The judiciary are not being nearly tough enough in controlling the length of proceedings, Lord Woolf said last week.

Giving the inaugural Barlow Lyde & Gilbert litigation lecture, the former Lord Chief Justice warned that 'slowly but surely, step by step, we are introducing the complexity that the civil procedure rules [were] meant to get rid of'.


Lord Woolf insisted that 'we are moving in the right way' to making litigation a last resort, but added that the system is 'far too expensive'.


He said: 'There is litigation taking place in this jurisdiction which should not be taking place in the contemporary circumstances in the way that it does. And the very scale of that litigation is a process of injustice.'


However, he said trial judges could not be blamed. 'The real problem is with lack of confidence in trial judges that they can be as tough as they should be. They don't want to get a reputation of being that sort of judge.'


Lord Woolf added that trial judges do not feel that the Court of Appeal or the House of Lords is necessarily going to support them if they adopt a tough approach, and suggested that it is up to the senior judiciary to give the lead.


In his speech, Lord Woolf also expressed his concerns about how the new Supreme Court is to be funded, arguing that it would be 'totally wrong' if it were to become a financial burden on the other courts in the system.