Day 157 - 18 Jul 95 - Page 22
1 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Right. Start off with telling me whether
2 they are official or not and what your authority for that
3 is.
4
5 MS. STEEL: To be honest, we cannot actually pin down whether
6 they are official or not.
7
8 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Suppose they are official; where is my power?
9
10 MS. STEEL: Because official, I mean, it just must be that
11 official court records, it is open to the court to decide
12 what it wants to do with them, therefore, it must be within
13 your power to allow us to make copies or to provide us with
14 copies out of public funds.
15
16 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Why do you say that?
17
18 MS. STEEL: Just because they are an official record of the
19 proceedings.
20
21 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I do not follow that, I am afraid. I mean,
22 even High Court Judges have limits on their power.
23
24 MS. STEEL: I do not know, it just seems that it cannot be fair
25 that there can be official records of proceedings which are
26 only available to one party.
27
28 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I understand that is your argument, but what
29 I thought you were going to come back to today is to say
30 that you found some new lead into a power which on 4th July
31 I decided I did not have subject to any further argument.
32
33 MS. STEEL: I mean, Mr. Morris referred to the point in the
34 European cases about the equality of arms being considered
35 an essential element of a fair trial. As I understand it,
36 the courts in this country are supposed to try to adhere to
37 the recommendations of the European Court of Human Rights
38 and to try to follow directions or suggestions that they
39 have put down.
40
41 MR. MORRIS: The thing is I am going to come to entitlement to
42 costs which is Ord. 62, r. 3, but I was going to deal with
43 the specific White Book on transcripts and official
44 shorthand note first, because it is our contention that the
45 purpose of the stenographers' firm here is to provide
46 CaseView facilities by agreement for all the parties which
47 McDonald's are now saying should be limited only to them,
48 and that they have a private arrangement with the firm who
49 are not there as official transcribers.
50
51 The official transcribers, for example, can sit in a
52 different room, get tapes and make an official transcript
53 and they are, effectively, providing a service for one
54 party producing, as we speak, a non-official record which
55 they later check against tapes from the Mechanical
56 Recording Department.
57
58 This leads to, as far as we can see, various contradictory
59 problems because they are, in effect, employed by one
60 party. They are not at this moment, as we speak, producing
