Foreword
Lord Justice Carnwath, Senior President of Tribunals
I am pleased to have this opportunity to write the foreword to this timely work. The Tribunal Reform programme began with the ground-breaking Report of Sir Andrew Leggatt in 2001. He drew attention to the important role that tribunals play in the UK justice system, accounting for more than 500,000 cases a year. He called for radical overhaul of a system which had grown up in a piecemeal and illogical way so as to create ‘a system that is independent, coherent, professional, cost-effective and user-friendly’. It should have ‘a collective stand to match that court system and collective power to fulfil the needs of users in the way that it was originally intended’. The Upper Tribunal was to be a very important part of the new structure, providing a unified appeal route to replace the ‘hotchpotch’ of different appeal procedures applying to different tribunals under the previous law. He also called for the harmonisation of the disparate sets of rules governing different tribunals.
The general thrust of his recommendations was accepted by government in 2004. In due course it led to the creation of a Tribunal Service in 2006 as part of what is now the Ministry of Justice, and to the enactment of a flexible legislative framework in the Tribunal, Courts & Enforcement Act 2007.
Since then the pace of reform has gathered pace. I was formally appointed Senior President in November 2007. A year later on `T-Day’ (3 November 2008), the First-tier and Upper Tribunals were created and the first Chambers established: the Social Entitlement, Health, Education and Social Care, and War Pensions Chambers at the First-tier level, and the Administrative Appeals Chamber in the Upper Tribunal. In April we were joined by the tax jurisdictions and in June by the Lands Tribunal. The General Regulatory Chamber will follow in two stages in September 2009 and January 2010, and the asylum and immigration jurisdictions in February 2010. The Tribunals Procedure Committee has made great steps towards the Leggatt goal of harmonising the Rules by providing new sets of Rules for all Chambers, conforming to a common model with appropriate variations to reflect the needs of different jurisdictions. All this has been achieved without significant disruption to the day-to-day work of tribunals. I am proud to have been involved in what has been a remarkable co-operative achievement by judges and administrators working together.
These structural changes mean nothing unless they bring with them gains in terms of improved access to justice and improved substantive coherence for the legal framework within which tribunals operate. Edward Jacobs’ new work seems destined to make a major contribution to the latter objective. His ‘structured approach’ to the procedure and practice of tribunals emphasises what is shared by the components of the new system rather than their differences. I am particularly pleased to note the valuable quotations from judgments relating to different tribunals which help to illustrate the underlining principles. I look forward to using the work as a ready handbook and guide to the new tribunals world.
Robert Carnwath
Senior President of Tribunals
August 2009