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(d)
Adequate resources
It was pointed out in the Interim Report
that adequate resources are essential to the
success of the proposed reforms. Such resources may be divided into those which
involve a one-off requirement for funding and those which entail recurrent
expenditure.
One-off costs would have to be incurred in relation to (i) the drafting of amendments
to the rules of court; (ii) the initial training of judges and court staff (both in terms of
time taken for attending training sessions and of paying for professional trainers,
where necessary); (iii) possibly some IT enhancement; and (iv) the general
administrative expenses of introducing the changes, including consultation with
professional and other groups and publicity for the changes. While essential for the
success of the reforms, costs of this kind are likely to be of a relatively insignificant
order when compared with the cost of any other major upgrades to our social and
economic infrastructure.
It is more difficult to predict how much, if any, additional recurrent expenditure the
reforms would require. Different features of the reforms trend in opposite directions
and may, to some extent, cancel each other out.
As many of the respondents to the consultation have pointed out, the general emphasis
of the proposed reforms on judicial case management as a response to the excesses of
an unbridled adversarial approach, is likely to involve a demand for more judicial
resources. For judges to case manage actions effectively, they have to be given
sufficient time to read into the case. This is all the more so where the reforms call for
decisions to be taken on the papers. The savings that such decisions aim to achieve
would be worse than negated if the judge does not have time properly to consider the
papers so that his orders are unsatisfactory and lead to oral hearings or appeals.
Notes
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