SMALL CLAIMS TRIBUNALS (AMENDMENT) BILL

Order for Second Reading read. 2.03 pm

The Minister for Law (Prof. S. Jayakumar): Sir, I beg to move, "That the Bill be now read a Second time."

This Bill amends the Small Claims Tribunals Act (Chapter 308). Sir, the Subordinate Courts Rules Committee, which is chaired by the Senior District Judge, was asked by the Chief Justice last year to review the Small Claims Tribunals Act and the Rules thereunder and to recommend any necessary changes which are necessary in the light of working experience gained. The amendments in this Bill are the result of the work of this Committee and have been recommended by the Chief Justice.

Some of the proposed amendments have become necessary as a result of the change in the character and volume of claims which have come before the tribunals. Basically, these amendments have the following objectives:

Firstly, to improve the statutory provisions regulating the manner in which the claims are dealt with;

Secondly, to remove shortcomings in the Act which are the source of administrative strain on the limited resources of the tribunals; and

Thirdly, generally, to improve the efficacy of the tribunals as a machinery for the settlement of any dispute arising from a contract for the sale of goods or provision of services.

If I may turn to the specific amendments, Sir. First, the Bill allows destruction of records of completed cases of a tribunal after a period of at least one year from the date of the tribunal's order or after the conclusion of an appeal to the High Court. The reason for this amendment is to alleviate the storage problem of such records posed in the light of the ever increasing number of cases. But the claim form and the order of the tribunal will be retained for a period of 12 years through administrative arrangement in the light of the Limitation Act.

Second amendment, Sir, is to allow the Registrar at the consultation stage to do the following things:

Firstly, to discontinue any claim outside the jurisdiction of the tribunals;

Secondly, to dismiss any claim lodged if a claimant fails to appear; or

Thirdly, to enter judgment in default of a respondent's appearance.

The reason for these amendments is that at present the definition of "tribunal" does not include the Registrar. As a result, at the consultation stage, the Registrar is unable to make a decision on straightforward matters, for example, dismissing a claim which is clearly outside the jurisdiction of the tribunal or to enter a default judgment when one party fails to appear. Instead, he has to fix the matter for a hearing before a tribunal (presided by a referee who is usually a magistrate in the Subordinate Courts) to make such an order. This is quite unproductive and it delays the disposal of cases.

Third amendment, Sir, is to allow a tribunal to set aside any order made by the Registrar. The reason for this amendment is that we want to provide a mechanism to check on the exercise of powers of the Registrar to ensure that there is no abuse of power or miscarriage of justice. The amendment will allow an aggrieved party to make the relevant application and provide a tribunal with powers to set aside the Registrar's order.

Fourth amendment, Sir, is to enable Town Councils to be represented before a tribunal by its full-time employee or a full-time employee of its management agent. I think Members of this House who have to deal with Town Councils must be familiar with the reason. Because the Act at present does not allow for representation of parties by agents, this has caused considerable difficulties for Town Councils which often operate with skeletal staff and rely on managing agents to attend proceedings before a tribunal.

Fifth amendment, Sir, is to increase the time limit for the filing of application to set aside any order made in default of appearance from seven days to one month. The reason for this amendment is that it is necessary because the time required for the tribunal order to be prepared and despatched through the post takes more than seven days due to various administrative constraints.

Sir, these amendments recommended by the Chief Justice upon the report of the Subordinate Courts Rules Committee, I believe, will certainly help to improve the functioning of these tribunals.

Sir, I beg to move.

Question proposed.

Dr Arthur Beng Kian Lam (Bedok GRC): Mr Speaker, Sir, I support the amendments which have been recommended by the Chief Justice.

Sir, the Small Claims Tribunal is a machinery which was set up to settle disputes arising from a contract for sale of goods or provision of services. The procedure is simple, informal, inexpensive and expeditious. Lawyers are precluded from representing and being party to the proceedings before a tribunal. The primary function of the tribunal is to attempt to bring the parties to a dispute to an agreed settlement. The prominence is given to the mediating function of the tribunal. I am glad that the amendments do not affect the simplicity of the proceedings or compromise the safeguards provided in the Act.

In allowing the Registrar to decide in cases where a claim is outside the jurisdiction of the tribunal or when one party fails to appear, will, in fact, allow for the speedy disposal of cases before the tribunal and enable the tribunal to deal with its increasingly large volume of cases. However, this will not compromise the safeguards of the Act as the decision of the Registrar can be appealed against by the aggrieved party. The appeal will be heard by a referee (a magistrate in the Subordinate Courts). Prior to the amendment, the Registrar had no power to decide on such cases. The matter had to be referred to the referee, thus causing delay.

The amendments also alleviate some of the problems faced by the Town Councils. Town Councils run on a tight budget and depend on managing agents to assist them. The amendment will enable the managing agents to represent Town Councils in proceedings before a tribunal.

Mr Ho Peng Kee: Sir, I rise to speak in support of the Bill.

Sir, indeed, as the Minister has said, this Bill and the amendments thereof will certainly facilitate the small claims process in Singapore. As Dr Beng has mentioned, the key benefits of the process are simplicity, economy, and also the fact that consumers will feel comfortable with the process since no lawyers are present and the costs are low. And that is why, Sir, it is for very very reason that even though I support the Bill, I think some concern should be registered in that, like the other small claims processes in the world, the small claims process in Singapore has mainly benefited not so much the consumers but companies, government agencies, statutory boards who have got many claims of a simple nature to press. And, therefore, I find that with the present amendment, the Town Councils will find it easier to file claims in court. However, it also adds on to this problem: that where consumers, even though they were to be important beneficiaries of the small claims process, will find themselves now being put before the Small Claims Tribunal by an additional agency.

