The legal services market is also an important part of the UK economy. We want to increase the amount of international legal business coming into the UK and support the effective provision of private legal services.
The Community Legal Service aims to reduce social exclusion and support communities by providing accessible legal advice and funding for cases in priority areas of law.
Legal services must be used efficiently and according to priority need to promote social justice, economic well-being and to tackle social exclusion. Our work covers both publicly and privately funded legal services. The Community Legal Service (CLS) is a key part of our work. The CLS sets up partnerships between the funders and providers of legal help and advice so they can deliver services that meet local needs and priorities. Similarly, the Criminal Defence Service (CDS) provides legal advice and representation to those charged with a criminal offence.
Objectives
To improve people's knowledge and understanding of their rights and responsibilities, including how to resolve disputes which affect them, in a way and at a cost proportionate to the issues at stake. (SO2)
To improve the availability of affordable and good quality legal services so that the law underpins economic success at home and abroad, and that the use of public funds secures greater social justice and reduces social exclusion (SO3).
The Legal Services Commission (LSC) replaced the Legal Aid Board on 1 April 2000. The Commission's statutory functions are to establish, develop and maintain the Community Legal Service and the Criminal Defence Service. Information on the Commission's key aims, objectives, targets and performance during 2001-02 will be published in its second annual report in July 2002. Its first report for the period 2000-01 is currently available. The Commission's third Corporate Plan, which was published in March 2002, sets out the Commission's key objectives and targets, and its plans for delivering the new arrangements during its third year of operation.
Contact information for the LSC can be found in Section 8.VI [Legal Services Commission].
People must have access to effective legal and advice services. The Community Legal Service (CLS) was launched in April 2000 to improve this access so that people can resolve potential or actual disputes and enforce their rights effectively. The CLS also aims to obtain the best value for taxpayers' money spent on legal services. The CLS consists of four inter-related initiatives:
Target
To reduce the proportion of disputes which are resolved by resort to the courts (PSA5).
Effective early action to resolve problems can prevent a dispute escalating and requiring an expensive court case. The CLS contributes to our target by providing good legal advice at the early stages of disputes.
Mr O suffers from schizophrenia and is an alcoholic. Last year, he spent seven weeks in hospital after breaking his leg. He does not know how it happened, although he was probably knocked down while drunk.
He lives on a council estate where his neighbours take an interest in his welfare, particularly since his accident. A neighbour visiting him spotted a large pile of unopened official letters from the city council's housing department and the local county court. None of the neighbours knew what to do, but one contacted the Law Centre and attended an emergency appointment with Mr O on the last day before he was due to be evicted from his accommodation by court bailiffs.
The Law Centre made an emergency application to suspend the execution of the warrant by the bailiffs. It was a difficult application: Mr O had not paid any rent for eight months and had significant rent arrears. He was eligible for housing benefit, but had not made any applications since his accident. He was advised to go immediately to the city council office to claim housing benefit, accompanied by his neighbour. At court the following day, the district judge adjourned the application, to await the outcome of the housing benefit application.
Having averted the immediate crisis, the Law Centre turned attention to applying for backdated housing benefit to cover the period during which no rent had been paid. For this, medical evidence of Mr O's mental health problems was required.
The Law Centre also anticipated that the court would order Mr O to make weekly payments towards his rent arrears at £2.70 per week. The district judge was unlikely to be persuaded that Mr O could meet this obligation on his own, so the Law Centre arranged for the weekly payments to be paid direct by the Benefits Agency through deductions from his income support.
To avoid similar problems in the future, the Law Centre has asked the council housing officer to contact the Centre, as well as Mr O, if there are any more problems with the rent or paying off the arrears.
Target
To increase the number of people who receive suitable assistance in priority areas of law involving fundamental rights or social exclusion by 5 per cent by 2004 (PSA6a).
The CLS targets priority cases, such as those involving the welfare of children, social welfare issues such as housing, debt and employment, and cases where the clients seriously risk losing their life or liberty. Our aim is to ensure that there are no gaps in our service in these priority areas, and we have set service targets against which to measure our performance (SDA14).
