Money, Money, Money, It’s a Rich Man’s World Part II

Whoever wins the next election will have an almighty mess to clear up. There have been many reforming governments in the past but none have gone about their business with such reckless zeal.  None have set out on their mission without even a recognised objective let alone a fall back plan if it should all go wrong.  This administration will leave in its wake a set of public services in total disarray.  NHS, CJS, welfare payments, disability services, armed forces, social care etc. the ambition of these adventurers is almost boundless.  It would be nice to imagine that their plan was motivated purely by ideology, however on the basis that much of what is happening is not just a move to the private sector.  The fact that these many of these moves are targeted at small businesses (something the government has claimed they want to actively support) that leads one to suspect something altogether more sinister is happening.  For example Legal Aid lawyers are already in the private sector most in small practices and not a corporate multi-national.  Why would that make a difference?  They would have us believe it is to save money, but experience has proven that it could well cost a good deal more than tried, tested and successful existing arrangements.  Maybe because in a large budget the opportunity for maladministration is far greater it can be made to look like it is saving money.  However, there far more sinister interpretations that can be placed on their motives.

They have set out on a path to ruthlessly destroy public services by privatising practically everything that remained in the public sector when they came to power.  Amongst the things they have privatised is the court interpreter service (another small business).  The whole process has been an unmitigated disaster; court cases being delayed or failing altogether because the contractors have sent the wrong interpreter, the interpreter has been late or they have sent nobody at all, costing hundreds of thousands of pounds in wasted court time.  But apart from that most of the interpreters are unqualified which in itself can often lead to miscarriages of justice.  Interpreting for court purposes is a highly qualified profession not only do they have to be extremely well versed in each of the languages they are to express, but they need to be able to ensure that everything that is said by one party is clearly understood by the other including any nuances and colloquialisms.  To be able to do this takes knowledge, training and skill, there are specific qualifications required and those that undertake it do so under oath.  However at the moment many of those sent by contractors don’t always have these qualifications and often struggle to make themselves understood let alone interpret others.  The spin off effect of this change has been that hundreds of highly qualified interpreters have found themselves without work, and with all that entails. 

Proposed changes to Legal Aid provisions are inevitably going to have a similar effect with thousands of highly qualified professionals put out of work overnight and their work given to poorly qualified people.  Up and down the country barristers and solicitors with families, mortgages and business loans will find themselves out of a job.  Well, I know that lawyers don’t always attract a great deal of sympathy from some of us more modestly qualified people.  We read expressions such ‘fat-cat lawyers’ bandied about by the tabloid press, there are reports of barristers earning £400,000 pounds which may be true but it does not those who work in criminal law.  The average income of a barrister in criminal law (who is self-employed therefore a small business) is in the region of £35,000 out of which they have to pay VAT at 20% , chambers fees at 15-25%, practicing licence fees, professional body fees, pension and in many cases travel costs to courts which can be anywhere in the country.  It costs on average £60,000 to qualify to be a barrister and can take eight years during which time they have to live.  In the light of this their pay might easily be considered too low rather than too high (in comparison a train driver earns around £45,000). 

These two examples of the ridiculous overzealous policies of this government are both within the legal system although there are many, many more.  A fair robust criminal justice system, available to all is a cornerstone of any society wishing to call itself civilised, and the changes I have referred to will in themselves fatally flaw ours.  We do not want justice in our country administered by poorly qualified people; we want innocent people exonerated, guilty people punished and protection from injustice.  With the destruction of the Criminal Bar and solicitors who currently practice in criminal law put out of business, miscarriages of justice will become commonplace.

As can be seen, the victims of this government’s policies though are not only amongst those groups normally considered most vulnerable.  One is driven to conclude that destroying the professions is a deliberate tactic in their overall strategy.

If you want to employ someone to carry out a large difficult yet crucial job for you, say an extension on your house, how do you go about it?  Would you perhaps speak to people who have had done this sort of work before, maybe you might go to see similar works that have been completed elsewhere.  Certainly you would want to see evidence that any people you might consider for the job were competent, honest and reliable.  I doubt you would employ anybody you had used before who had been repeatedly incompetent, someone who had surreptitiously billed you for work they hadn’t done, and definitely not someone who had deliberately defrauded you.  You surely wouldn’t use someone that costs you huge amounts to rectify their mistakes so any savings that might have been made are nullified. 

Nonetheless this is what this government is repeatedly doing with its outsourcing programme.  There are numerous examples court interpreters, offender tagging, prisoner transportation, disability assessments, and police back-office services etcetera.  Some have argued that their ideology is explained that by putting work into the private sector contributes to the country's economy.  Well that may be so, but surely that only works if the companies involved actually pay tax in this country; also if those that are employed by them can earn a reasonable wage.  However, most of these multi-national companies pay very little tax here and some none at all and their employees often earn little more than the minimum wage and/or are on zero-hour contracts.  The actual logic behind large-scale privatisation was once described to me like this.  Hold your hand out to one side level with your shoulder; that represents the service you pay for.  Now hold your hand out to one side at waist level; that represents the service you actually get.  Everything in between is profit.

So if it's not for ideological reasons that the government do it, and it's not to save money it leaves only two possible reasons and they are, complete mind-numbing stupidity or corruption.  From that draw your own conclusions, but these politicians can be accused of a lot of things but not stupidity.

