Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Before my noble and learned friend leaves this issue, he knows that my concern is that this amounts to a dialogue between Government and the Civil Procedure Rule Committee, with no input from Parliament whatever, and no guidance to the Civil Procedure Rule Committee on how it should proceed and what the parameters are. What I was seeking to do, in broad terms, with my amendment was to introduce certain specific things—for example, that the word ““unreasonable”” should not be used in these procedure rules, but we should revert to familiar territory, such as ““frivolous””, ““vexatious””, ““abusive of process”” and ““fraudulent claim””, actually spelling out where a judge should have a discretion and where he should not. ““Unreasonable”” has such a broad meaning that it would put any litigant off if he were to be told by his solicitor, ““We will take this case forward, but you have got to appreciate that, at the end, the judge may look at it and say that your conduct is unreasonable””. What does that mean? As I endeavoured to show in my remarks, in explaining that concept in the report Lord Justice Jackson used the term ““fraudulent, frivolous””, although he did not use ““vexatious””. I am seeking clarity. The Civil Procedure Rules will come out of the air from somewhere and will not have any proper parliamentary scrutiny. They will have been drawn up as a result of discussion between the Executive and the Civil Procedure Rule Committee, which is entirely made up of judges and lawyers. I would have thought that there would be a constitutional position. It is more serious than anything else in the Bill. The Civil Procedure Rule Committee should have guidance, as elsewhere in this Bill it does. Over and over again in the Bill, we come across regulations being made by the Lord Chancellor. There is specificity about that. But this position is highly unsatisfactory. If the Minister cannot put something in the Bill in the way in which he has described, what assurances will Parliament have that the Civil Procedure Rule Committee will act in accordance with certain principles?