Extract from the Public
Bill committee considering the Prisons and Courts Bill
The Minister for Courts and Justice (Sir Oliver
Heald): Q Lord Justice Briggs said that it might be a
role where a particular piece of legal advice would be given and
then fixed recoverable costs would be involved, as a way of
ensuring it could be funded. Do you have any views on that?
Professor Susskind: That is entirely feasible. I
take the point entirely that there will be places where it would
be beneficial to have the participation of lawyers. It might well
be that we can, in an online process, involve lawyers in a more
modular, occasional way, rather than an all-or-nothing way. If I
am absolutely honest, we are to a large extent on new ground
here. We can look at what has happened in Canada and what is
happening in Singapore and Holland. We are feeling our way.
The overwhelming evidence is that online dispute resolution
provides a cheaper, quicker, less forbidding service, but no one
in the world has yet delivered an integrated service of the sort
that the Law Society is sensibly anticipating, where lawyers can
be involved in a structured, systematic way in the new process. I
would welcome that, but again, we cannot forget the swathes of
cases just now where people are self-represented or do not go to
law at all, and lawyers are not involved. With online dispute
resolution, there is the possibility of lawyers becoming more
involved in some of those cases that they do not reach at all
now.
(Professor Susskind is an IT adviser to the Lord Chief
Justice and chaired the Civil Justice Council advisory group on
online dispute resolution)
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Extracts from Westminster
Hall debate on the National Spitfire Project
(Southampton, Itchen)
(Con):...The Spitfire played a central role throughout
world war two, and our British pilots were joined by allied pilots
from all over the world. In fact, up to 20% of pilots who flew in
the battle of Britain were not British. Most notably, the Royal Air
Force was joined by Poles, Czechs, New Zealanders,
Belgians, Canadians, Australians, Norwegians,
Greeks, Swedes, Italians, Indians and Pakistanis. Tomorrow the
Prime Minister will write to Donald Tusk, the President of the
European Council, informing him of the UK’s intention to leave the
European Union. One of the first priorities of our withdrawal
negotiations must be the status of European Union nationals living
in this country and British nationals living in European Union
countries. As the negotiations begin, it is important to take a
moment to remember the significant contribution that those
countries of the European Union made to our war effort...
(Argyll and Bute)
(SNP):...However, let it be a true memory, because we were
not alone in fighting the Nazis in the 1940s. The United Kingdom
gave refuge to those fleeing fascism, and welcomed those, wherever
they came from, who were willing to help defeat it. I hope that
when the monument opens we shall not forget the 30 Australian, 30
Belgian, 84 Canadian, 90 Czech and Slovak, 13 French,
two Caribbean, 10 Irish and 135 New Zealand pilots, the 30 from
Southern Africa and, of course, the 147 Poles, who shot down more
than 200 enemy aircraft...
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