The distribution of legal help and advice services is uneven. To identify local need, we commissioned the Legal Services Research Centre to undertake a long-term research project. The first part of the National Periodic survey was carried out in summer 2001: there will be further surveys over the next two years. The surveys will provide a comprehensive national picture of unmet legal need in social welfare.
This survey arose from the findings in Paths to Justice by Professor Hazel Genn of the National Centre for Social Research. Professor Genn's report was a major breakthrough in identifying the problems with which people need help, the frequency of the problems, and how they deal with and solve them. The survey concentrated on the type of civil problems that people encounter in their everyday lives: family disputes, debt, housing and employment problems. People who are commonly defined as socially excluded are least likely to take any action or seek help to resolve their problems. "A clear message that emerges from the study," writes Prof. Genn, "is the profound need for knowledge and advice about obligations, rights, remedies, and procedures for resolving justiciable problems" (p. 255).
The Legal Services Commission's Regional Legal Services Committees (RLSCs) assess local priorities for civil and family legal help. They are responsible for making the Community Legal Service Partnerships aware of the regional perspective when making recommendations about local funding and priorities. The Lord Chancellor has set national priorities, including cases involving the welfare of children, cases which help people to avoid or climb out of social exclusion, and cases with a wider public interest.
Community Legal Service Partnerships are at the heart of the CLS. They work locally to co-ordinate legal and advice services. They always include the Legal Services Commission and also often involve the local authority, Citizens' Advice Bureaux, voluntary advice services and representatives of the legal profession.
Target
To extend the coverage of integrated, local CLS Partnerships to 90 per cent of the population in England and Wales by March 2002 and 100 per cent coverage by March 2004 (SDA11).
There are 201 CLS Partnerships involving 374 local authorities and covering 95 per cent of the population of England and Wales. We met our 90 per cent population target by August 2001 - eight months ahead of schedule. We are confident that we will reach 100 per cent population coverage by March 2004.
All advisers should have sufficient training in their particular areas of law. We are developing, in conjunction with leading advice providers in each field of law, individual competencies in the knowledge and skills for each area. These could eventually be contained within a nationally-recognised framework. We are supporting this work further by increasing the percentage of our funding that goes to legal services providers holding a Quality Mark (SDA15). For more information on the Quality Mark, see Section 3.III.
CLS Helping Local Communities
In Liverpool, the local CLS Partnership launched the new Speke Advice Service. Speke is the second most deprived ward in the country, and is also very isolated within the City. The new advice service - a Citizens Advice Bureau - is the first service of its kind in the area, and is based on extensive local consultation. It will provide advice and help with issues such as housing and benefits. The consultation identified high levels of disability and caring responsibilities in the ward and the Bureau will offer telephone advice and home visits by advice workers. It will also provide access to services outside normal working hours. The service received funding of £110,000 from Liverpool City Council and a £50,000 contract from the Legal Services Commission.
The LSC has developed techniques to ensure that it is funding a good service:
The CLS is actively involved in the Government's Neighbourhood Renewal agenda and the fight against social exclusion. Both LCD and the LSC are working closely with other government departments to ensure a joined-up approach. CLS Partnerships are involved in a range of initiatives including Local Strategy Partnerships, Connexions and the New Deals.
The Community Legal Service Fund replaced civil and family legal aid in April 2000. The Fund aims to improve access and value-for-money in legal services funded by central government. The Legal Services Commission makes contracts with solicitors' firms and not-for-profit agencies for quality legal services targeted at national and local needs.
By using contracts, we have moved away from traditional case-by-case management of legal services funding. Not only do contracts give suppliers an incentive to deliver value-for-money, but they also allow the LSC's auditors to check that the suppliers are doing the work they claim they are doing.
Since January 2000, all civil and family legal help and representation in family, immigration, mental health cases and multi-party actions has been delivered through contracts with quality-assured suppliers. In April 2001, contracts were let for representation in all other civil cases. Contracts are only awarded to suppliers who hold the CLS Quality Mark (see Section 3.III).
Within the CLS, there are 4,932 contracts with solicitors' firms and 389 with not-for-profit agencies (at 15 March 2002). We are working with the LSC to develop other ways of providing legal services, such as advice by telephone. Through the LSC's Delivery Pilot Project, legal services are becoming available in places such as libraries or doctors' surgeries.
