760%

The House of Lords is this evening debating the catastrophic rise in court fees proposed by our hapless Lord Chancellor.

I’ve been planning for a number of days to blog about the massive injustice of this proposal but only this evening have I examined the figures against the background of the justifiable outrage at what has been publicized as an increase of up to 622% at one level.

But it’s worse still – in case nobody else has noticed.

In December the Civil Justice Council published an analysis that included this table:

The highlight is at the £200,000 threshold and the calculation that an increase from £1515 to £10,000 amounts to £8,725. Plainly, £1,515 + £8,725 = £10,240.

So, the MOJ can’t add up – no surprise there.

But it’s worse than that because the court fee, currently, for a claim of £200,000 is only £1,315. 

Here’s an extract from the current list of fees published in August last:

Note that the top of the bracket for the £1,315 fee is £200,000 – dead.

Under the new scheme, the fee will be 5% i.e. £10,000.

So, in fact, the increase is 660% and the new fee an excruciating 760% of the current figure.