The Government’s Plans on Civil Justice

Abstract

The Labour Government's plans for reform of civil justice and of legal aid were announced by the Lord Chancellor, Lord Irvine of Lairg, in his keynote address at the Law Society's Annual Conference held in Cardiff on Saturday 18 October 1997.1 In summary, the package of reforms of civil justice proposed by Lord Woolf2 was to be implemented; there was to be a radical shake-up of legal aid and, in particular, legal aid for most money claims would be abolished on the ground that even poor people could be expected to make conditional fee agreements. Lord Irvine's speech was given just two days before the publication of the Middleton Report.3 Sir Peter Middleton, a former Treasury mandarin, had been asked by Lord Irvine to conduct a lightning review4 of the existing reform proposals on civil justice and legal aid and to advise. His 83-page report broadly endorsed the Woolf package. It also endorsed many of the plans for reform of legal aid proposed by the previous Government, including in particular, a system to achieve control of overall expenditure.5 The writer has consistently opposed the Woolf reforms,6 though that critical position has been a somewhat lonely one. By contrast, the Labour Government's plans for reform of civil legal aid have been widely criticised by lawyers' and consumers' bodies alike. This note is an assessment of the Government's proposals on civil justice.7 In these reforms the Government is simply adopting the ongoing work on implementation that was put in hand by the previous Lord Chancellor Lord Mackay, and that was continued by Lord