The Lord Chancellor introduced a graduated fee scheme for independent barristers undertaking publicly-funded family work on 1 May 2001. This means a barrister is paid by the type and complexity of the case, not for the number of hours' work they do. This gives us greater control over expenditure and will also provide valuable management information so we can forecast expenditure of family cases more accurately.
It should be easier for applicants to obtain 'exceptional funding' in certain cases that would normally be outside the scope of the CLS. On 1 November 2001, the Lord Chancellor announced changes to guidance to ease the process. Reflecting the Government's commitment to human rights, this includes inquests where the death occurred in police or prison custody, or during the course of a police arrest, search, pursuit or shooting. The LSC may now give funding without seeking the Lord Chancellor's authority for each case, making the application process for the bereaved much more straightforward.
We reformed the financial conditions for LSC funding for civil and family matters and introduced a new package of measures on 3 December 2001. The changes provide a fairer and more consistent framework for financial eligibility for civil and family legal advice and representation.
We are always looking for new ideas. Our new Partnership Innovation Budget, worth £15 million over three years, encourages creative thinking in the way we deliver legal services. It will support new initiatives that provide legal and advice services to communities inadequately served by existing services. The first round produced 64 successful bids, announced last September. They included:
The CLS Quality Mark, launched in April 2000, assures the public of the quality of legal and advice services. By December 2001 almost 9,000 solicitors' firms and advice agencies held or had applied for the Quality Mark. The Quality Mark incorporates standards in:
We have been particularly pleased with the take up of the information standard of the Quality Mark. For many people, CLS Information Points are the first point of entry to the Community Legal Service. Over 1,600 outlets have applied for this standard, including every library in the East of England. All county courts are now self-help information points. We want every Job Centre Plus Office to become an information point. We are exploring ways to set up information points at Post Offices and in prisons. We are considering a recommendation from the Association of Chief Police Officers that police stations should apply to become information points.
We are working with the Legal Services Commission (LSC) to develop the Quality Mark further. We published a standard for websites in November 2001 and we will introduce standards for the Bar and community and family mediation services in the first half of 2002. A casework standard for student advice agencies, published in January 2002, means these agencies can now apply for the Quality Mark. We will also develop competency standards for people providing advice services, focusing initially on consumer advice.
Deciding where to go for legal advice can be a daunting experience. The LSC published the third edition of the Community Legal Service Directory of Legal Service Providers in April 2001. The Directory, which is published in 13 regional editions, provides information to the public about the services available in their area. From April 2002, the Directory will only include those service providers who have applied for the Quality Mark (SDA12). The Directory is available on the CLS website in English at: www.justask.org.uk/public/en/directory and in Welsh at: www.justask.org.uk/public/cy/directory.
We launched our award-winning website, Just Ask!, in April 2000. It provides:
The site won last year's Plain English Web Award for the clearest website. Since its launch, the site has registered around one million hits, and has over 11,000 unique hits a week. Feedback via the on-site form reveals that 60 per cent of users rate the site as either 'good' or 'very good'.
We have improved the site's navigation, accessibility and content, and have included maps showing the location of service providers. We added a Welsh language version of the CLS Directory in March 2001. The National Association of Citizen Advice Bureau's AdviceGuide website (which links to Just Ask!) will also be translated to provide legal information in a range of community languages. Responsibility for the site's management and development was transferred to the Legal Services Commission in October 2001.
Links
Just Ask! - www.justask.org.uk
The provision of criminal public legal services has changed dramatically in the past year. On 2 April 2001 we replaced criminal legal aid with the Criminal Defence Service (CDS). The CDS provides services through a flexible system of contracts with private sector lawyers and a small number of public defenders, to achieve quality-assured services and value for money. Through contracts, solicitors' firms provide defence services ranging from advice at the police station to representation at the magistrates' court. Until now, only franchised firms could undertake work for the CDS in the Crown Court. However, we intend to extend the current schemes for contracting and quality assurance so that they also cover the Crown Court - this is subject to the Government's decisions on Lord Justice Auld's review of the criminal courts.
We have brought in Individual Case Contracts for solicitors for Crown Court cases that last more than 25 days or cost over £150,000 to make sure they are managed effectively and that their cost is controlled. These cases are known as Very High Cost Criminal Cases (VHCCC). Many of these VHCCCs concern allegations of serious fraud and only Serious Fraud Panel members who have demonstrated their ability to handle such specialist cases can undertake them.
