Funding and Costs of Legal Aid in UK Law

The expression aptly describes conduct which is vexatious, designed to harass the other side rather than advance the resolution of the case, and it makes no difference that the conduct is the product of excessive zeal and not improper motive. The acid test is whether the conduct permits of a reasonable explanation. If so, the course adopted may be regarded as optimistic and as reflecting on a practitioner's judgment, but it is not unreasonable.

But still more important, in the present context, is the special constitutional convention which jealously safeguards the exclusive control exercised by Parliament over both the levying and the expenditure of the public revenue. It is trite law that nothing less than clear, express and unambiguous language is effective to levy a tax. Scarcely less stringent is the requirement of clear statutory authority for public expenditure.

I will not multiply examples, but I hope I have said enough to explain why I cannot attribute to the legislature any general willingness to provide the kind of publicly funded safety net which the judiciary would like to see in respect of costs necessarily and properly incurred by a litigant and not otherwise recoverable.

If costs are awarded on an indemnity basis, in many cases there will be some implicit expression of disapproval of the way in which the litigation has been conducted, But I do not think that this will necessarily be so in every case.

In our view, the system of direct application of the approach to taxation of an independent solicitor's bill to a case such as this has relative simplicity greatly to recommend it, and it seems to have worked without it being thought for many years to lead to significant injustice in the field of taxation where justice is in any event rough justice, in the sense of being compounded, of much sensible approximation.

I should like to say (what is indeed obvious) that where a plaintiff in the end fails it must be a very unusual thing to order the successful defendant to pay the costs; and it would only be in exceptional cases that a Judge would think to right to make such an ordered.

Clearly this is a very important consideration in exercising the court's discretion with regard to costs. It would be wrong, in my judgment, to equate an offer of compromise in proceedings such as these precisely to a payment into court. I see no advantage in the court surrendering its discretion in these matters as it has to all intents and purposes done where a payment into court has been made. A Calderbank offer should influence but not govern the exercise of the discretion.