Higher court tariffs not matched by efficiency gains - Opposition

Court tariffs had gone up without a corresponding improvement in efficiency, Labour MP Gavin Gulia charged in Parliament on Wednesday.

He said the number of cases before the law courts was going down not because of faster clearance and greater efficiency, but because access to the courts had simply become too expensive for many ordinary people.

Dr Gulia was among the speakers in a debate on an opposition motion to strike off sections of a legal notice which raised a number of court tariffs last August.

The Labour MP said that the fact that the legal notice had also, in a cosmetic way, reduced some tariffs which were raised in the year 2000 was a vote of no confidence by the current justice minister in his predecessor, Austin Gatt.

He referred to actions for specific performance, saying rates had been increased by 1,000 per cent but such actions were not being decided more expeditiously. The same applied to the other tariff increases made now and five years ago.

As for the transfer of several cases to arbitration for quicker conclusion, Dr Gulia said the fact remained that this arbitration was compulsory when such cases should be voluntary.

Justice Minister Tonio Borg said the government should not be obliged to subsidise court tariffs, especially since local rates were very reasonable compared to the situation abroad. One should consider the expenses incurred for the administration of the courts. Indeed, the tariffs that were being charged at the moment do not cover all these administrative expenses.

Nonetheless, some tariffs, especially those charged to ordinary people, had been reduced significantly, and not cosmetically as claimed. Registry fees had dropped from Lm250 to Lm100 and the notification of legal consultants was down by 300 per cent. The cost of applications was also down as was the cost of a normal official letter.

There were altogether, some 17 instances where costs had been reduced.

Costs which were raised were those relating to warrants for impediment of departure of ships, which had been raised from Lm25 to Lm75. Fees for most official letters had been reduced. Although fees had been raised in the case of official letters for debt recovery, the creditors then made huge savings in costs by using the newly introduced debt recovery procedures instead of actually filing a court case.

Dr Borg said that in 22 months of Labour government, nothing had been done to improve the administration of justice. Indeed, the Opposition was still without a policy on justice. Would they remove any of the fast track mechanisms introduced by this government to benefit the people?

The reforms embarked upon by the Nationalist government in the face of resistance from the Opposition, were already bearing results. The fast track mechanism for payment of bills of exchange had already removed the need for 800 people to open a court case, saving much time and money. Several hundred people had also benefited from the procedures for the recovery of uncontested debt.

Although the backlog in the civil court had dropped by 19 per cent, more needed to be done for cases to be decided more quickly. The government would continue to do whatever it could, but it could not force judges to give judgments. After all, the opposition had even voted against a motion to impeach a judge who had not gone in for work for seven years!

Concluding, Dr Borg said that the government intended to continue the reform process on the basis of the suggestions it made in a White Paper earlier this year after considering the reactions made from various quarters which, unfortunately, did not include the Opposition.

Winding up the debate, Anglu Farrugia, opposition spokesman on justice, said that soon after taking office in 1998, the Nationalist government had astronomically raised court charges without having warned the people that it would be doing so. Now more tariffs were being raised. The reductions mentioned by Dr Borg were a climb-down from some of the tariffs which had already been raised by this government. The number of cases in court was falling because of costs to the people and not because of greater efficiency stemming from reforms.

Even though there was a good clearance rate of cases at the Small Claims Tribunal, collision cases had still been transferred to the Arbitration Centre, where costs were higher.

The reductions which the government was trumpeting were cosmetic or misleading.

It was being claimed that fees for warrants were going down, but this was only cosmetic because when a notified person was not found, one still had to pay an extra Lm10 for after hours notification of a warrant.

Costs for the issue of a warrant of impediment of departure of children used to cost Lm5 before being raised to Lm75 by this government. Now the fee was said to be Lm25 yet he was tabling an official receipt issued to a lawyer showing a registry charge for such a warrant at Lm43.65c.

Intervening, Dr Borg said he never spoke about such warrants, but only said that the fees for warrants of impediment of departure of ships had been raised.

Continuing, Dr Farrugia said there were problems of interpretation over the provision of the legal notice on tariffs in spoliation cases and people were being charged almost Lm300.

Dr Farrugia insisted that court tariffs needed to be revised downwards in order to ensure that all people had access to the law courts in the interests of justice.

The opposition motion was later defeated after a division. Other speakers were reported yesterday.