The Legal Services Commission is piloting a Public Defender Service (PDS) over a four-year period. The PDS employs advocates who work only on publicly-funded criminal defence cases. Six offices are opening in the first phase of the pilot. In May 2001 the first PDS office opened in Liverpool, closely followed by offices in Middlesbrough, Swansea and Birmingham. A fifth office in Cheltenham began work on 15 April 2002, and a sixth office will open in Pontypridd in the summer, as a sub-office of the Swansea PDS.
The PDS pilot will give us a valuable insight into the costs of running a defence solicitor's office, which in turn will help us to make better decisions about funding criminal defence cases. It should also give us greater flexibility and choice in the delivery of criminal defence services.
The same fee structure for all Crown Court trials lasting up to 25 days has applied to all advocates since 29 October 2001. This has removed the previous disparity between the fees paid to advocates employed on defence and prosecution work. We plan to extend the scheme soon to cover cases where the defendant pleads guilty or the prosecution is abandoned.
New regulations that came into force in September 2000 have enabled us to reduce by 50 per cent the number of defence cases handled by a QC - and thus also reduce costs. We now limit the use of QCs and advocates except in cases that are sufficiently serious or complex to warrant it.
There is no longer a means assessment at the beginning of the case. However, under the new CDS arrangements, courts are still responsible for deciding whether a defendant should receive publicly-funded representation.
When cases are heard in the magistrates' court, details of the applicant's means are not required as there is no power to recover the cost of the applicant's representation. However, with cases heard in the Crown Court or a higher court on appeal, the applicant must provide details of his or her means. At the end of the case, the trial judge has a new power to order the defendant to pay back some or all of the costs of his or her defence under a Recovery of Defence Costs Order. If necessary, the judge will order an investigation of the defendant's means before making the order. Such enquiries are undertaken either by the Legal Services Commission's special investigations unit or by the court itself.
Targets
It is important that we target publicly-funded legal services on the most deserving cases and so we let contracts according to local and national priorities. From April to June 2001, 78 per cent of CLS expenditure was on quality-assured suppliers. Ninety-nine per cent of CDS expenditure from July to September 2001 was on quality-assured suppliers, although this excludes work in the Crown and Higher Courts.
Thus we are on course to meet our targets. We are achieving value for money by setting efficiency targets for the CLS and CDS, based on reductions in the average cost of cases in real terms (adjusted for inflation). Our efficiency controls include cost and quality control targets, such as using quality-controlled suppliers and making sure cases meet our initial success criteria.
The Community Legal Service seeks to prevent problems developing into confrontational legal disputes. However, some situations can only be resolved by an outside authority. Therefore, as part of our work under PSA5 to keep cases out of court, we are working on Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR).
ADR is an umbrella term that encompasses processes such as mediation, complaints and ombudsman schemes, arbitration and early neutral evaluation. However, complaints and ombudsman schemes do not receive public funding - they are funded by the relevant bodies or sectors, with no charge to the client.
Target
To increase the number of disputes resolved with funding from the Community Legal Service through Alternative Dispute Resolution, including mediation (SDA13).
To establish a baseline, we are using data from the National Legal Needs Survey, undertaken by the National Centre for Social Research in summer 2001. The survey involved initial interviews with 5,600 individuals and detailed interviews with 1,600. We achieved baseline data in December 2001 and expect to have verified baseline data for SDA13 in June this year.
In March 2001 the Lord Chancellor announced that all Government departments and agencies will consider and use ADR where appropriate and when the other party accepts it. All departments are committed to monitoring the use of ADR, and the Lord Chancellor will announce the results of this monitoring early in the new financial year.
In general, we encourage and promote the increased use of ADR. An example of ADR in action is the new scheme at the Birmingham Civil Trial Centre, launched by the Lord Chancellor on 7 December 2001, which offers mediation to parties in defended cases of £5,000 or more. In addition, the Legal Services Commission promotes non-court resolution in areas of publicly-funded clinical negligence and housing disputes.
