The mouseinthecourt has replied to a consultation run by the Civil Procedure Rule Committee (CPRC) on new rules purporting to take into account the judgment of the Supreme Court following one of the biggest open justice cases in a generation.
“The availability of skeleton arguments, and witness statements, deployed in open court hearings is essential to any meaningful concept of open justice.”[32]
The Honourable Mr Justice Nicklin
In 2019 the Supreme Court handed down judgment in the case of Cape v Dring. Lady Hale helpfully described the issues at hand:
“This case is about how much of the written material placed before the court in a civil action should be accessible to people who are not parties to the proceedings and how it should be made accessible to them”
Lady Hale concluded the judgment stating:
“We would urge the bodies responsible for framing the court rules in each part of the United Kingdom to give consideration to the questions of principle and practice raised by this case.”
On 1st December 2023 the Civil Procedure Rule Committee commissioned a consultation into proposed changes to Civil Procedure Rule 5.4c, currently titled “Supply of documents to a non-party from court records”
The CPRC’s cover note and the proposed rules have been preserved here.
Those interested in our submissions to the committee can read our six-page-submission here.
We covered:
– The lack of a generic ‘access to information’ rule
– That we consider the proposed rules too complicated
– That the proposal for certain documents to only be available at the start of the hearing was problematic
– That the cost of simple and complex requests can be disproportionately expensive
– That ground of appeal are seemingly not covered by the rules
– That the CPRC has failed to consider the topic of whether there is a continuing obligations on the parties
It’s not known how long the committee will take to consider and finally implement the changes.
This blog relies heavily on the principle of open justice, a recent success story is our coverage of the London Capital & Finance trial, from which we’re hosting daily transcripts, witness statements and skeleton arguments.
You can see the documents we’re hosting here and you can see how we’ve been able to do this by reading “High Court approves substantial open justice request in LCF trial“.
Our history with the CPRC
As part of an ongoing project looking at the transparency of decision making in the justice system, the mouseinthecourt has been examining the work of the various rule committees.
In December 2022 we reported that the CPRC was warned that continuing to ignore a Freedom of Information Act request would amount to a contempt of court.
The CPRC finally replied some 17-months later citing an “e-mail fault”.
In May 2022 this site reported that a rule change was “one of the biggest attacks on the principle of open justice in recent times“. The rule was subsequently quashed.
Mouse in the Court 