Day 157 - 18 Jul 95 - Page 43


     
     1        national or social origin in association with the national
     2        minority, property, birth or other status."
     3
     4        My Lord, Article 6, which I have just read, was, as your
     5        Lordship heard this morning (and I will not go back to it)
     6        given an interpretation in X v. Sweden on 30th June 1959.
     7        Following that, there was the decision in Airey v. Ireland
     8        on 9th October 1979.  I do not know if your Lordship has
     9        that?  Did I hand up a copy?
    10
    11   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Yes.
    12
    13   MR. RAMPTON:  My Lord, this case, like X v. Sweden, was a
    14        matrimonial case.  The passage which your Lordship might be
    15        interested in is on page 317.  This is a judgment of the
    16        court and not a decision of the Commission which is in the
    17        right-hand column, page 317.
    18
    19        In the second complete paragraph, the judgment says this:
    20        "It would be erroneous to generalise the conclusion that
    21        the possibility to appear in person before the High Court
    22        does not provide Mrs. Airey with an effective right of
    23        access.  That conclusion does not hold good for all cases
    24        concerning civil rights and obligations or for everyone
    25        involved therein.  In certain eventualities, the
    26        possibility of appearing before a court in person, even
    27        without a lawyer's assistance, will meet the requirements
    28        of Article 6.1.  There maybe occasions when such a
    29        possibility secures adequate access even to the High Court.
    30          Indeed, much must depend on the particular
    31        circumstances."
    32
    33        My Lord, I will not read the next paragraph but I will, if
    34        I may, go on to the paragraph after that:  "The conclusion
    35        appearing at the end of paragraph 24 above does not,
    36        therefore, imply that the State must provide free Legal Aid
    37        for every dispute relating to a civil right.  To hold that
    38        so far reaching an obligation exists would, the court
    39        agrees, sit ill with the fact that the Convention contains
    40        no provision on Legal Aid for those disputes, article 6.3C
    41        dealing only with criminal proceedings.
    42
    43        However, despite the absence of a similar clause for civil
    44        litigation, Article 6.1 may sometimes compel the State to
    45        provide for the assistance of a lawyer when such assistance
    46        proves indispensable for an effective access to court
    47        either because legal representation is rendered compulsory,
    48        as is done by the domestic law of certain contracting
    49        states, for various types of litigation or by reason of the
    50        complexity of the procedure or of the case". 
    51 
    52        My Lord, I pause there to observe two things:  First, that 
    53        this passage is all about the provision of full Legal Aid
    54        for representation by lawyers in court.  A fortiori
    55        whatever might follow from that will embrace the relatively
    56        minor matter of the provision of a daily transcript.
    57
    58        Secondly, though there are, as your Lordship observed this
    59        morning, areas of this case which are both complex and
    60        difficult, those areas of the case are largely in the past

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