UK's fuel woes and its impact on legal practitioners: Judges looking for proof-of-no-fuel.

Gas pumps in UK run out of supply due to supply chain chaos. 

Britons are facing the most acute fuel shortage since 2000 as fuel pumps across the country started drying up at an unprecedented rate since last Thursday. Long queues of vehicles were starting to snake down the streets, fueling fears that there will be a severe fuel crisis. Yet, nobody expected a fuel war. Least, they expected pulling out of knives and fist fights at petrol stations. But as the fuel saga showed no signs of abating for a week straight, some Britons went wild.

Nevertheless Downing Street insists that there is plenty of oil and there isn't really a fuel shortage in the country, urging people to stop panic buying. The government has also suspended Competition Act, 1998 for gas companies to work together to maintain a smooth supply of fuel by directing fuel supplies to stations in need of fuel. It's simple economics. A temporary spike in fuel demand triggered the current fuel crisis in Britain. Fuel supplies were already in short supply. Large-scale 'panic buying' aggravated the problem. But that is not say that there are no other long-standing root causes behind the current shortage. One such major cause is the chronic shortage of HGV drivers Britain has been experiencing since 2019 owing to a host of reasons ranging from Brexit to Covid-19 pandemic. This is why the government deployed army personnel to drive tankers to deliver fuel supplies to petrol stations. 

In the meantime there have also been calls for key workers to be prioritized by designating fuel stations for the sole use of essential staffs. But as of yet, no such plans have been rolled out by the government to prioritize key workers' access to fuel. In any case, lawyers aren't likely to secure a spot on a possible list of key workers, the government might come up with. 

So at a time when even essential workers are struggling to report to work, lawyers cannot possibly be an exception. Lawyers are also finding it hard to get to courts. As taxi services are fuel-ridden, booking a taxi would not guarantee a ride to courts. As escort services have also been affected by the fuel shortage, remand  prisoners are facing difficulties to get to courtrooms for their trials, even if they are remote trials. Defendants are also unable to appear before courts, that would mean they will be subject to arrest, in case they don't appear. 

Some counsels have thought of carpooling and siphoning fuel as an alternative. Some are borrowing friends' cars. But these tactics won't last very long. The severity of the current fuel shortage will somehow ease, but shortage of lorry drivers cannot be resolved within a matter of weeks. So, if the fuel crisis is going to stay longer, judges should be flexible enough to allow counsels to appear remotely where such recourse is justifiable. There are doubts whether important court cases can proceed physically amidst the fuel crisis. Many believe cases should be allowed to be conducted remotely where possible. Because postponing cases would only burden the current backlog of cases. 

Amidst the worsening fuel crisis, a UK High Court judge has reportedly asked a counsel to show by evidence how much fuel is left in his car and the number of fuel stations he has visited, as a prerequisite before allowing a request for remote hearing. This shows the judicial indifference towards what we as a society are really up against in times of crises. First there was the pandemic and still it is far from over, and now the world is heading into economic chaos. There are fuel shortages worldwide and fuel prices are soaring globally due to a host of different reasons. But the judiciary has been adamant in its traditional, snail-paced approach in adapting to these changing circumstances. 

In UK, justice system has a new internet-based video communication platform called CVP, since 2020, to facilitate remote hearings. But pushing for a remote hearing is by no means an automatic right. There are also no national directives or protocols in place to determine when to allow a request for a remote hearing. Allowing a remote hearing under CVP is at the sole discretion of individual judges in each individual case, and accordingly it is the responsibility of judges to consider the best interests of justice and circumstances of each case in deciding whether it's appropriate for a court to allow a remote hearing over an in-person hearing. If there are proper systems in place to facilitate remote hearings, and if the interests of justice are in no way impeded by a remote hearing, judges should be sensible enough to allow remote proceedings whenever they can.

In a nationwide fuel crisis of the scale we are seeing, court's time should not be wasted on proving some bizarre test of 'proof of no fuel'. Everybody knows that there is an acute fuel scarcity. Such a requirement is wholly disproportionate to the task at hand. The simple task before the court is to decide whether the kind of the matter concerned warrants a remote hearing. Regardless of the fuel issue, if there were no procedural obstacles in allowing the type of the case concerned to be heard remotely, no other consideration should have influenced judge's discretion. And in this particular case, the counsel has shown that he visited 15 garages looking for fuel. But interestingly, 15 garages weren't enough to tilt the judge's discretion in counsel's favor. In difficult times like this, whether it is the pandemic or the fuel crisis, judges should be understanding. The judicial behavior and thinking should be flexible enough to address social realities. It takes little imagination for anyone to discern that given the severity of the fuel shortage, a car running low on fuel is truly an exceptional circumstance, not one that somebody would run into in ordinary times. But unfortunately the judiciary in recent times have unreasonably plumbed unrealistic depths in arguments over availability of remote hearings.