I gather that HM Coastguard and the fire service are now on the wish list for this treatment.  Nothing is sacred, the scale of this government’s aspirations has been made abundantly clear are from a speech made by Oliver Letwin, currently Minister of State in the cabinet office, in 2005 said, “There will be no NHS within five years of a Conservative election victory.”  In a television interview on Sunday George Osborne complimented himself and his party on how well they were doing all the while displaying a smug smile that competed to outshine even that of Ed Balls seated next to him.  He stated that the UK could no longer afford a welfare state, but gave no explanation how that could be true when we could afford to build a railway that nobody wants, and most people can’t use and couldn’t afford to use if they could.  Neither did he explain why the economy can afford to pay six-figure salaries and enormous bonuses to executives of outsourcing companies who do not achieve what they are paid to

Money, Money, Money, It’s a Rich Man’s World Part I

I’ve never believed in the politics of envy.  In my view to discriminate against someone because of their wealth is just as bad as victimising someone for their poverty.  But this government are making it increasingly difficult to maintain those views.

The aristocracy, the extremely wealthy and the socially advantaged have always been disproportionately represented in government and that can be said of all parties, even in modern day politics.  However, over the years that has not necessarily meant that they have all used their elevated status to better themselves, their kin or their contemporaries; especially not to the direct disadvantage of those less fortunate.  There are numerous examples of politicians who have used their privileged positions as the means to improve the lot of the disadvantaged or at least for the betterment of the nation such as Winston Churchill, William Wilberforce, Tony Benn or William Gladstone.  However now wherever you look along the front benches of parliament you see rows of millionaires and nary a face amongst them there for selfless reasons. 

The recent parliamentary expenses scandal exposed the level of greed and even dishonesty amongst those chosen to represent us and you would imagine that the publicity would have convinced the most avaricious ones to crawl chastened back into their hides.  That is clearly not the case with some resorting to any means to wring the very last possible drip out of the public purse.  For example, we read of a minister claiming pennies in expenses for a journey of a hundred yards.  Everybody knows that it must have been a fraudulent claim; not least of all because I doubt that any MP could park a car within a hundred yards of their workplace if they wanted and even if they could it would take longer to retrieve the vehicle than it would to walk to their destination.  As far as I am aware we have no disabled ministers at the moment, so one is left to conclude it was either a fraud or the minister involved is the laziest public representative on record or perhaps both. 

On 24 May 2011 the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) was made responsible for determining MPs' pay and setting the level of any increase in their salary; and since May 2010 IPSA has been responsible for the regulation and payment of expenses to Members of the House of Commons.  That we were assured would put an end to unreasonable salary increases and unfair or fraudulent expenses claims and yet that is clearly not the case.  Still we’ve an MP claiming expenses for before he was elected and who now serves as a minister in the Department of Justice and several others claiming for fuel bills of two houses.  When IPSA recently announced the next round of pay increases for MPs at 10-11% (in spite of many having had their pay frozen or even cut over recent years), many parliamentary incumbents insisted that they deserved it.  Some even claim that they have no choice but to accept it.  All that is common knowledge of course as is the Salary of the Justice Secretary £220,000 and the £40,000 per year he pays his wife to act as his secretary (not bad for a bit of diary management, opening letters and answering the phone).

Whilst the avarice of these people is disgusting and enough to make you scream; it somehow seems so much worse when seen in contrast to what they are doing to the very people who they are employed to represent.  The extraordinary arrogance of these people who smile into cameras and compliment themselves about what a good job they are doing.  They do this whilst completely ignoring the hardships being caused not just by the prevailing economic circumstances but by the actions they say they are taking to remedy the problems.  ‘We are all in this together’, they told us when they were elected.  How does that pan out when we have a front bench that looks like a Who’s Who of millionaires with second and third homes awarding themselves above-inflation pay rises and expenses for things that the rest of us have to pay for ourselves.  With several of them claiming fuel cost for two homes, last time I looked it was not possible to be in two places at the same time so how they justify that is beyond me.  All the while they are developing policies that further impoverish and/or oppress those who they might regard as at the bottom of the food chain and unworthy of their compassion. 

The Spare Room Subsidy otherwise known as the ‘Bedroom Tax’ is forcing people to leave homes they may have lived in for decades; as many are already barely managing to keep their heads above water the alternatives are to run up debts or go without food or heating.  This would be bad enough but as there is a shortage of smaller homes for these people to rent and therefore have no available remedy to their problem.  Needless to say the private landlords are laughing all the way to the bank because the additional pressure on the small home market pushes rent up so even if they do find a smaller home then the rent will be as much if not more than where they came from.  If the victims of this vicious policy go to councils or housing associations for help they are told they are not entitled to help as they are regarded as ‘intentionally homeless’. 

Disability Living Allowance has been withdrawn along with other welfare payments and replaced with something called ‘Universal Credit’.  Former DLA claimants have all been reassessed to re-evaluate their need and eligibility for assistance.  The government outsourced the £400m medical assessment contract to a company called Atos Healthcare, their doctors’ role was to advise DWP ‘decision-makers’ about the level of disability of claimants.  Needless to say the whole process went wrong from the outset with hundreds tales of bizarre assessment results such as; amputees being told their condition may improve or people who are able to walk 20 metres must be able to walk 100 metres and therefore are fit to work.  Atos is now routinely described as ‘a disability denial factory’, although they have now withdrawn from large parts of the contract and now only advise the DWP on terminally ill claimants leaving the medically untrained ‘decision-makers’ to make their own minds up on all the others.  It is superfluous to say that this whole process is causing very real hardship and no small amount of stress to disabled people.