A priority for us is to improve access to justice and to underpin economic success by promoting legal and dispute resolution services. This can be achieved by providing effective public legal services. We can also work with the market on more effective and accessible private legal services.
The key areas where we can make a difference are:
Our new Market Intelligence Unit provides economic analysis and intelligence about the legal services market. This will help to shape policy and decision making aimed at improving market competitiveness. Our aim is that this new source of information will help us to understand better the market for legal services. This will in turn make civil justice and trade policy sounder and support work to help the legal sector contribute to the national economy. The Unit will publish a market overview of civil legal services this year, and is working on a range of projects including an economic analysis of the legal services market, and the competitive implications of new professional rules and proposed changes to the professions.
We continue to implement the recommendations of Ann Chant's report into the functioning of the Office of the Legal Services Ombudsman (OLSO). This includes making a significant investment in OLSO's infrastructure, allowing it to fulfil its three main functions identified by Miss Chant:
We also continue to scrutinise the performance of the Office for the Supervision of Solicitors and the implications for consumers of issues such as the Law Society reform proposals.
The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) published its report to the Government on competition in the market for professional services in March 2001. The report concludes that the professions should be fully subject to competition law and that unjustified restrictions on competition should be removed. The Government is keen to remove restrictions that are not in the public interest and welcomes moves by the professions to consider matters raised by the OFT report. We have set up a team to take responsibility for matters arising from the OFT report and for competition policy matters in the legal services market generally.
In April 2000 we introduced fundamental changes to the funding regime for civil litigation. Most personal injury cases became ineligible for public funding; and success fees in conditional fee agreements (commonly called 'no-win, no-fee' agreements) and after the event insurance premiums were made recoverable from a losing opponent. The focus shifted to the legal services market to help deliver access to justice.
The market has responded well to the changes, delivering a diverse range of litigation funding products to meet the needs of most personal injury cases. There has been a more gradual development in more complex areas of litigation such as clinical negligence, commercial disputes, insolvency and libel. However, the significance of the changes has led to an unsettled period as lawyers, insurers, accident intermediaries and the courts have worked with the new regime and tested the parameters of the new rules and the reasonableness of the litigation funding costs.
In 2002-03 we will continue to promote a cross-sector approach to making the new regime work better to provide more certainty and stability on litigation costs, to encourage the further development of innovative products to fund litigation and to ensure improved access to justice. In particular we will be working with the Civil Justice Council's Costs Working Group to consider the options for introducing fixed recoverable costs in the fast track and a pre-action protocol for personal injury disputes. We also remain committed to delivering a flexible but effective way of tackling the difficulties caused by the Indemnity Principle in costs.
Our work in the development of international legal relations and international legal policy contributes to the Government's aim of higher productivity, sustainable growth and effective co-operation with our European and international partners. Through our international legal relations activities with other nations we promote:
The UK puts considerable work and resources into these areas. There is much scope for extending the rule of law and respect for human rights and simultaneously developing the market for legal services. This benefits partner states and maximises the opportunities for British firms. However, we can only achieve this through joined-up government and co-operation across the public and NGO sectors and beyond. LCD has taken on a co-ordinating role in this area.
Within the EU, the Treaty of Amsterdam and the Tampere European Council have produced a change in activity at a Community level towards a common area of freedom, security and justice. We have worked to further Departmental and national legal policy interests within the Justice and Home Affairs Council. We pressed for clear and certain rules of jurisdiction, enhanced co-operation between authorities and improved mutual recognition of court orders and judgments, so that cases may be brought, and judgments enforced, across borders with the minimum of obstacles. We can see the fruits of this work in, for example, the proposals for a European Enforcement Order. We have worked similarly in two other areas: to further UK interests in civil legal co-operation in the Council of Europe; and in negotiations in the Hague Conference on Private International Law towards a worldwide agreement on jurisdiction and the recognition and enforcement of judgments in civil and commercial matters.
Ministers, judges, officials and members of the legal professions came to the UK last year from many parts of the world. We arranged programmes for over 100 different groups of visitors and arranged the first exchange between senior UK and Spanish judges. We provided liaison, funding and administrative support for 24 visits by UK judges or groups of judges working abroad on a variety of projects.
