The Issue
Facts in dispute requiring proof by witness evidence at trial are generally proved by oral evidence given in public. A fraud, forgery and document-integrity dispute with contradictory statements from multiple witnesses — the lender's solicitor, the borrower, the receiver, witnesses to execution — cannot safely be resolved as a paper exercise. Credibility is a trial question, not a paper question. The parties' competing accounts require cross-examination, not paper preference.
The Law: How It Should Operate
CPR 32.2 — the general rule is that any fact which needs to be proved by the evidence of witnesses is to be proved at trial by their oral evidence given in public. Flannery v Halifax [2000] 1 WLR 377 — essential issues must be determined with adequate reasons. English v Emery Reimbold & Strick Ltd [2002] EWCA Civ 605 — the duty to give reasons extends to all essential findings, including findings on credibility. Where credibility is in dispute, cross-examination is ordinarily required.
How It Operated in Lawrence v HNW Lending Ltd
Contradictory witness statements — from HNW's solicitor whose attestation was temporally challenged, from the receiver and from Ms Lawrence — were resolved on paper without cross-examination and without reasons for preferring one account over another. Ms Lawrence's account of the transaction, the travel chronology and the payment history was treated as unmeritorious without being heard at trial.
"The question is not whether one court reached one adverse result. It is that the same failure of protection recurred across courts, tribunals, administration, policing and oversight — making the pattern visible only because the case passed through so many forums."
— Open Letter to the Lord Chancellor, 15 May 2026