There are many more examples of how this government is surreptitiously destroying the welfare state without any mandate from the electorate.  They do it of course in the guise of saving the economy.  However, many of these changes have actually ended up costing more which begs the question, ‘why do they do it?’  I will address this question in Part II, coming to my blog shortly.

Power Behind the Throne (or who's pulling the strings?)

Anyone who knows me or has read some of the things I’ve previously written will know that I’m no fan of MPs or the government (this one or its predecessor).  But it occurred to me the other day that maybe I’ve been a little harsh on them.  Don’t get me wrong, I have experienced some sort of epiphany, I still think that a far too great a proportion of them are mendacious, ego-centric, venal wasters with little or no talent to do anything in the real world.  There is little doubt in my mind that their motivations all fit into one or more of these categories; greed, power or dogma. 
But perhaps they are not the only ones to blame when things go wrong.  I’ve often been intrigued how it is that a government member who has perhaps on one day been in charge of railways or maybe the environment and then overnight after a cabinet re-shuffle find themselves able to talk with absolute authority about childcare or justice.  Well of course this could always be the result of a waving of the Prime Ministerial magic wand that PM imagine they've got, but more likely it is because the apparent polymath is just another ‘rentamouth’ who has been briefed moments before stepping in front of the camera. 

So who is it then who does the briefing you might ask?  Well as most of you probably know that this task falls to the highly paid civil servants that populate the corridors of Whitehall, the ‘Sir Humphrey Applebys’ of this world.  Progressing this thought begged the question, what is it that happens when the day after the election, the whole ideology of the government has changed and the entire direction of the department in which these mandarins might have been ensconced for years starts plodding in a completely new direction?  I somehow could not convince myself that these individuals and their immediate subordinates suddenly about face and begin to think about things completely differently.  If they did that it would often mean abandoning policies and work that they had spent years maybe even a career developing.  My own experience of public service support staff didn’t extend to national level but my time with a county council and London Fire Authority gives me strong grounds for inference.  I have observed close-hand exercises in sycophancy and duplicity that would put Basil Fawlty to shame, and seen policies unashamedly manipulated by backroom staff.  Policies that I had worked on from an operational standpoint found themselves being ‘steered’.  Little changes in sentences and paragraphs, small nudges by a department head following a ‘meeting’ with a senior non-operational manager etc.  All these things managing to take the teeth out if not derail the thing altogether (there’s a lovely metaphoric mixture for you).

So what does happen?  Well anybody who watched ‘Yes Minister’ will have seen Sir Humphrey manoeuvre things so that he almost always got his own way and somehow the minister was left believing that he had won the day.  ‘But that’s just fiction’ I hear you say; and of course you would be right.  However, maybe there might be an ounce or two of fact in there somewhere.  As children we all laughed at and enjoyed the tales of Hans Christian Anderson and most of them were allegorical in one way or another.  It seems to me that an apt one to consider in this context would be the tale of The Emperor’s New Clothes where two weavers manage to convince an emperor that their non-existent cloth is invisible to stupid people or those unfit to hold their position.  Given that MPs don’t always demonstrate the highest level of intellect…..?

I think it’s an issue worth consideration, not to take the heat off the ministers, after all they accepted the job so if they don’t like it they know what they can do.  But perhaps we should be trying to find out who else is to blame for the succession of inept administrations that appear to destroying this country.  But for the immediate future the pressing issue is, ‘Is the Lord Chancellor wearing any clothes?’  What do you think?

A Bleak Future for Justice

I am not a member of the legal profession nor have I ever had the need to use a lawyer in court, but I have been closely following recent developments.  As a citizen of this country I consider that I have as big a stake in the outcome of the changes to our criminal justice system as anyone else; and I believe, as I’m sure most people do, that a robust criminal justice system (CJS) available to all regardless of financial situation, position in society, race or religion is the very bedrock of a civilised country. 

I know that on the face of things this may be a subject that does not directly affect most law abiding people, some I know believe that Legal Aid is predominantly something given to criminals to defend themselves against a justifiable prosecution.  It should be remembered that any one of us can be vulnerable to arrest in many unforeseeable circumstances.  A driving accident where someone has been injured or killed; or perhaps walking home from the cinema a group of drunks spill out of a pub and start a fight in which you defend yourself and once again a person is hurt; maybe a neighbour falsely accusing you of damaging his property; the possibilities are almost limitless.  The need for a lawyer begins from the time of first arrest and what happens over the few hours following your arrest may determine in the first instance whether you are charged and if you are charged whether you are found guilty in any subsequent prosecution.  The advice and support of an independent fully qualified lawyer at that stage is crucial.  Many lawyers say that up to 50% of times they are called to advise a client at a police station the police do not proceed with a charge; a very high percentage of those charged either never reach court or are found not guilty at an early stage.  It is difficult to imagine how many of these cases may turn out differently if the defendants are unrepresented or their advocate is either poorly qualified or not fully committed to proving the client’s innocence.  One must never lose sight of the fact that the police have no mandate nor incentive to gather evidence that might indicate innocence, only that which might point toward guilt. 

Over the centuries this country’s CJS has justifiably gained a reputation as being one of the best in the world; and until recently I have considered that whilst not being faultless ours was pretty good.  However, during the last decade or so a number of changes, made by various UK governments have nibbled away at the edges of the foundations of that system, but none so severe as those now being proposed by the current Justice Secretary.