A particular priority was development projects in EU candidate states, both for their contribution to developing a stronger Europe for the future, and for the political and economic benefits which such co-operation brings to the UK. This was the first year the Department competed for European Commission funding for development programmes in justice administration. We secured partnerships in wide-ranging projects in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. We funded projects in Poland and Slovenia on training for lawyers and judges, and we began to develop projects for the future for Bulgaria and Poland.
In China we took forward the Department's responsibilities under the Memorandum of Understanding signed by the Lord Chancellor and the Chinese Minister of Justice in 1999. We have adopted the Lord Chancellor's Training Scheme for Young Lawyers which is steadily exposing a generation of the most able young Chinese lawyers to British systems and the common law. Following up a major visit in 2001 by a team headed by Sir Hayden Phillips, the Department's Permanent Secretary, we have begun developing other training initiatives in China.
International legal relations cover an enormous range of activities. To co-ordinate them better, we are setting up a comprehensive database to document activities across the public and NGO sectors in international legal relations. These include work within Government, within other organisations such as the British Council, by the legal professions and by academic institutions.
In our new leading role as co-ordinator and sponsor of the legal services market we are looking to increase the quality and competitiveness of British legal services in the domestic and global markets. We can do this in two ways: by promoting legal services as a contributor to the national economy (not least in foreign earnings) and by providing legal support for the commercial world.
Targets
To secure year-on-year increases of at least 5 per cent in the number of international legal disputes resolved in the UK (PSA6b).
To identify and correct market imperfections preventing UK firms from exploiting opportunities overseas or the development of the UK as a centre for global dispute resolution and legal services. In particular, we will reduce regulatory barriers to international trade in legal services by working through GATS 2000 (SDA16).
We will achieve our aim by working with the legal sector to increase the UK's market share in international legal business and thus contribute to the UK's economic performance. We are also working to reduce barriers to international trade in legal services; we encourage foreign market liberalisation; and we are promoting the UK as a global centre for dispute resolution and other legal services. This includes working through GATS (the General Agreement on Trade in Services) 2000 to reduce regulatory barriers to trade in legal services.
We have constructed a set of baseline data to measure our progress and we will report at least annually. The data is based on a representative selection of UK courts, tribunals, ombudsmen and organisations that administer Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR). In 2000-01, the UK courts adjudicated in 1,372 international disputes. Currently, there is no way of knowing the total number of disputes handled in the UK using ADR. However, we are using returns from specific ADR service providers as material for the baseline figure (there were 219 such disputes in 2000-01).
The Court Service is considering proposals for a new Commercial Court to consolidate and improve London's status as a premier centre for international commercial legal dispute resolution. It will take into account the findings of a recent consultation with court users.
We are acting jointly with the sector in promoting UK legal services abroad and in attracting international work to the UK, including industry briefings, trade promotion activities and an Industry Briefing Course on legal services (including ADR) for Trade Partners UK commercial officers overseas during 2003.
To open up international legal markets to UK law firms, we are developing networks with other EU and World Trade Organisation members and working with the Department of Trade and Industry and the EU Commission to maximise the UK's influence in GATS and other trade negotiations on legal services. We are working with the British Trade International's (BTI) Government Group to support other sector exporters through early access to legal advice and by increasing the number of law firms (especially in the regions) engaged in international work.
We participate in the Law Society's taskforces on India and Korea and expect greatly expanded activity in the coming year. We successfully lobbied the Japanese Government on practice rights issues: this resulted in the Japanese Justice Minister committing to implement a reform programme within three years. We provide other government departments' ministers with legal services briefing notes when they go on trade visits overseas. In recent visits to Korea by Treasury and DTI ministers, this practice significantly raised the profile of legal services.
Parliamentary Secretary Michael Wills submitted in October 2001 the Government's response to an EU consultation paper which asked whether different national laws of contract obstructed the functioning of the internal market and sought views on possible solutions. The UK response was, that if real and significant obstacles to cross-border trade were identified, they should be tackled by targeted and proportionate solutions on a case-by-case basis. They should preferably be market-led solutions such as the development of model contracts by particular business sectors. The Government welcomed the Commission's proposals to streamline and clarify existing EU law but was not attracted to new comprehensive legislation to replace national laws of contract. This would reduce the choice of legal regimes available to contracting parties and could reduce demand for legal and other services provided in the EU.
