Justice Secretary, Chris Grayling, has urged the world to bring legal disputes to the UK in an attempt to promote British courts and boost the income generated by the UK’s legal services. The statement coincides with huge cuts to the UK legal sector which have outraged the profession as a whole. The message the Government has rolled out in the last few months has been that the legal services in the UK are overpriced and cost the country far too much. Now it seems they are willing to ‘pimp out’ the UK’s legal services, selling these services on the basis of “quality, experience, flexibility, efficiency and value for money.”
This is completely inconsistent with the Government changes which are to take effect in April. The changes are set to slash the fees recoverable by solicitors in many cases and curtail the use of Government funded claims. The new message appears to be that the UK’s legal services offer value for money just as long as the Government doesn’t have to foot the bill.
This attitude is likely to anger many professionals because it shows a great deal of hypocrisy within Government. The UK legal services sector contributes £20bn per year to the UK economy, a significant amount that greatly benefits the Government in tax and revenue which they are more than willing to receive. For the Government to make all these cuts because of cost cutting and then sell the legal sector abroad on the basis of value for money is insulting.
There is no denying that it is desirable to diversify and outsource the UK’s legal services especially in light of April’s challenges. To generate income from overseas litigants is positive for UK legal services but whether the administrative arm of the justice system is able to handle an influx of overseas cases is yet to be seen; the Salford Business Centre administrative hub has hardly been demonstrative of ‘efficiency’ and ‘quality’. Furthermore, given the further significant cuts to legal aid and Lord Neuberger’s recent comments on litigants in person flooding the UK Courts as a direct result of the cuts, I`m sure the Judiciary will be thrilled at the prospect of dealing with disputes from around the globe!
The reality is the damage to the legal services sector has already been done with firm closures and mass redundancies being reported on a weekly basis. It is unlikely that Government support now will change the profession’s opinion about the poor consultation and significant cuts to the legal services sector even if there is a boost from foreign litigants.