In May Mr Grayling produced a consultation paper principally saying he wished to save £220m from the Legal Aid budget by cutting a minimum of 17.5% to lawyers.  He also proposed many things that were alien to the general understanding of what the British CJS was all about and quite understandably his proposals were universally  condemned from both within and outside the legal profession and attracted over 16,000 responses most of which were hostile.  Yet in spite of that hostility from the most qualified and experienced members of the profession, including members of his own legal team, Mr Grayling and his deputy, both without qualifications or experience in law, vigorously defended the original proposals using inaccurate statistics, spurious arguments and defamatory remarks about lawyers.  Mr Grayling claims that the bill for Legal Aid is £2b and spiralling out of control, when the actual cost of criminal defence is in fact less than £1b and falling and only £275m of that was for advocacy.  He says we have the most costly Legal Aid system in the world without mentioning that he makes his comparison with systems that are completely different and therefore not comparable.  He talks of lawyers earning huge sums of money and getting rich at the public’s expense, when the reality is that criminal defence work is the lowest paid area of law and many solicitor firms and barrister chambers working in criminal law are already going out of business even before any further cuts.  There have been no rises in Legal Aid fees since 1997 and indeed several severe cuts during the intervening time.  He fails to mention that the figures he quotes include VAT and expenses such expert witness fees, that lawyers are not paid for much of the time they spend preparing for a case, travelling time, time spent waiting for a case to be called in court or days wasted because a case was moved to another day or court; and he conveniently forgets the other costs of running a business such as support staff and rent or leases etc.

Why should most of us worry about cuts to lawyers pay you might ask?  Well, an initial consultation paper called for a reduction in the number of firms contracted to provide Legal Aid cover from the existing 1600 to a maximum of 400, and this would be achieved by a process called Price Competitive Tendering (PCT); in effect awarding the contracts to the lowest bidders.  There have been a number of big companies that have expressed an interest most of whom have no history in providing legal services, and some of which already hold huge government contracts and have been discredited for over-charging, incompetence, and fraud.  Other aspects of the proposals were that clients would lose the right to choose their solicitor and have one randomly allocated; and that lawyers would get a single fee regardless how long or complicated a case turned out to be.  The combined effect of these proposals would be that a client could be represented by a lawyer they have never met and perhaps have no confidence in, and one who has a financial incentive to persuade them to plead guilty to an offence they might not have committed.  I know that people may think, ‘well I would never plead guilty to something I hadn’t done’; but if you are being told by someone that, ‘if you plead not guilty and are later convicted you may end up in prison’, you may think differently.

So what do the government’s proposals for Legal Aid Joe Public, to you and me, the man and woman in the street?

Many people would be surprised to learn that the current cost of training to be a barrister is in the region £60,000 with no guarantee in criminal law that once qualified an income of over £16,000pa is a realistic prospect; and the situation for trainee solicitors is much the same.  If you reduce that salary by 17.5% (as proposed by our Justice Secretary) it doesn’t take a genius to realise that people will look elsewhere for a career. 

Not so widely known but at the same time as these proposals are made, the regulatory bodies that govern the legal profession the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) and the Bar Standards Board (BSB) have been developing something called the Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates (QASA).  The stated purpose is of QASA is to ‘assure the quality of all criminal advocates appearing in courts in England and Wales’.  Currently to act as an advocate solicitors, barristers and legal executives have to pass a whole raft of stringent examinations including written, oral, and practical in front of senior judge.  They have to present a portfolio of cases where they have acted as advocate under supervision and without intervention which have to be periodically renewed and reviewed.  Given this existing level of quality assurance, it is difficult to understand what is to be achieved by QASA if it is not to lower the standard and make it easier for people with a lower academic background and level of achievement to act as advocates. 

After his original proposals were roundly condemned almost everyone in the legal profession (including his own Attorney General) Grayling issued a second consultation paper but as far as I am able to see there is very little in the overall effect from the original.  Let me demonstrate what I mean, how I foresee things will pan out in a post-Grayling world and what the domino effect of making these changes will be. 

·         If you reduce the rates lawyers get paid to the rates proposed (i.e. a minimum reduction of 17.5%) most current providers will go to the wall or be subsumed into larger companies.

·         Because the rates paid to successful bidders for contracts will be so low the successful companies will be unlikely to be able to pay professional salaries to their advocates.  This will mean the most qualified and capable criminal advocates will look elsewhere for.  How does that pan out for client choice if the only choice you have is one huge company or another?

·         These changes combined with QASA will mean that the high standards currently imposed by the professional bodies will become a things of the past, allowing people with very few qualifications and little experience to act as advocates.

·         Removing the right to Legal Aid for many will, amongst other things, lead to people acting for themselves in court which will add to court time wastage, produce miscarriages of justice and possibly even perpetrators of crime cross-examining their victims in the witness box.  Lower standards of advocacy (It must be borne in mind that advocates prosecute as well as defend) will inevitably also lead to more miscarriages of justice which would have huge and undesirable consequences.  Innocent people being punished maybe even imprisoned for crimes they did not commit whilst the actual criminal is left to walk the streets.  Prosecutions failing, allowing the guilty to walk free.  Guilty people being given inappropriate sentences because mitigation wasn’t argued correctly.  Apart from the huge impact these have on the wrongly convicted and on the victims of crime, all of these can lead to appeals costing huge amounts of court time and therefore public money.  Because of new Legal Aid rules many people may not be entitled to a lawyer no matter how just their cause and may find themselves arguing an appeal armed only with a copy of ‘A Dummies Guide to Advocacy’.