Our objective remains to work with our EU partners to reduce barriers to cross-border trade, while maintaining the fundamental basis of the English common law of contract, which attracts a large volume of EU and other international commercial and legal business to the UK.
Selling the Law
The international success of UK law relies on its reputation for quality, expertise and incorruptibility. People come here to do legal business because the product - our common law system, our judges and our legal profession - is dependable. They employ UK lawyers because of their expertise in matters such as mergers, acquisitions and privatisation, which are common to all nations seeking to advance their international commercial ambitions. Additionally, there are many members of the Bar, commercial lawyers and former judges working for our ADR service providers, bringing with them their expertise and the high reputation of our legal system as a whole.
The lawyers drafting dispute resolution clauses in business contracts usually want to include provision for settlement of disputes by the law and locations they are familiar with. As UK lawyers engage more in overseas work, so there will be more contracts which stipulate dispute resolution under English common law or in the UK (either at court or non-court venues).
If we are to increase the use of Alternative Dispute Resolution, it must inspire people with the same confidence as more traditional means of dispute resolution. Many US businesses now prefer to include in contracts dispute clauses which provide for resolution in the UK. This is largely because there is no recognised accreditation of mediation in the US and practice between US states is inconsistent.
Conveyancing is the process by which land is bought and sold. Since 1862, Her Majesty's Land Registry for England and Wales (see Section D) has operated a scheme of land registration based on a central register of the ownership of land. When land ownership changes, it is usually necessary to notify the Land Registry so that the register can be kept up-to-date.
This process of notification and data storage has until recently been largely paper-based. Although the Land Registry has progressively and successfully been developing information technology, there are legal restrictions on the amount of business that it can conduct electronically. Once these are removed, the Land Registry and conveyancers will be able to take advantage of electronic communication. This is one example of our commitment to electronic conveyancing (SDA81). It links to the Government's initiative for Modernising Our Laws for the Information Age (MOLIA) (see Section 2.I) and is also part of our wider activity to improve the working of the property markets, particularly home buying and selling.
Target
To make orders under section 8 of the Electronic Communications Act 2000 to amend primary legislation to remove present barriers to electronic conveyancing by December 2001. Thereafter in association with HM Land Registry, to promote the uptake of electronic conveyancing over a ten-year period aiming to reach 20 per cent by the end of the SR 2000 period (SDA82).
The response was overwhelmingly favourable to our consultation paper last March on a draft order to be made under the Electronic Communications Act 2000 to permit electronic conveyancing documents. We published an analysis of the responses in December 2001.
The Land Registration Act 2002, which received Royal Assent from HM The Queen on 26 February 2002, will benefit home buyers and sellers considerably and was welcomed across the political spectrum. The Act creates a legal framework for a full electronic conveyancing system in which investigation of title will be conducted almost entirely online, and changes in ownership will only happen on registration. The system will provide instantaneous electronic transfer of funds and shows the participants how each element in a chain of transactions is progressing. Implementation of the Act is scheduled for 2003.
Most of the legislative framework envisaged in our SDA target has been subsumed into the Land Registration Act, except the legislation to regulate the creation of electronic contracts, which will follow the introduction of electronic stamp duty for land transaction documents. We will therefore not meet our original target of December 2001, but only because a far better outcome is now possible.
We published in December 2001 the Government's response to the recommendations in the Quinquennial Review of HM Land Registry. The response incorporates an action programme for recommendations such as those relating to electronic conveyancing: extending and completing the land register; improving the transparency of the property market; re-engineering the conveyancing process; and delivering the National Land Information Service (NLIS). NLIS is already providing a full electronic service in 41 local authorities, and in partnership with local government and other government departments we will encourage others across England and Wales to adopt it. We will work closely with the Land Registry and other government departments, as well as with people involved in the wider field of conveyancing.
Our work here includes supporting the Land Registry in 2002 on both its proposed major public consultation on electronic conveyancing and the preparation of its 10-year strategic plan.
Links
Land Registration for the 21st Century: A Conveyancing Revolution (Law Com No 271) - a joint report of the Law Commission and Land Registry published July 2001.
HM Land Registry Quinquennial Review Report by Andrew Edwards published June 2001.