My Lords, I may have been rather hasty in saying that the Lord Chancellor is in favour of county courts, but I am going to rush back to the MoJ and tell him to get it on the record quick because there seems to be so much support for them. It is an interesting point and again I can see the value in the recommendation as just read out by my noble friend Lord Mawhinney. Along with other matters, I will ponder on it. I did not say that we could not legislate for case management, but I want to hear the arguments. As for my noble friend’s suggestion that the Lord Chancellor might be afraid of doing this because of a fear of offending the judiciary, that is not something I have heard said about the Lord Chancellor very often in recent weeks.
Amendment 6 deals with the issue of strike-out. It would put a new strike-out power into the Bill that would require the courts to strike out actions that do not meet a certain threshold unless the interests of justice require otherwise. We do not consider that there is any need for this provision. As I indicated when responding to Amendment 3, the serious harm test in Clause 1 and the new early resolution procedures will ensure that the court has at the forefront of its mind the need to make sure that trivial and unfounded claims do not proceed. As the noble Lord, Lord Browne, anticipated, I will also argue that the courts already have a power in Rule 3.4 of the Civil Procedure Rules which permits them to strike out all or part of a claim where there are no reasonable grounds for bringing it or they consider it to be an abuse of process. The courts are very familiar with that power, and we have no doubt that they will use it more in defamation cases once the new higher threshold is in place. As I have said before, one of the aims of this Bill is to make the law simpler, so unnecessary duplication such as that proposed in this new clause would conflict with that aim.
As we have explained in the note recently provided to Peers, we intend to make changes through the Civil Procedure Rules to ensure that the key preliminary issues are determined at as early a stage in the proceedings as possible. Where the question of whether the claimant has suffered or is likely to suffer serious harm is in dispute, this is one of the main issues that the court could be asked to consider under the new procedure. On that basis, I hope that the noble Lord will agree to withdraw his amendment.