Opinion

“I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered!”

The last year has seen both the 10th anniversary of the inception of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) and the enactment of the Health Act 2009

Voting fiasco may give rise to increase in election litigation

“Nobody takes any notice of the Equal Pay Act”. That’s the resigned view of Sue, a 53-year old home care worker.

The Chilcott inquiry has now heard its two star witnesses, the Prime Minister and his predecessors, though we have not been promised a report before the end of this year.

Initial responses to Jackson LJ’s Final Report focused on the headline grabbing proposals such as an end to the recovery of success fees and insurance premiums, one-way costs shifting and a ban on referral fees.

There is no shortage of critics of the family justice system. Family charities allege bias in the law so far as it relates to their members, senior judges complain that there is insufficient funding to properly protect children, Ofsted continues to criticise Cafcass, and politicians have finally woken up to the fact that the system should be viewed in its socio-economic and public health context.

David Cameron describes the forthcoming election as: “The most important election for a generation.” But, how important is it for property professionals?

The Daily Mail was keen on Lord Judge’s Judicial Studies Board lecture. It linked his caution on the use of judgments of the Strasbourg European Court of Human Rights to David Cameron’s policies to strengthen British sovereignty. Lord Judge himself, though he uttered the usual judicial disclaimers (“political debate is not for a holder of judicial office”), can hardly have been surprised. He dealt with politically touchy matters—the role of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and that of the European Court of Justice. On the former, he entered the murky waters of the authority to be accorded by the domestic courts to judgments of the Strasbourg court.

A central theme of the Jackson Report is that making costs proportionate to damages under the CPR has not been achieved in practice and that major rule changes are needed.