Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Bill [Lords]

The Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Bill may not be the raciest title to come before us this Session, but the Bill covers important subjects that affect people in their everyday lives. I want first to pay tribute to my noble Friends Lords Kingsland and Lucas, who made some important improvements in the other place and turned this into a better Bill. Tribunals exist to allow people straightforward, inexpensive and relatively informal access to justice and they play a crucial role in our justice system and our society. Equally, the enforcement of debt is crucial to business, but also vital to consumers, particularly as debt is at an all-time high. We support the broad objectives of the Bill. It will unify the tribunal system, and much of it is based on Sir Andrew Leggatt’s report, ““Tribunals for Users””, which proposed significant structural reform of the tribunal system, including a move towards a unified service. The purpose of that is to improve and simplify the tribunals for those who are required to use them, which is an objective that we fully support. There are 70 tribunals with many different sets of rules of procedure. That makes the system more complicated than it needs to be and difficult for users. Sir Andrew’s report set out three key principles for reform: first, and most important, the tribunal system should be completely independent of the Executive; secondly, the system should be rationalised to give the full benefit of economies of scale; and thirdly, tribunals should not be courts and should be there for the users and be a reflection not of the state, but of the needs of the consumer. On the first principle, the Bill is a great improvement on the existing arrangements. Each Department of State provides administrative support for each relevant tribunal, appoints and pays the members, and sets out—or promotes—the legislation defining what their procedural rules should be. However, for bodies that have an important judicial function, tribunals have not been constituted sufficiently independently. Responsibility for administering tribunals should not fall on the very Department whose decision the tribunal will be judging, so we support the Government’s proposals in that area. Economies of scale will achieve improvements of two sorts. With the Department for Constitutional Affairs responsible for a single tribunal system, there will be opportunities to make savings by amalgamating functions: dealing with the appointment of staff, more flexible working of staff between tribunals, the purchase of equipment in bulk, united interpretation and other communications services, training, and the efficient use of premises. However, we have certain concerns over some ways in which the intentions behind the Bill are to be delivered.