·         Because profit margins will be too low, survivors of existing firms will find themselves on a very low bough and ripe for the picking by the likes of G4S, Eddie Stobart, the Co-op and Tesco (I kid you not, they have all expressed an interest)

·         By this time, if anybody needs a publicly funded lawyer they may find themselves with an 18 year-old grammar school leaver with an A Level in law and a certificate gained from a self-funded 12 hour weekend course in advocacy, employed on a zero hour contract with G4S, and being paid a flat rate for guilty plea or trial creating a financial incentive to persuade the client to plead guilty.  It won’t matter at that stage if you are an immigrant or a trafficked woman, neither will it matter if you suffer from mental health issues, from alcohol or drug addiction problems, nor will it matter if you’re a prisoner, or even if you’re just a bog standard member of the public; it won’t matter if you’re innocent or guilty, if you want to defend a prosecution or argue an appeal, your Buy One Get One Free lawyer is probably all you will be entitled to.  And as for a judicial review against an unjust government decision or a new law forget it, they will be only for the very wealthy.

·         This country’s judiciary is amongst the finest in the world, its criminal branch relies on the ablest of advocates, barristers or solicitors, taking their accumulated knowledge and judgment onto the bench.  Where will the criminal court judges of the future to be found?

Another proposal, possibly popular to some, is to deny access to Legal Aid for prisoners.  A recent interesting calculation from the Howard League for Prison Reform said that if every prisoner currently serving a life sentence served only one additional year in prison as a result of not having a lawyer to argue their case then for a saving of £4m from the Legal Aid bill, the cost to the taxpayer at today’s prices would be £480m.

I have written several times to my MP on this subject and to the Justice Secretary pleading with them to reconsider these proposals, the answers I get consist largely of the re-iteration of the same inaccurate statistics and discredited arguments whilst completely ignoring the consequences.  And yet, for somebody who seems to be rarely out of the public eye lately speaking on just about any subject you can think of, Grayling seems to be strangely absent when the subject of Legal Aid is mentioned.  He refused to meet with Michael Turner QC the then President of the CBA, and he failed to attend either of two debates in Westminster and left them to junior ministers who rather ineptly attempted to fight his corner 

Victims of these changes, apart from thousands of lawyers from all branches of the profession and many ordinary members of the public caught up in the law with no previous criminal record, will include trafficked women, victims of domestic abuse, and anybody falsely accused of a sexual offence even if there is little no evidence against them, to name but a few.

‘British justice’ and our reputation for fairness have long been regarded as the gold standard for even-handedness, and a hallmark of what is best about this country, but if these changes go ahead we will have a criminal justice system reminiscent of a third world country.

A New Dawn a New Deity

I was thinking of starting a new religion.  I’ve given it a lot of thought and I think I’ve got all the elements required:

·     I’ve imagined that I’ve had exclusive communications with an omnipotent deity that sees all, knows all and has expressed a complete intolerance of other religions and/or deities.  The deity has instructed me to go out into the world and recruit gullible and disenfranchised people and persuade them to blindly follow me along the path of stupidity sorry I meant righteousness.  First though I’ve had to compose some absurd membership rules (the more ridiculous the better otherwise nobody will take my religion seriously); then I have to write a very long book with lots of stories seeking to, (a) justify each of the rules, and (b) threaten eternal damnation on those who disobey them (sorry I borrowed that last bit from of a couple of existing faiths).  Here are the rules, in no particular order:

o   Gender.  Randomly select a whole section of the population and classify them as second-class beings.  I’ve chosen women, I know it’s been done before but I’m a bloke and it was my choice so it was a bit of a no-brainer.

o   Hair.  Decide on a stupid haircut, the more impractical the better.  I decided that the right side of the head should be completely shaved and the left allowed to grow to waist length.  This is for men only, I don’t like bald women.  Facial hair is only allowed on the right side opposite to the head hair.

o   Genital Mutilation.  (This one was difficult since circumcision male and female had been done before and I didn’t want to be accused of too much copying).  After a great deal of thought I’ve decided to go with penile piercing.  Yes I know that will be uncomfortable at first, but it has the potential for making life uncomfortable for women and gay men and that seems to be the order of the day with most religions.  Clitoral piercing can be optional but only for girls of 16 and over and if conducted by a male priest in the presence of the whole family and invited guests (I wouldn’t want it to seem weird or anything).

o   Homosexuality.  At first I was tempted to ban homosexuality but everyone does that and I couldn’t think of any appropriate stories that would be good for my book when I write it so I thought, whatever let’s go with it.

o   Sex.  I thought about this one for a long time and in the end (as it’s necessary for procreation), I decided to allow it but instruct priests to make people guilty for doing it.  I’m confident that I can think of some interesting stories for my big book.

o   Iconic Symbol.  All successful religions have a symbol, crosses, moons and stars have all been used so decided to go with the question mark.  It will keep people guessing and will be frequently used and therefore brought to mind and Spanish people can even use it upside down.  I can explain that it represents the mystery of life.

o   Food.  Now I love my grub so I was a bit reluctant on this one, but convention has it that there has to be some sort of culinary restriction, so after a great deal of consideration I’ve decided that the holy faith dish will be hamburger or kebab eaten with alcohol on Saturdays between midday and midnight; but that Brussels sprouts and broccoli will be declared the food of the Devil (that last bit should be popular with younger generation).

