Civil Proceedings, Family Proceedings and Upper Tribunal Fees (Amendment) Order 2016 — House of Lords, 2016-03-15
Topic: Law and Crime
Simon Denis Brown (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, this is the second time that the Lord Chancellor has exercised his power under Section 180 of the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 to prescribe enhanced fees—court fees, that is, that exceed the cost to the Courts and Tribunals Service of doing that for which the fee is charged. This power was first used last year in relation to the fees for bringing court proceedings to recover sums of money. On 4 March last year—a year ago—the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, moved a regret Motion, on which I spoke. Frankly, much of what I said then applies with equal—indeed, even greater—force today. I pointed out that there has long been objection even to the basic principle of full cost recovery. The justice system exists for the benefit of society as a whole and really courts should no more be required to be self-financing than, say, the police service Of course, orders for enhanced fees go altogether further than mere cost recovery. In a real sense, as the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, explained, they amount to selling justice—on the face of it contrary to Magna Carta, although now of course regrettably sanctioned by Section 180 of that Christmas tree of an Act we passed two years ago, the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act. As I pointed out in last year’s debate, that Act stretches to 186 clauses and 11 schedules, occupying 232 pages of the Queen’s Printer’s copy. Small wonder that by Clause 180 we had grown a little lax or careless in our scrutiny of that Bill Today I want to focus briefly on the increased fees now to be exacted for a decree of divorce or nullity, an increase of about a third from £410 to £550. In the Government’s January 2015 response to part 2 of the consultation on the so-called reform of court fees, it was recorded at page 40 that the senior judiciary, who were, naturally enough, a statutory consultee in the process, "noted that the current divorce fee was above cost" The recent 20th report of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee confirmed this, noting at page 4 that the Ministry of Justice’s own estimate of the average cost of dealing with an uncontested divorce application is only £270—this new enhanced fee being therefore just over double that Of course, that earlier consultation related specifically to the then-proposed increase of the fee to £750—a proposal later abandoned. However, the objection remains essentially as to the original proposal, summarised in the case of the higher judiciary at paragraph 8.5 of the Explanatory Memorandum to this order. The objection was that, "it will be a disincentive for divorce and in particular, women that are victims of domestic violence" Essentially, that echoed earlier objections that an increased divorce fee, "could lead to parties being trapped in unhappy or violent marriages", and could prevent people from marrying or remarrying and being therefore, "without the protection the law affords to married couples" At the conclusion of last year’s debate, noting that the Motion was one of only regret and not a fatal Motion, I expressed the hope that at least it would persuade the Government that enough is enough and really there must be no more use of this enhanced fee power. Alas, the Government have now chosen to go still further down this sorry road. This order is to be not merely regretted; it is to be deplored.