It is not something peculiar to Singapore. It is a problem that all small claims processes grapple with, and other jurisdictions have tinkered with various ways to control the problem but without much success. For example, you can think of limiting the status of claimants, although I think this is too extreme, or you can limit each claimant to a certain number of claims that can be filed within a time period of a month or so, although that may be said to be denying justice to a legitimate party, the corporate party. Or you could actually make corporate parties or any other parties for that matter who file beyond a certain number of claims within a certain period of time to pay more. This will not deter them as such, but this will reflect the fact that they use the facilities more and, therefore, they should bear in greater proportion the costs of these facilities.

There are two other quick points I wish to make. The Minister in his Second Reading speech of the Small Claims Tribunals Bill in 1984 did say that after the system had been tried out and found to be successful, consideration may be given to extending the jurisdiction of the tribunal to cover other types of actions. I note that this point has not been considered in these present amendments. But I would like to ask the Minister whether, after eight years of its successful implementation, he would consider extending the jurisdiction of small claims tribunals. Again, there are two ways to do it. You can extend it by way of lifting or raising the quantum of monetary limit (right now it is $2,000) or you could extend the types of claims that can be brought before the court.

Here again, I think we can take a leaf from other jurisdictions. I believe in New Zealand, for example, other claims, besides contracts for sale of goods or provision of services, can be brought before the tribunal. I do know that an important point of this tribunal is that you do not want to put before the tribunal complex issues of law. Therefore, the supposition is that in a contract for sale of goods under $2,000, or provision of services under $2,000, this problem would not arise. Given this constraint, would the Minister therefore consider other situations, such as is available in New Zealand, property damage to vehicles in accident cases which do not involve injury to persons or complex issues of law.

The other quick point is, as Dr Beng has mentioned, one of the key benefits of the Bill is that there is no legal representation. We know sometimes when lawyers get into the picture, there is a possibility that simplicity may be lost or economy or speed may be lost. However, I would ask the Minister whether he would consider, not legal representation, but lay representation, and not as of right but as a matter of discretion by the Registrar. For example, if a 60-year old lady enters into a contract for the sale of a fridge - she is the party to the contract - and the fridge proves to be defective, then under section 21 of the Act she herself has to press the claim in a Small Claims Tribunal. Only when the party is a corporate party then you can have a representation. But in a case like this, which I would submit is an appropriate case, would not it be fairer if such an old lady can ask somebody else, eg, a younger nephew, to bring her case before the tribunal? I do not think this is opening the floodgates, but this is giving a proper discretion to the Registrar of the tribunal to ensure that there is some parity between the parties in the contest.

Sir, I support the Bill.

Prof. Jayakumar: Mr Speaker, Sir, I thank the two Members who have spoken on the Bill.

Mr Ho Peng Kee has raised some points. He has quite correctly observed that, over the years, the Small Claims Tribunal is now being increasingly used by corporate bodies as distinguished from individuals. But if that has been so because of the trend, I would like to emphasise that it is not because individuals are prevented from access to the tribunals. There could be many reasons why individual consumers who have complaints have not resorted to the Small Claims Tribunals in large numbers. But whatever the reasons, I would like to assure him that the Small Claims Tribunal is still open to individual claimants who have complaints or claims which come within the province of the Small Claims Tribunal. Of course, there can always be a debate on any Small Claims Tribunal's structure as to whether it should be limited only to individuals. We debated this when the tribunal was established in 1984 and I did inform the House then that we considered the different options but decided that it is not a tribunal only for individual consumers but it is a tribunal for small claims, whether from shops or consumers.

Secondly, Mr Ho Peng Kee asked whether, in the light of the experience gained, we are prepared to extend the jurisdiction. I would proceed very cautiously at this stage because what has happened in the past eight years is that the volume of work faced by the tribunals has shot up tremendously. And this problem was alluded to by the Chief Justice in his speech at the opening of the Legal Year where he commented on the usage of the tribunals by bodies like the Telecom, PUB, Town Councils, and so on. And consultations are going to be held with some of these bodies to work out the procedures where the pressure on the tribunals could be reduced. I understand from the Registrar of the Subordinate Courts that these consultations are well in hand. I would like to know, as Minister, first, how the Registrar of the Subordinate Courts and the persons in-charge of this tribunal see the future years of operation of Small Claims Tribunals. If they feel that the matters are under control, I think we can then consider some of the points raised by Mr Ho Peng Kee.

His final point was, although he agrees with the need to have proceedings where individuals appear in person and not represented by lawyers, whether we could have lay representation. He cited, particularly, the situation of this old lady who might have a claim but who might not be able to sufficiently articulate before the tribunal. I would consider this point, Sir, in any future amendments to the Small Claims Tribunals Act. We may not want to have representation by agents or lay representation for each and every case. But in a difficult situation which he gave as a hypothetical example, perhaps, there may be good grounds for conferring some discretion with the Registrar to allow representation by either relatives or some immediate members of the family in this kind of situation, and I am prepared to consider that for the future.

Question put, and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time and committed to a Committee of the whole House.

The House immediately resolved itself into a Committee on the Bill. - [Prof. S. Jayakumar].

Bill considered in Committee; reported without amendment; read a Third time and passed.