o   Clothing.  Now most of the silly forms of clothing have already been adopted so I was a little bit stuck on this.  The Mormons have already done underwear, the Muslims pyjamas, and the followers of Judaism have got overcoats; so I’ve gone for socks.  People are to wear one blue and one mauve whenever outdoors except when swimming.  Women can be excused hosiery under the age of thirty but only if they shave their legs.

o   Behaviour.  Basically much the same as everybody else’s but with a few amendments, additions and omissions.  Don’t follow other religions or pray to any deity than the one recommended by me.  Don’t kill, steal, or lie.  Don’t have it away with other people’s life partners.  Look after your mum and dad.  Take at least one day a week off to chillax.  Try to remember that children are only children so try not use them as unpaid labour or sex toys.  (This list is not exhaustive and I may wish to amend or add to it at a later date).

o   Headwear.  Once again the competition has hoovered up the most of the really good examples like bits of cloth wrapped round the head, homburgs, female balaclavas and little knitted coasters.  So I’ve gone a bit radical here and opted for a unisex pink bandana.

o   Days of the week.  We have to have a holy day so I’ve chosen Wednesday to try to break the week up a bit.

o   Priests.  I was going to stick celibacy in here but none of the others obey that one so I didn’t see the point.  I’ve opted for male priests just to wind the women up and get a bit of controversy going.

o   These rules aren’t set in stone (did you see what I did there?), I anticipate that the priests will use their imaginations and develop ways to make them even more ridiculous.  Given time I imagine other rules will be added and regional spin off branches of my religion will adapt them so they have a reason to kill each other over who is right.

·         Prophet.  As founding member of the religion and author of the big book it’s only right that I should be the prophet.  I needed a name and obviously it needed to be distinctive and original.  ‘Colin’ was obviously not going to hack it as a guide to Paradise, so and after a great deal of deliberation I’ve opted for ‘Jemojebu’.

I think I’ve covered most things, but if something else comes up I can always have another one of my exclusive conversations with our deity and pass on any revelations that come up.  All I've got to do now is write the big book.  Let me see, "In the beginning...."

The Terrifying Prospect of the Future for British Justice

Up to the point when my daughter (a partner in a firm specialising in criminal defence and prison law) first explained the proposed changes to Legal Aid funding to me, my opinion of British justice was that the system was relatively robust but, like everything, open to failings from time to time.  This confidence was in spite of an incident in which someone close to me became a victim of some of those failings.  However, since becoming involved with the Save UK Justice campaign and listening to the anecdotes from my daughter and reading some of those told by other members of the campaign I have formed a completely different opinion.  I have been forced to re-evaluate my attitude towards changes that have been made over the years, my opinions formed as a layman from information available in the press.  Reading the tales of those in the legal profession, those on the periphery and the opinions of knowledgeable commentators has given me an entirely different perspective. 

It is apparent to me that miscarriages of justice of one sort or another are now almost commonplace and not just an occasional aberration.  As successive governments have come to power over the last 20 years or so waving metaphorical banners and claiming to be the party of law and order, or whatever; changes have been made to our criminal justice system have eroded any claim we ever had to be a land free and fair to all.  These politicians make sound bites about being tough on crime and/or tough on the causes of crime but when they come to power they make profound changes to the legal justice system like shooting from the hip with scant regard to their macro effect.  Whilst seeming to address one aspect of criminal behaviour or other, little thought has been given to justice; or how it would be assured that innocent people would not fall foul of laws and themselves become victims.

Our governments have lost sight of the fact that there are two sides to justice (hence the scales of Lady Justice) or the fact that she is blind to represent she holds no favour.  Many solicitors working in criminal law estimate that 50% of the clients they deal with are innocent, and are neither cautioned nor charged.  If the Lord Chancellor’s proposals go ahead then those few people left who are entitled to a Legal Aid lawyer, will only get one with a financial incentive to persuade them to plead guilty.  The lawyer would get the same fee for a contested trial as he/she might get for short hearing where the accused pleads guilty.  Now I don’t care what protestations the Secretary of State for Justice says but that is NOT justice for either client or lawyer.

So what happens if someone becomes a victim of a miscarriage of justice?  Well they won’t be entitled to Legal Aid representation so the likelihood is the sentence will prevail even if that is a prison sentence.  There are numerous examples where people have been exonerated after having spent years in prison for crimes they did not commit.  If the proposed changes had been in place then almost of them would probably still be behind bars.

To misquote Thomas Jefferson, until recently there were certain truths that I held to be self-evident:

·         In a trial someone would need to be proven guilty beyond all reasonable doubt.

·         People were to be considered innocent until proven guilty.

·         It was a police duty to investigate crimes and gather all relevant evidence that might prove by whom they were actually committed.

·         That although each political party may have its own view about how to go about governing the country they would always act in what they believed are our best interests.

Unfortunately, none of those things are now true.  It was once the case that having heard all the evidence, closing statements by the defence and prosecution and after a summing up by the judge, he/she would caution the jury that in order to issue a guilty verdict that they should be sure beyond all reasonable doubt.  Now apparently the judge will now only ask them to be sure.  But what does that mean?  ‘I’m sure he did it.’, sounds awfully like ‘On the balance of probabilities he did it.’  The latter are the words used in civil litigation, supposedly a lower burden of proof.

How about where a defendant of previous good character is charged with more than one offence?  Because of changes which now allow evidence of poor character to be introduced by the prosecution, the jury may be told that if they find the defendant guilty of one offence they can assume guilt of the others if they want to.

