Civil Proceedings: Legal Representation
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will take steps to amend the Civil Procedure Rules to make explicit that litigants-in-person are not to be denied procedural safeguards normally afforded to represented parties, including circulation of draft reserved judgments.
Answered by Sarah Sackman
Civil court rules governing judgments and orders are set out in Part 40 of the Civil Procedure Rules (CPR) and are supplemented by Practice Directions (PD). PD40E provides additional directions in relation to reserved judgments before they are handed down. Paragraph 2.3 of PD40E states that the court will provide a copy of the draft judgment to the parties’ legal representatives, however, paragraph 2.4 goes on to state that a copy of the draft judgment may be supplied to the parties provided that they: 1) do not disclose it or its substance to anyone else; and 2) do not take any action in relation to the judgment until it is handed down. This, therefore, provides for litigants in person to be given an embargoed/draft judgment and to engage with the steps taken before such a judgment is handed down.
It is also important to recognise that Part 1 of the CPR sets out the overriding objective of the rules. These overriding objectives include ensuring that the parties are on an equal footing and can participate fully in proceedings. This is the principal safeguard under pinning how the rules operate in practice.
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