943
Individual ledger accounts for actions in connection with which payments are made into court are kept only by the Registrar, the Treasurer keeping merely an account dealing with the total amounts paid into and out of the bank as Suitors' Funds.
The keeping by the Treasurer of individual ledger accounts would, by reason of the multiplicity of items (largely small in amount), involve much labour and would be reduplication of work done in the Registry; but without the keeping of such accounts the present system affords no effective safeguard, as the Treasurer has no means of determining whether the sum which he is directed to pay is in fact payable to the person named in the "Direction".
The present system is cumbrous and involves labour in the Treasury and delay and inconvenience for litigants without affording any commensurate safe- guard.
It is considered desirable that payments into court should be dealt with in the manner in which they now are, but that payments out of court should be made by the Registrar direct to the persons entitled thereto, the Treasurer being duly informed by the Registrar of all payments into and out of court. The Colonial Trea- surer, the Auditor and the Registrar of the Supreme Court are desirous of making this change in this pro- cedure, which is in accord with that which prevails in the Country Courts in England.
The Ordinance has been submitted to the Secretary of State, Lord Passfield, and is in the form approved by him in his despatch of the 1st August, 1931,
September, 1931
G. C. ALABASTER,
Attorney General.