We like to believe that when the police investigate a crime it is their function to catch the culprit(s) and to charge those responsible for its commission.  However, it is looking increasingly like they see their function as finding someone who might have committed the crime and to gather evidence that might go to prove that is case.  In other words to disregard witnesses or evidence that might put doubt upon the police case; or to withhold contrary evidence in the disclosure process.  I’m not suggesting that this is always the case but it seems to occur often enough for there to be a serious cause for concern.  There may be political pressures that cause that to be the case but the effect remains the same.

The effects of these three things are serious enough but when taken into account alongside the fourth one, the consequences for British justice are enormous.  This government is first in recent history to make a deliberate and concerted effort to dismantle our Criminal Justice System.  The changes that are proposed include making Legal Aid unavailable to many and unaffordable to all but the obviously innocent.  Reducing those cases eligible for judicial review to almost none.

THE CONSEQUENCES

The list of potential outcomes is long and frightening:

·         The almost complete destruction of the criminal bar.  That would mean a massive reduction in qualified barristers to prosecute as well as defend.

·         Over time there will be less and less people qualified to become judges.  I can’t imagine how future governments will deal with that.

·         The loss of anything up to 1600 small solicitor firms with a long and respected record of service.  Thousands of highly qualified professional people and their support staff out of work.

·         Legal Aid lawyers will only be available from big companies such as G4S, Serco, Tesco and the Co-op.  Many of these companies are already completely discredited from other government contracts that they have failed to administer either competently or honestly.  These will be paid the same for a straightforward guilty plea as for a long protracted trial.  Giving the lawyer a financial incentive to persuade the accused to plead guilty even if that need not necessarily be the right thing to do.  These ‘lawyers’ would not necessarily be the same qualified people that have done this kind of work in the past, but possibly paralegals, people who have attended a 12 hour weekend course in advocacy.

·         Miscarriages of justice will become even commonplace because people will be represented by poorly qualified advocates; or will represent themselves in court.  Lack of representation will prevent people from successful arguing for an appeals in many cases.

·         Courts are already struggling under the weight of cases that need to be heard due in no small part to programme of court closures introduced by this government.  This situation will be severely exacerbated by the increase in court time caused by poor advocacy and self-representation.

·         From time to time the government makes a decision or brings into force laws or regulations which are contrary to natural justice or are in themselves in conflict with other existing law.  In such circumstances people can request a judicial review where these things can be independently considered by senior judges and put aside if found to be unjust or incorrect.  The government’s proposals would make it almost impossible for an individual to get such a review and totally impossible for groups or charities to do at all; leaving the government of the day to act with impunity.

These latest changes are a terrifying attack on the freedom and democracy of this country if allowed to go through I don’t know how this government intend to exploit them but the potential for misuse by future governments is incalculable.

The Great British Rake Off or Family Silver Gone Now What .....?

Remember those days back in the 70s when the government set about privatising our nationalised industries?  Remember the rationale?  The income would be good for the country they said.  Introducing more competition will be good for prices they said.  Some of us believed them others didn’t, and all of us watched over the next decade or two as various utilities and assets disappeared into private hands.  It never became clear where the money went that the government got for those precious things but somehow we accepted that it had contributed towards paying off the national debt or some other equally laudable cause.
Well here we are now, 40 years down the line and most of our assets with any substantive value at all have gone to the highest bidder (most of them in other countries) and we find ourselves with gas, electricity and water bills going through the roof and allegations of corporate profiteering appearing in the press on an almost daily basis.  But, you might argue, surely the government has introduced safeguards to ensure that our best interests are protected.  Yes of course there’s Ofwat, Ofgen, Ofcom, Oftel Ofthis and Ofthat and numerous other quangos that cost god knows how much to run.  But none of these committees comprising of jobs for the boys appear to do anything to rein in the excesses of the huge corporate leeches that have carried out this passive takeover of practically every physical asset that wasn’t nailed down and quite a few that were. 

But all that is history, it’s gone, we can’t get it back we have to accept it and move on there’s nothing left to sell is there?  Well you’d think not, but behind the scenes a surreptitious and insidious (and some might say even more dangerous) programme of asset stripping has been going on; it is called ‘outsourcing’.  This innocuous sounding word, as far as our government is concerned can be roughly defined as holding a fire sale of any or all public services that can be privatised without causing riots in the streets.  It began quite uncontroversially with things like cleaning in hospitals and moved on to waste collection and the like.  Then they started to get really serious about things with moves such as selling the London Fire Brigade’s entire fleet of fire fighting vehicles to a private equity company for £2 so the Brigade could lease them back and not have to maintain them.  Needless to say the company went to the wall and sold the vehicles on to another faceless company almost leaving the Brigade without an appliance to their name.  Had it not been for the intervention of the court, London could have been left effectively without a fire service.

There have been thousands of these dodgy deals going on over the years, but the pace of the selloff seems to be accelerating.  Among the latest, the handover of prisoner tagging services to G4S.  This particular masterpiece of contract negotiation and supervision led to the government being overcharged 10s of millions of pounds for services which included tagging for dead people, people in prison and people who had been found not guilty.  Then there the court interpreter service this went to a company called Capita.  This company is routinely guilty of sending interpreters who:  speak a different language(s) than that required, are unqualified, don’t turn up at all, turn up late; and several other variations on that theme.  Some may remember that organisation Group Four Securicor that used to deliver cash and other valuables between banks well it has now morphed into the afore-mentioned enormous international corporation G4S, with fingers of thousands of pies.  Most will recognise the name from their embarrassing inability to meet their obligations at last year’s Olympics.  You may even have spotted their fire appliances at the recent airport fire in Kenya.  A brief look at the Wikipedia page will give you a soupcon of the extent of the G4S reach, and a little taster of their incompetence.  As a service provider they have proven to be something of a government favourite they have the prisoner transport contract (frequently failing to get prisoners to court on time or at all on occasion) and sometimes to the wrong court.  They even operate police services in some parts of the country.  Now they feel themselves qualified to operate children’s homes and provide advice to defendants under Legal Aid in spite of having no expertise or experience in either of these areas.  I know that there many other areas of public service where G4S and other huge corporate organisations already have contracts although I don’t believe they actually run any NHS hospitals yet but it is probably only a matter of time.

