Legal aid

An infuriating benefit of readers’ online comments beneath the efforts of a columnist like me is that as you read the responses an understanding dawns of the column you ought to have written. Some readers are stupid, unpleasant or obsessive; but most are not. As you learn their reactions you see where your argument was not clear, where you were short of information, and where you were simply wrong. But more than that, you sometimes tumble for the first time to where the nub of a problem that perhaps you danced around may lie. Last Saturday I wrote for the Times about the self-righteousness of spokesmen for public services threatened

Members of the legal profession who were hoping Michael Gove’s time would be consumed trying to solve the Human Rights Act puzzle will be disappointed. In a speech to the Legatum Institute this morning, the Justice Secretary confirms he will be bring the same reformist zeal to Britain’s legal system as he did to education. Gove’s main concern, according to the extracts of the speech pre-released, is that our justice system at present is tipped too much in favour of the wealthy. Similarly to the rest of the government’s agenda, he wants a One Nation legal system: ‘There are two nations in our justice system at present. On the one hand, the wealthy, international class

Earlier this week, Sadiq Khan MP ‘admitted Labour could not reinstate £600m of legal aid cuts imposed by the government’. These are cuts which continue to have a very real impact on our society. They’ve left parents unrepresented when family judges are considering the future care of their children. They have deterred workers who are racially or sexually discriminated against in the workplace from bringing actions in the employment tribunals and priced out those who have suffered loss from bringing claims in the civil courts. The cuts have also driven the best lawyers away from publicly-funded civil work into private practice, and they have dried up the recruitment of junior barristers. We

Litigants in person – individuals representing themselves, rather than relying on a lawyer – have always been a feature in courts, and are the source of the aphorism ‘a lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client’. While the profusion of courts means there are no easily available statistics as to their numbers, as late as 2011, about one fifth of cases featured litigants in person. Since the government slashed legal aid in April of last year, the number of them has exploded. While the funding for these cases has vanished, the right to go to court has not. The most recent set of figures is for autumn 2013 –

Something peculiar is happening at criminal courts across England and Wales this morning. Barristers from are staging an unprecedented walk out in protest at Justice Secretary Chris Grayling’s plan to trim a further £220 million from the Legal Aid budget. Barristers in wigs and gowns are protesting at at Westminster Magistrates’ Court and at Crown Courts including the Old Bailey. Since 2010 the Ministry of Justice’s budget has been cut by £1.3 billion, with a further £148 million to be cut over the rest of the parliament. The government asserts that the Legal Aid bill is too high. Since the coalition took power, the bill has reduced by £264 million

I just wonder how long Harry Mount has been waiting to put his boot into the Bar. Having a first-class degree from Oxford, membership of the Bullingdon Club and then getting a pupillage in a top class set of chambers, it must have been devastating to his well-nurtured ego to have been turned down for a tenancy. His piece in this week’s Spectator was a masterpiece of bitterness and bile. It was a travesty of what is really happening. There are no fat fees at the criminal Bar. Far from spiralling out of control the criminal legal aid budget has been cut by a third from 2006/7 and fees  between

Shakespeare took it a little far in Henry IV, Part II, when Dick the Butcher said, ‘Let’s kill all the lawyers.’ Chris Grayling hasn’t made the same proposal but you could be forgiven for thinking otherwise, listening to the howls of anguish and indignation coming from the Inns of Court. Grayling, the first non-lawyer to be made Lord Chancellor since the 17th century, has simply said he wants to make some savings in the legal aid bill. To the lawyers, unaccustomed to having their privileges and subsidies challenged by anyone, this means war. Already, 90 millionaire QCs — poor, impoverished Cherie Blair among them — have written a letter to

Jack Straw’s column in the Times today (£) contains the following revelation: ‘Our records indicate that you may be entitled to £3,450 for the accident you had. To claim free reply CLAIM to this message,” went the text that my pal Phil Riley received last week. This “accident” was, in truth, a minor prang. Phil had stopped in traffic. The chap behind drove into him, with minor damage to Phil’s car; no personal injuries. The other driver’s insurer paid Phil’s repair bill. Within days of this prang, 18 months ago, Phil was bombarded with texts and personal calls to tell him that if he would make a claim, three or

George Osborne’s statement is, I hear, about 40 minutes long. I also hear that there is no obfuscation in it about what is being cut. The coalition is determined that no one can accuse them of trying to disguise what they are up to. Given what we have learned from pre-briefing, the cuts must be just massive in the departments we haven’t heard anything about yet. There is word this morning that the legal aid budget is going to be being reduced by far more than was expected even at the weekend. It appears that legal aid is one of the things that took the hit as the Treasury tried

Professor Ken Pease, the renowned criminologist, has written a report for the think-tank Civitas which rubbishes Ken Clarke’s plan to reduce prison numbers by extending community sentencing. Pease is of the Howard school: prison works. The key is that community sentences do not reduce reoffending. Pease estimates that 13,892 convicted offences could have been prevented by incarcerating prisoners for one extra month. The crimes for which offenders are convicted are a fraction of what they author. Pease quotes one estimate that there are 130 burglaries per conviction. Money is not saved by reducing incarceration because the costs associated with the victims (police time, NHS treatment, increased insurance premiums) increase. Using

Britain’s legal aid system continues to fail, and should be abolished for virtually all compensation claims. Reformed Conditional Fee Agreements (CFAs for short) should take its place. Those are the headline recommendations of the Adam Smith Institute’s latest report, written by legal expert Anthony Barton.   It’s not difficult to point to problems with legal aid, but the main one is that it encourages risk-free, speculative litigation, and fuels a costly compensation culture. The fact that claimants receiving legal aid are not responsible for defendants’ costs if their case is unsuccessful essentially puts them in a no-lose situation. Defendants, on the other hand, just can’t win – they’re going to

The government’s position is that prison does not work. It aims to reduce prison numbers and now Ken Clarke has announced that further savings will be made to the criminal justice budget. The Times reports (£) that Clarke will continue Labour’s policy of closing courts; 103 magistrates courts and 54 county courts will shut up shop. The Tories campaigned against court-closures at the fag-end of the last government; and there is whispered concern around Whitehall and Westminster that the concrete apparatus of justice is already over-stretched. But, savings must be made. Clarke’s closures will save a paltry £15.3 million from the annual £1.1bn budget; the bulk of cuts will come