Chapter 1: Aims and Objectives
| Our priority is to provide a modern, fair, cost-effective and efficient
system of justice for all. We are delivering policies to reduce crime,
unfairness and delay, and to offer the highest standards of service to
all users.
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The aim of the Lord Chancellor's Department is justice.
- The priority for the Lord Chancellor's Department is to contribute to
the Government's commitment to fairness, growth and opportunity by introducing
a programme of reforms to provide a modern, fair and efficient system of
justice which operates in the public interest and ensures value for money
for the taxpayer.
- The Department is committed to modernising the civil justice framework
and to reducing the delay, cost, complexity, uncertainty and the scope for
unfairness in the system. A clear legal framework with cost-effective remedies
helps both the public to resolve disputes and the wider economy by encouraging
business confidence and lowering the costs of business. The Department's
reforms include raising the limits for the small claims court, introducing
a fast track for cases, improving judicial management of cases, and reviewing
enforcement of civil judgments. It will also implement the reforms to the
law on divorce introduced in the Family Law Act 1996 so as to minimise the
damaging effects of marriage breakdown.
- The Department will reform legal aid to improve access to, and raise the
standards of, legal services while ensuring that best value is achieved
from the use of public money. This will be achieved by:
- setting a firm budget for civil legal aid and contracting for quality
assured services at agreed prices
- directing legal aid resources to priority areas of social need and
of public interest
- making legal aid work in partnership with the private market, and
- establishing a Community Legal Service.
- The Government's aims for the criminal justice system are to reduce crime
and the fear of crime, and their social and economic costs; and to dispense
justice fairly and efficiently, to promote confidence in the rule of law.
The Department will be working in partnership with the other criminal justice
departments and their agencies to achieve these aims in particular working
to reduce delays in the criminal courts; improving the service to victims
and witnesses and increasing the effectiveness of enforcement.
- The Human Rights Act received Royal Assent on 9 November 1998. The Human
Rights Task Force established by the Home Secretary, of which the Minister
of State is a member, is to assist the Government in its preparation for
implementation. The Department has established an implementation project
to take forward the necessary preparation to ensure that rights under the
European Convention on Human Rights can be fairly and effectively adjudicated
in courts and tribunals at all levels, including effective procedures, organisational
arrangements and support services (including IT).
- The Department is committed to the principles of the
Service First programme and to delivering high standards of service
to all its users.
Strategic Objectives
- The Department set six strategic objectives[1] in 1998/99
to achieve its aim and will continue to work towards these objectives over
the period of this report:
- To ensure that civil and family law is simple, clear and responsive
to the needs of society, and to contribute to the development
of the criminal law.
- To enable the Lord Chancellor to appoint or recommend for appointment
sufficient numbers of judges, magistrates and other judicial post-holders
of the right quality and to safeguard their constitutional independence.
- To facilitate the fair, speedy and effective resolution of
disputes, ensuring that costs and procedures are proportionate
to the issues at stake.
- To enable criminal justice to be dispensed fairly, effectively
and without undue delay, promoting confidence in the rule of law
and contributing to the Government's aim of reducing crime and
the fear of crime.
- To support family relationships and enable disputes relating
to their breakdown to be resolved with the least damage and stress
to those concerned, and contribute to the Government's objective
of helping to build strong families.
- To ensure the availability of cost-effective, quality-assured
legal services to those who need them, within the resources available,
and develop a Community Legal Service, contributing to the Government's
aim of combating social exclusion.
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- In meeting these objectives the Department will operate efficiently and
effectively within the available resources. The Department's aim and objectives,
and the performance measures against which our success will be judged, are
consistent with the unifying aims and objectives for the criminal justice
system to which all criminal justice agencies will work.
- More detailed information about the Department's performance is published
in the plans of the Court Service and Public Trust Office, and the annual
reports published by the Court Service, Public Trust Office, Law Commission,
Legal Aid Board, Judicial Studies Board, Lord Chancellor's Advisory Committee
on Legal Education and Conduct, Council on Tribunals and Legal Services
Ombudsman (see Chapter 9).
- The Department's objectives are listed in this order for reasons of consistency
or continuity. They do not necessarily reflect the Government's order of
priority for each area at a particular time.
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