When these massive companies fail to provide the service they are contracted to (and have been paid for) there is no evidence of any of them suffering any penalty; financial or otherwise.  In fact the reverse is true; we see government departments and local authorities almost biting at the bit to renew contracts or to give them another contract in a different field of operations.  So what is the incentive then to hand over these sometimes vital services to organisations with proven records of incompetence, and some even with allegations of criminality?  Well the government will always claim that it is to ensure best value for money.  Well that is an argument of course, but only if, a) it actually does save money, b) we do actually get the service we pay for, c) that the service is of the minimum acceptable standard, and d) that the standard is maintained as a matter of course throughout whole of the term contract.  However, experience (and there is a lot of that) tells us none of those things apply in most of these contracts and the bigger the contract the less likely they are to comply with the service level agreement.  And thereby hangs the first part of the tale, if the contract is too big it cannot be allowed to fail as the consequences of failure would be political embarrassment at best, and/or massive disorder/suffering/injustice at worst.  So what does happen when it does go wrong is the politicians blame someone else such as the last government/external forces/the workforce/global conditions.  We have seen that G4S have withdrawn from bidding for the next tagging contract but they are nonetheless still allowing to continue with the existing one purely because there are no alternatives; all the competition have been forced out of business.  Every failure adds to the cost of running the service but not to the contractor but to taxpayer.  Every missed court hearing and every miscarriage of justice has massive cost implications for the whole justice system; and the same applies in other areas of public service too numerous to mention.

What’s the second part of the tale then, I hear you ask?  Well if this type of business model has been proven not to work (as it has been both here and in the US) why are officials so anxious to keep using it.  Well one can be charitable maybe it’s because the headline prices of these contracts appear attractive and without close examination look as if they have saved money.  That of course is very rarely true because the only beneficiaries of these contracts are the shareholders, unless some money, benefits or political donations changing hands somewhere along the line.  The losers are normally the service users such as the general public, the taxpayer and the workforce whose pay is forced down to the lowest possible denominator.

Public Service - A Political Ping Pong Ball

State run public services versus private enterprise along with their associated politics.  I thought I might like to put my point of view.  As someone who spent most of his working life as a public servant I like to think my opinion is valid though some might not agree.

Like many of us, my early employment was a job, something one had to do in order to support oneself, not a vocation and certainly not a political statement.  When becoming a public servant for the first time it was because liked the idea of the job, not for any altruistic reason or the politics.  The next thirty-five years gave me the opportunity to see public service at its very best and its very worst.  I’ve seen demonstrations of courage and commitment to duty that would put many to shame; and seen blind mindless adherence to rules with total disregard to the service people were there to provide.  And I’ve seen those qualities and weaknesses demonstrated at every level of the organisation.  Governments have come and gone each with their particular brand of ‘reform’ and very few having a positive effect on service provision, let the alone professionalism of the employees.  Unions have had their say to argue the case for their membership, often with the quality of the service as their slogan of the day but disregarding the fact that many of their campaigns having had a detrimental effect on professionalism.

It seems to me that a public service’s first duty is to provide that amenity to its users (the public) efficiently, effectively and to the highest standard possible given the resources available.  However, in my experience, too many public employees forget the reason why they have a job in the first place and behave as if their employment is a God given right.  For example a police officer who arrests someone because he can, not because it is the right thing to do having regard to why a law might have been passed in the first place.  Or a fire officer who refuses to rescue someone from a pond because they were only trained for operations in water up to 15cm.  Then there’s the parking warden giving a ticket to a hearse when collecting a body or because a vehicle is 6cm over the line.  A 13 year old schoolboy arrested and DNA tested because of some overheard offhand hearsay remark in the playground by his boastful 13 year old girlfriend.  Endless examples can be given and although I suspect some might be apocryphal, I have seen the attitude with my own eyes.

Likewise I have seen the various attempts by political parties to use all aspects of public service as some sort cause celebre and plough on with changes and reforms in spite of the evidence proving a change would not work and any damage it would cause.  Normally that damage is at the cost of the service in both terms of budget and professionalism.  This damage is often exacerbated by the political collusion of non-operational bureaucrats in both central and local government with little or no understanding of what is really going on at the sharp end.

The government’s job as far as public service is simple, decide what services you want.  Decide to what standards you want them provided, having regard to advice from people with acknowledged expertise in the appropriate field.  Find out what resources are required to deliver those services with the appropriate support and then provide them.  Institute independent arrangements to ensure those standards are being adhered to.  Then keep their noses the hell out of it and remember these services are not there to be handed out as some sort of recompense for party donations.

In thirty-five years public service I have seen no evidence that either state or privately run solutions are exclusively the right answer; but of one thing I am certain and that is, their fate needs to be decided because it is the right thing to do not because of political dogma.