"To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice..."

[liadnan]

HHJ Paul Collins, speaking on Law in Action, states that "We are operating on the margins of effectiveness, and with further cuts looming we run the risk of bringing about a real collapse in the [County Court] service". Given the drive to move more and more business to the County Courts over the last 8 years it's about time someone said something.

As the BBC News Article points out: "County courts are no longer subsidised by the taxpayer. Instead, they are expected to generate all their income from fees charged to court users."
However, the courts' budgets are fixed by the government and although the courts more than covered their costs last year, the surplus raised from fees was spent on other services."

The first part of that I continue to find particularly appalling, as I have this vague idea that providing a way for disputes between citizens to be resolved is one of the fundamental reasons we have states in the first place. The fact that the courts now have "customers" is a fucking disgrace. And yes, they really do call them customers. I am occasionally tempted to scribble on the notice addressed to Customers in room TM101 of the RCJ ("what can we do for you today madam. Two bankruptcies, an order for sale, and approval of an IVA? Yes, we take visa.")

That the County Courts are heading for chaos, just as they are dealing with more and more complex and high value cases is certainly true. Even in the High Court, in the RCJ itself, some solicitors have taken to personally filing documents and obtaining a receipt as they go missing so often. Only the other day a hearing of mine in a London county court turned out, when we arrived, not to be the kind of hearing it said it was on the order telling us to to turn up, but something rather different. Reason: the order actually made by the judge going through the file (without a hearing) had been sent off to some shonky outfit with the contract for drawing up the formal version of the order, and what had emerged from them bore little or no resemblance to what he had actually ordered. This happens all the time. This after a decade of reforms supposedly intended to make the administration of justice more efficient. The (continuing) reforms to Legal Aid have undoubtedly had the result that people either simply don't bring good claims or represent themselves, which they tend to do very badly (though there are exceptions), thus not only failing to present their own case to its best but vastly extending the time and effort everyone else ends up spending on it. God alone knows what will happen in the High Court when/if the proposed move and semi-merger of the Commercial Court and the Chancery Division to the Rolls Building, and the various consequent changes suggested happen, let alone if the more drastic plans for the abolition of the Divisions (which allow for the people dealing with a case, both court staff and judiciary, to have a bit of a clue about what is involved in that kind of case) and the even more vague idea about the merger of the High and County Courts ever happen.

Comments

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

The commoditisation of justice.... there's something not even Kafka thought of. It soes sound hellish.

I have a feeling that a lot of the institutions that have been "rightsized" or "re-engineered" are now surfing on the very edge of the catastrophe wave - the NHS, the Courts, Utilities, Government... the Domino Effect, anyone?

[liadnan]

Both this government and its predecessor are fundamentally convinced that radical change is the way forward, everywhere. It is Bad if something hasn't been changed. (How very Marxist of them). In many cases that may well be so. But what gets ignored is that there was usually a reason for the way things were done before. Many times a bad, or at least outdated reason. But sometimes, even often, something that had evolved because it Worked, and had been tinkered with over years. Sometimes, just sometimes, while it's always right to ask if things should be done differently, the answer maybe "No". That's aside from what I believe to be a fundamental point of principle: that proper, efficient justice, like defence, is something the state should provide as a service funded by general taxation. Civil no less than criminal: the ability of one person to seek redress from another for a wrong is as fundamental -perhaps more so- as the ability of the state to investigate crime and punish the wrongdoer.

There's also the issue of IT in particular. In the Court system, as elsewhere, this was supposed to be the answer to all our problems, and many of the changes were predicated on the technology being available. Which it isn't, because the money isn't there and the capital investment has not been made (and then it doesn't necessarily work as planned anyway).

See Daniel Davies on Comment is Free on a similar point here: http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/daniel_davies/2006/09/dont_just_do_something_stand_t.html

[coughingbear]

I'm extremely fond of that article.

Obviously I don't know about civil proceedings, but at the court I've been at for the last two weeks I was struck by the shortage of staff. They were advertising jobs to jurors, though in a rather hopeless way, and the court clerk seemed to be fulfilling various other functions every day but one that I saw. Which of course just slowed everything down that bit more.

[liadnan]

Sing it now:
"The phrase "The status quo is no longer an option" is reliably the leper's bell of the modern managerial idiot. It is almost always wrong. Like Status Quo, the status quo is often vastly underrated simply because it is unfashionable. The great thing about the status quo is that it is not any worse than the status quo. Surprisingly few proposals for "radical and far reaching reform" can actually beat this standard."

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

Not particularly a Marxist creed - the Thatcherites didn't seem reluctant to sell the family silver or create internal markets. Old Marcus A probably pinned it best:
"It is no evil for things to undergo change, and no good for things
to subsist in consequence of change."

