Certainty is a valuable commodity in all walks of life and civil justice is no exception.
Consumers want to be certain that their legal issue will be dealt with promptly and fairly.
Their representatives want certainty that their business models are robust so they can plan properly for the future and continue to offer high-quality services to people when they need them the most. This is why ACSO is campaigning for regular, inflationary reviews of all the fees, costs, disbursements, thresholds and so on which exist in civil justice.
It is also why we ask for timely warnings of changes to civil procedure rules or other regulation that affects our sector, as well as reasonable notice of updates to the increasing number of digital portals that must be used to make or defend civil claims. Forewarned is forearmed, after all.
Many of the targets of these and other lobbying priorities will remain the same in 2024 and beyond, but one group, the politicians at the heart of decision-making processes, might soon change.
This is because we can also be certain that 2024 will be an election year. Although Rishi Sunak could delay polling day until January 2025, this would mean campaigning over the Christmas period, a wholly unwelcome present for activists and voters alike. November 2024 now looks the likeliest month.
We can also be certain that the two main political parties’ messages will be different sides of the same coin; the Conservatives that a switch to Labour represents a dangerous risk, Labour that the bigger risk is to continue as we are. Perhaps the most important and least commented-on factor will be turnout, noting that Tony Blair’s 1997 landslide depended on around two million Tory voters staying at home, giving him a 179-seat majority with fewer votes than with which John Major won a 21-seat victory five years previously. A big - or perhaps even small - Keir Starmer win this time around might depend on something similar.
Despite his legal background, civil justice has yet to feature on Sir Keir’s slowly developing agenda. This needs to change, with the civil justice system seriously strained. A widespread loss of public confidence in it, and in the rule of law, would have consequences well beyond the confines of just this one part of public policy.
Problems in the system can be seen most obviously in the county court delays that are the subject of the current Justice Select Committee inquiry ACSO called for. An unholy trinity of cost-cutting, Covid and incompetence provides the simple explanation for the record average waits. The solution to this and to ensuring the sustainability of the civil sector may be rather more complex, but it can only be reached by seeking answers from the bottom up, rather than them being imposed from the top down, as has happened far too often in recent times and with very patchy results.
This is why we are seeking commitment from the Labour Party that it will establish an independently chaired civil justice commission, should it enter government.
The commission’s role would be to bring together experts from across the civil system to identify the scale of the challenges and then the ways these can be addressed. Greater use of alternative dispute resolution, more take-up of legal expenses insurance and more technology will be part of the mix. More government funding seems unlikely given constraints on the public finances, but this must be part of the long-term thinking.
Such a commission would only start work in 2025 at the earliest, so in the meantime there are some key dates for our collective diaries.
For example, in April 2024 there will be further changes to the fixed recoverable costs regime in personal injury, as well as a possible extension of it to clinical negligence. Guidance on the exact plans has yet to emerge, so we are pushing the Civil Procedure Rule Committee to provide it as soon as possible.
The government’s whiplash reforms may have bedded in but the widely anticipated problem of how to value mixed injuries in the Official Injury Claim portal remains. It will be up to the Supreme Court to try and resolve this when it hears the insurance industry’s Rabot appeal next month and enable the hundreds of thousands of such cases stuck in legal limbo to be resolved.
By June we should also receive the Financial Conduct Authority’s analysis of how much of the savings from the reforms have been passed on to consumers through lower motor insurance premiums. We can again be pretty much certain that most insurers will say that the £35 target has been met or even exceeded, but that a combination of inflationary pressures as well as mixed injuries mean that actual price reductions rather than just marginally slower increases are impossible unless there are more reforms to reduce the number of claims being made. Once again, we can be certain that no laurels are being rested on in compensator circles, with many insurers wanting consumer rights constrained still further.
Beyond this, the consultations and calls for evidence continue to come in thick and fast, be they from the Civil Justice Council, the regulators, the government or other stakeholders. ACSO will certainly respond to all of these, and as we enter our sixth year of championing the needs of consumers in civil justice, we greatly look forward to working with our members in delivering on our mission.