Henry Mance describes in great detail the sorry state into which the criminal courts have fallen (The Weekend Essay, Life & Arts, October 12). What is left undescribed is a parallel state of affairs in England’s civil courts.
For many years the quality of our justice system was held up by the City of London and others as one of the key attractions to draw business to the UK.
Actual exposure to the reality of the system delivers a quite different story. The detail is telling, as is the reaction of court officials to the organisation in which they attempt to work; it seems documents going missing is the norm rather than the exception.
A company with which I have an association recently attempted a small claim in the Central London County Court to recover an unpaid debt. The claim was made a year ago and a note received from the court saying the claim, sent by signed-for registered post, had been received. A year after the original claim, no substantive hearing has been held. It almost defies belief that the court had (a) lost registered post it admitted receiving, (b) could not retrieve an email it had acknowledged receipt of and (c) lost a hand-delivered bundle of papers.
The truly discouraging thing, however, is that the very polite and helpful court officials spoken to were not in the least surprised, and said that this was happening all the time, that anything sent by registered post to the post room might very well disappear and that bundles delivered often failed to make it to the judge hearing the case.
It is time to acknowledge, as Mance implies, that, however good the English court system may have been in the past, a political decision is now needed to determine whether resources can be deployed to differentiate once again our courts from those of third world countries.
David Green
David Green Consulting, London NW3, UK
