Liadnan

Look away now.

Well, don't actually.

Lord Justice Brooke, Vice-President of the Civil Division of the Court of Appeal and noted for his interest in modernisation and IT, made a speech a week ago you see. And last night it went up on the Department for Constitutional Affairs website, as is usual. But, strange to tell, it's not there now, nor are the links to it from other pages.

(ETA 16/12/2004: how strange. After several people manage to track down the google cache and publicise it, and wonder why it went from the DCA, it reappears...) (Further ETA (2007): after various moving around of websites it is now here.)

But it is in the google cache, here. [ETA: gone now, but I saved a copy.... ]

[W]e hoped to develop [a model he'd outlined using IT in a variety of practical ways] for the civil and family courts in those heady days four years ago before the sky fell in on St Swithin’s Day 2002, and the Treasury made it clear that any investment in modernisation would have to be paid for by litigants. Last month Lord Justice Thomas delivered a paper at Bangor University in which he traced the history of the warfare between the Treasury and successive Lord Chancellors since 1875 over who should bear the cost of the courts. In January 1965 Lord Gardiner beat off the Chief Secretary to the Treasury for six years. He told Mr Diamond that the country got its justice dirt cheap, when compared with continental systems of law. He also reminded him that Magna Carta said that we will not sell justice to the people. His letter ended “We really can’t mess about with Magna Carta in Magna Carta year.”

In 1992, however, against the background of the legal aid overspend, Magna Carta was indeed messed about. The Treasury got its way. From now on, every item of expenditure on the civil and family courts, judges, court buildings, IT infrastructure and all, had to be paid for by current litigants, subject to a very small public subsidy for the indigent and for family work. After ten years of these policies there was a £160 million backlog of essential court maintenance work in addition to the £160 million backlog of essential IT investment, and the courts had great difficulty in attracting and retaining the staff they needed to serve the judges properly.

[...]

I have spent over forty years of my life in the world of civil justice. Two and a half years ago I really thought we were on the way to creating new arrangements for civil and family justice of which this country could be proud. Now I see no light on the horizon at all. I do not even see any evidence that the scale of the problem is being properly addressed because there are so many other initiatives currently being pursued, which are distracting the attention of our policy-makers. And so long as the Treasury insists on its full cost recovery regime, things can only get worse. Much worse.

Can't think why it's been pulled from the DCA website.

(ETA: a bit that might be appreciated by those of you who work on large IT projects...

On the civil justice side valiant efforts were made in 1997 and 1998 to try and make plans for IT systems to support the Woolf reforms. These plans were always doomed. The rule-makers went on changing the rules right up to Woolf Day on 26 April 1999*, and nobody can design complex IT systems under those conditions. Those of us who knew a little about IT were worried that yet another set of inadequate systems were to be rushed out with no prospect of leading anywhere afterwards. Professor Richard Susskind, who advised us, kept on saying that we should now be building the foundations for a twelve-storey office block, and not another bungalow.

*context for non-lawyers or non-UKians: in 1999 the Rules of Court for civil procedure -how exactly you bring a claim etc- were drastically revised.)