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Small Claims (Courts)

I glad that you, Mr. Marshall, and a significant number of hon. Members, as well as the Minister, who has taken on new responsibilities, have stayed behind on the last day before the Easter recess in order to discuss the small claims track, which is important to a lot of our constituents. The report produced by my Committee gives a general commendation to the work done on the small claims track of the county court. It provides a genuine and valued service to large numbers of people with minimal effort, cost and complication and it is genuinely appreciated. We said in our report that the system"““generally works well in providing a low cost, good quality procedure for large numbers of litigants. The procedure is informal and quicker than ordinary proceedings. It assists litigants to appear in person by providing greater judicial intervention and support and enables people to avoid incurring substantial legal costs in order to pursue small monetary claims.””" We went on to say that we identified some problems, and I will refer to those in my speech. We visited county courts in various parts of the country individually, in places that were convenient to us. We talked to district court judges, who also gave evidence. We listened to cases from start to finish and took evidence from judges, personal injury lawyers, Citizens Advice, the Law Society and Ministers. We identified four issues. The first was the information technology situation in the county courts, particularly as it affects the small claims track. When we visited the county courts, we found the IT systems in a dreadful state. Judges admitted that they were using their computers merely as word processors. Even more concerning was the fact that we were informed that new software was performing poorly. The listing software, which could be accessed by the clerks and administrative staff, could not be accessed by the judges because of compatibility problems. We concluded that the Department must place greater priority on providing adequate IT facilities to the county courts. Although the provision of IT equipment and electronic document management software might be expensive in the short term, there would be scope for greater efficiencies if the current paper-based system were at least partially replaced, and the service to the public would be improved. The Government response includes the interesting phrase:"““We start from a low technology platform””—" a strange mixed metaphor. It continued:"““current investment in improved infrastructure, electronic scheduling, centralised data and future plans to develop electronic service channels will provide us with the opportunity to streamline the process further.””" Wonderful weasel words. The Government are saying not that they are actually going to do it, but that once they have done all that—even that is in doubt—they will have the opportunity to do more. The response said, of course, that financial constraints dictate the speed of progress, and that a"““programme to roll out a modern IT infrastructure to our large civil courts””" should have been completed by today—the end of March 2006. It continued:"““details of the scope and timetable for further developments is commercially sensitive.””"