been placed in the Library of the House.