Day 147 - 04 Jul 95 - Page 19
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2 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Who are you talking about now, the court?
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4 MR. MORRIS: The court costs, whatever the court costs are per
5 day.
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7 MR. JUSTICE BELL: It is not just pedantry. I am not
8 omnipotent; I cannot make orders unless I have the power to
9 make them. Order 68 at the moment does not seem to me to
10 offer a route to me ordering that you should have
11 transcripts; and I know of no other power to order the
12 spending of the Government's money.
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14 Signers and interpreters are necessary in order to
15 understand the evidence; that is absolutely fundamental,
16 and they are well established categories.
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18 I am saying this to try to help you. I do not at the
19 moment see that the inherent jurisdiction, such as it may
20 be, to ensure a fair trial gives me a power, firstly, to
21 order that you be provided with transcripts out of public
22 funds, and certainly does not give me the power to order
23 the other party to provide you with a transcript.
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25 It is absolutely fundamental that you show me the power.
26 I do not at the moment see how it can just arise out of
27 fairness. So I am not minded to go on to decide what is
28 fair. Probably, it would be impossible for me to decide
29 without hearing a lot of evidence on oath. I would need to
30 look at what the reports are, compared with the transcript,
31 to form a view of whether they came from the transcript.
32 I would have to give you the opportunity to give evidence
33 on oath and call witnesses, with a view to looking into, or
34 I may have to -- I probably would give you the opportunity
35 to see how, if transcripts were being used, if they had got
36 into the hands of people who were publishing the contents
37 of the transcript, if that is what happened, when you say
38 that you have not done it.
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40 Before one can decide fairness, there might have to be
41 quite a far ranging inquiry. But all that is academic if,
42 whatever unfairness there is, I have no power to make the
43 orders in any event. That is the problem that faces me.
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45 I have made a note of your application for an adjournment,
46 and I will hear what Mr. Rampton has to say, but I will
47 consider whether you should have something like a week to
48 try to set up some other kind of recording system, if you
49 can. But that is a separate point on its own.
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51 MR. MORRIS: The question of what the court is being asked to
52 do, if one party does have a transcript in its hands and,
53 on top of that, if it makes it available to yourself --
54 which we would certainly oppose, unless we got a copy --
55 but even if it did not make a copy for yourself, then,
56 well, we believe that the court has power.
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58 MR. JUSTICE BELL: That happens quite often, in my experience,
59 that one party orders a transcript of a particular piece of
60 evidence from the Official Shorthand Writer or the