And I wish Hippocrates was more widely listened to when change programs get underway - "First, do no harm."

[liadnan]

Oh I agree Thatcherism was no better, this government simply follows Thatcherite/Majorite policy on a lot of this, particularly with reference to legal reforms. Actually, isn't it Maoism that makes such a thing of perpetual revolution?

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

I've always associated it with capitalism - no one ever made a buck in a static market.

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

That's an article worth cheering.

[beingfrank.livejournal.com]

Ironically, one of the things I most like about the public policy strategy guide produced by the UK Prime Minister's strategy group is that it's constantly hammering home that for every proposed change one should start by questioning if that change should even be made and I think that's a good question to ask. Maybe it's the strategy group's way of crying?

[anstruther.livejournal.com]

You can't open a legal rag at the moment without seeing a reference to the Legal Services Bill and the commoditisation of legal services, but the commoditisation of justice is a whole 'nother level of scary.

[liadnan]

This is why I don't read the legal press...

[anstruther.livejournal.com]

Except for rollonfriday.

[liadnan]

Ah, that doesn't count. (Except for being momre on the ball, pithier, and funnier than any of the rest)

[liadnan]

.. actually, I've done a ton today, I think I deserve a bit of time on the board looking for L's latest lunacies.

[blonde222.livejournal.com]

Thirteen minutes ago I was at HMCS being interviewed.

What a day to pick.

I'm not surprised the court staff are less than motivated and always leaving when they're only paid £11k a year.

[blonde222.livejournal.com]

PS I am actually in favour of courts having customers, if that means courts have customer service. The problem is, they don't.

[liadnan]

Customers buy things. And have the option to buy from various competing places. They choose to take their custom to one place over another. That one ought not to be able to buy justice should go without saying. It is a service to which I am entitled as a citizen, not one for which I should have to shop. As for competition, well certainly in the county court that's not exactly relevant (it's a more defensible argument in the Commercial Court, where there are often choice of law, jurisdiction and forum clauses in play and the court users really are shopping around for an effieient forum: at that level the High Court is indeed in competition with other fora, particularly NY, and there's also the Arbitration alternatives)

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

When I worked in HR my colleagues were my customers. And there was me thinking they were my colleagues.

[liadnan]

What were they buying from you?

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

What were they buying from you?

Training. They used the currency of rudeness and disinterest.

[lexin.livejournal.com]

I remember once getting into terrible trouble at work by pointing out (I worked then for the Contributions Agency) that the 'customer' in the sense of 'payer' for our services was the taxpayer, that they had a right to see things done properly and fairly, and that not every complaint against us ("Why do you hate company directors?")* was justified.

* Answer: because nine times out of ten, where an underpayment is down to an individual, it be found in directors' pay. In the tenth case it will be either the bookkeeper or accountant.

[blonde222.livejournal.com]

I don't think the qualification of customer is choice. The qualifier to be a customer is 'are you paying for it?', and I think we are. As citizens, we pay taxes in return for living in a civil society. And as part of living in a civil society, I want justice: fairly, courteously and accessibly dispensed.

[liadnan]

I simply don't see the word customer as applicable to the relationship between state and taxpayer. To equate the private commercial world with that of state monopolies of fundamental services is misleading at best. You make the point yourself by basing it on the three-step relationship: pay-taxes - to live in a civil society - one aspect of which is efficient justice etc. A customer relationship would be one in which you pay money for justice, bringing civil society into it makes the term and concept wholly inappropriate.

The qualifier to be a customer is to be someone who takes one's custom to a place. I do think the idea of choice is fundamental to that, otherwise it isn't custom.

But in any event you are evading the issue. The point is that the court service is increasingly funded by court fees, and has been since a Treasury decision as long ago as 1992. Brooke LJ described some of the background in a speech made in 2004, largely about the IT issues I refer to. (That speech, highly critical of government policy, has an odd history, being removed from the DCA website for a while until people who had already seen it began asking why). That is who the "customers" are: not the taxpayers but the users for the time being. That takes the civil courts from being a state service paid for through general taxation and there when you need it, to being a commercial enterprise for which you pay on a scale rate at the point of use -but a monopoly one.

You aren't a "customer" in their eyes simply by virtue of paying taxes. Even that I would consider an abuse of language. You are a customer at the point of use. When you pay your issue fee, your allocation fee, etc etc.

And the you get a shit service - because this simply doesn't provide enough money to run the system properly.

[pashazade.livejournal.com]

am occasionally tempted to scribble on the notice addressed to Customers in room TM101 of the RCJ ("what can we do for you today madam. Two bankruptcies, an order for sale, and approval of an IVA? Yes, we take visa.")

*dark-hued mirth from stage left*