Before the Arbitration Act 1979 came into force, arbitrators could be required to state their award in the form of a special case for the decision of the High Court1. Under this procedure, the arbitrators set out in their award the facts which they found and any questions of law arising on those facts. The courts then decided what was the correct answer to the dispute as a matter of law on the facts so found. In English law, any question as to the meaning of a document is itself a question of law and, accordingly, it was in many cases not difficult to find a point of law which could be referred to the courts. Partly because of this principle, the courts were fairly liberal in requiring arbitrators to state a special case when the tribunal declined to do so on the application of either party2. If the arbitrators’ award was stated in the form of a special case, finality was not reached until the courts had ultimately disposed of the matter, and because of both the state of the courts’ list and an unrestricted right of appeal to the Court of Appeal, the time of payment of damages was often delayed long after the issue of the award itself. Although innumerable arbitrations took place quite satisfactorily without any case stated, complaints were made that the losing party could abuse the procedure and delay the time of payment for far too long. Various calls for reform were made3 including, in particular, a report of the Commercial Court Committee4 which ultimately led to the enactment of the Arbitration Act 1979.

It is an unfortunate fact of Parliamentary history that the Bill which became the 1979 Act was hardly considered by the House of Commons. The Bill was introduced into the House of Lords, where it was passed and sent to the House of Commons on 15th February 1979. On 14th March 1979, it received its second reading after a short debate in committee5. On 28th March 1979, the Government was defeated in a vote of confidence and it was immediately proposed that, as soon as essential business could be cleared up, Parliament should be dissolved and an election held. The political parties thereafter agreed that a number of uncontroversial Bills which had been considered by the Lords should be passed by the Commons without amendment and enacted before the dissolution. Among them was the Arbitration Bill, which received its Royal Assent on 4th April 1979, after only formal debate. The individual clauses of the Bill were, therefore, never considered by the House of Commons, though they were by the upper House. So far as cl. 1 was concerned, only two members of the House stated what they understood the abolition of the case-stated procedure would achieve. Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone said6: