I Had A Dream

Prompted by a suggestion earlier this week from a solicitor acquaintance of a Royal Commission to look into the Criminal Justice System, Procedure, Rules, Access to Justice and Legal Aid, including family and civil legal aid I have been giving the matter a lot of thought.

It seemed to me (as a non-lawyer), that such a Royal Commission might want to suggest some really radical changes to our justice system.  Perhaps some of the following might be worth consideration:

1.       A system where everybody has access to justice without regard to their race, religion, nationality, wealth or position in society.

2.       One where people who are at risk of losing their children, homes, liberty or livelihoods can be represented by qualified lawyers without being forced into penury; and where people have to represent themselves in court because they don’t have access to a lawyer thus wasting huge amounts of court time and leading to miscarriages of justice.

3.       Perhaps consider providing qualified interpreter services to ensure that those for whom English is not their first language are not prevented from giving evidence in their defence or being witnesses for the prosecution.

4.       Where the laws of the land are made and drafted by people who have a long proven involvement in the in law.  Maybe even assisted by people with similar experience.

5.       The commission might even want to consider providing the police with sufficient resources that they might first accurately record and investigate crimes and allegations of crime to fully establish the facts, and bring charges against perpetrators so that victims of crime might feel they are safe.  Also that those people falsely accused of offences might not be the subject of erroneous prosecution.

6.       They could also consider having a department that would prosecute on behalf of the Crown.  Funded properly and with qualified staff reinforced in their endeavours by able support staff.

7.       Maybe a system where humane imprisonment is a punishment for crime and a place where rehabilitation can begin, rather an incarceration where isolation, neglect, further punishment or indoctrination can take place.

8.       What about a properly funded probation service that can really contribute to rehabilitation and help the stop the cycle of recidivism.

9.       Or even a system where people have the right to challenge the government or other public bodies if they have really got it wrong and decisions could be assessed for their legality by highly qualified judges; and where impecunious challengers or, say charities, would get public funding if necessary.

Wait a minute, this is all sounding a bit familiar.  Oh that’s right it’s what we used to have here in the UK before governments began interfering with it.

'British Justice' Does such a thing still exist?

For those of you who, like me, that always held an innate faith in ‘British justice’; but who have been either unaware of the effects of changes that have taken place over the last two decades or so, I thought it might be useful to explain.  Many people might not be too concerned, perhaps they might believe that they are things that are never likely to involve them; or maybe they imagine that there is no smoke without fire and those that find themselves caught up in the legal system deserve everything they get.  However, I hope that this edition of my blog will help to explain why I think that every single one of us needs to be desperately worried by the steady and relentless erosion of what was once a legal system that was the envy of the world.

What follows in this blog is a layman’s explanation of what has happened so far.  It is very long and you may not want to read the whole thing but perhaps cherry pick bits which you find informative.  I anticipate being bombarded with criticism (constructive I hope) by those in the legal profession because I am bound to have got a few things a bit wrong, and if I have I made glaring mistakes I will revisit and edit accordingly.
To put my concerns in context here are a couple of examples: 

·         Imagine yourself and your wife returning to your car after a night out to the cinema or restaurant, as your walk through the high street a group of young people a bit worse for wear through drink spill out into road and bump into you and your wife.  A tussle ensues resulting in an injury to one of the youngsters, the police are called and you are accused by the youngsters of being the aggressor.  The police become convinced that you are at fault and you end up charged with an offence.  Your wife is the only witness in your defence, all the youngsters tell the same story, there are no other witnesses and CCTV is inconclusive.  A criminal conviction would mean the loss of your job, potentially leading to your house being repossessed, moving to rented accommodation and your children having to change schools.  Because of your income and your assets (your house) you are not entitled to legal aid meaning your only options are to defend yourself, or to sell your house anyway to raise funds for your defence.

·         Imagine finding yourself fighting for the custody of your children, either because of divorce or separation; or worse still because of false accusations of abuse and the state want to place them in care or for adoption.  The Family Courts in this country are notoriously one-sided when it comes to matters involving children and without qualified representation your chances of successfully fighting your case are extremely low.

My campaign is not only to address the issue of miscarriage of justice when the innocent are convicted, but also of when the guilty are acquitted or not prosecuted in the first place as a result of a poorly resourced and badly damaged criminal justice system.
Below is a list (not exhaustive) of changes made during the last two decades:

Beyond all reasonable doubt

At one time anybody arrested and brought before a court could expect that a guilty verdict could only be returned if the magistrates or jury believed the accused was ‘guilty beyond all reasonable doubt’.  In fact a judge would even remind juries of that before they retired.  Sadly that is no longer the case.  Now juries are asked to be ‘sure’ of someone’s guilt.  ‘Sure’.  What does that mean?  ‘I’m sure I locked the front door when I left home’; ‘Are you sure you would prefer ice cream instead of apple pie?’   Whatever it’s literal meaning, the word’s context is blurred in common usage.  In my view a jury being asked to make decision that will affect the life, livelihood and possibly liberty of not only of the accused but possibly his family, need to be absolutely certain as to what burden of proof is required, and in that regard ‘sure’ doesn’t hack it.

Innocent until proven guilty

The concept of innocence until proven guilty has been around since Roman times and in theory it still exists in UK law although in some circumstances it becomes moot and ineffective.  I am not a lawyer but I will try explain.  Often when police or CPS decide to prosecute they won’t just do so on the basis of a single charge they will take what I call a ‘shotgun’ approach by choosing a number of occasions when a single offence may have been committed (sometimes without even specifying dates), or they may claim that an offence was committed a number of times (once again without specifying dates).  In 2003 the law was changed to allow prosecutors to introduce evidence of ‘bad character’ (in other words previous convictions) to help convince juries of guilt.  In and of itself may not seem too much of a step, but coupled with a ‘shotgun’ prosecution it can be used like this.  The jury are told that if they find a defendant guilty of one charge they may if they can also convict on others if they wish, even if the accused has a previous exemplary record.

The right to a defence lawyer (Legal Aid)

Anybody who has previously read my blog will have heard me go on about this before but in spite of all the campaigning, the (MoJ) Ministry of Justice and the Lord Chancellor roundly proven to have consistently lied about just about everything in this regard, have gone ahead with many of the changes.  The result is that when anyone who is charged with an offence the likelihood of them being given government funded lawyer is very remote.  Those people who are extremely poor may get one.  The very rich will not need one because they can afford to pay for the best.  Everyone else will either have to represent themselves or possibly sell their home to pay for one.

Like it or lump it the law is expensive.  It is very fashionable to believe that all lawyers are wealthy and they charge too much etc; however, that is simply not the case in criminal law, or in family law for the most part, amongst those representing parents in custody battles for example.  Running a solicitors’ firm or a barristers’ chambers is an extremely expensive business and lawyers do not get paid for many of the things they do preparing for a court case, many of their attendances at court, their travelling time and expenses, or for their time when they are waiting around for a case to be called.  The expense of running their offices can be enormous what with compliance safeguards, salaries of support staff, professional fees and property leases.   The changes brought about by this government have made the business of being a lawyer unviable for many and some of the best among them are leaving the profession, (Currently I understand, the government is paying approximately £45 per hour for a solicitor, which has to pay his/her secretary, receptionist, rent and overheads for much of their work. Less than most people pay their garage mechanic.).  The effect of all this will mean to those with legal aid and even some that can scrape together enough money to pay for their defence in court may only get a poorly qualified lawyer working on a zero-hour contract for a company like G4S.

If the attrition of highly qualified professional lawyers continues then there will be a shortage of suitable qualified lawyers to replenish the judiciary when retirements occur.

The right to remain silent

Most people will be aware of the removal of an arrested person’s absolute right to remain silent.  Now if a person remains silent when questioned that could be used by the prosecution in court to indicate guilt.  Without professional advice as to whether giving a commented interview is advisable or otherwise, an arrested person could easily say something which might appear to indicate their guilt even if that were not the case.  Although at present people still get a lawyer to represent them at a police station.  If these changes are allowed to reach their logical conclusion the quality of that representative, in terms of their qualifications and experience, is certain to deteriorate.

Disclosure of evidence

Disclosure of evidence to be used in a trial by the prosecution to the defence is an essential component of a fair trial.  This process is usually reciprocal.  It should be remembered that it is not within the mandate of either the police or the prosecution to ensure that evidence that which might go to indicate innocence should be gathered or presented in court.  Therefore another essential part of the process is that evidence and documents that are not to be used in the trial is also exchanged.

This government has massively reduced funding to the (CPS) Crown Prosecution to such an extent that they are so understaffed that more often than not now unused material is often either not produced until the day of the trial or in many cases not at all.  This continues to happen even after directions from a judge to the CPS to facilitate disclosure.  When this occurs the chances for a fair trial are severely damaged and the opportunity for a miscarriage of justice are greater.

Right to appeal
In some cases convicted persons may have the right to appeal a judgement and when this happens it is important that the person should be represented by a qualified lawyer with things as they stand now this may no longer be the case.

The right to be treated humanely in prison

Winston Churchill once said that you measure the degree of civilisation of a society by how it treats its weakest members.  Amongst the most vulnerable are those in prison.  It might be a popular view that people in prison are there because they have committed a crime and that is their punishment, but the imprisonment (i.e. the loss of liberty is their punishment) they are not sent there to be held in a secure place in order to facilitate additional punishment.  This is ignoring all the other aspects regarding rehabilitation whilst incarcerated.  There is little point in sending people to prison only for them to come out a more accomplished criminal than they went in.  People must be given an opportunity for redemption if the cycle of recidivism is not to continue.  Ignoring the absolute truism that the number of unjust convictions is rising exponentially for the reasons given above.  The Prison Service is now so starved of resources that overcrowded and under-staffed prisons are the rule rather than the exception.  Over the last few months barely a week has gone by when a report of a prison in crisis has not been published by HM Inspector of Prisons.  Suicides of prisoners are rising, violence against other prisoners and staff is increasing and so is the incidence of disorder.  Rehabilitation courses, which are mandatory before release in some cases, are often unavailable meaning that prisoners overstay their sentence sometimes by months or even years (at a cost of £40,000 pa to keep someone in prison).  Prisoners are be denied access to books from friends and relations, and routinely locked in their cells 23 hours a day; how is any of that expected to rehabilitate anyone or prepare them for life on the outside. 

Another of the Justice Secretary’s brainwaves has been split up the (NPS) National Probation Service.  Ostensibly, this was to improve the way it operates except the first effect was actually to make things a great deal worse.  The initial action was to divide the service in two; with the ‘most serious cases’ remaining with the NPS and the remainder to a number of ‘charities’ who will have bid for contracts.  This was privatisation by another name and the word charity was clearly a euphemism for outsourcing company.  Staff to be transferred to the new ‘charities’ were picked from a hat without their consent (always a good way to motivate people).  On the week that the initial change took place, the computer system designed to deal with the new arrangements crashed and irretrievably wiped the records of a huge number of probationers.  This resulted in hundreds of recently released including some dangerous criminals going about their business unsupervised by the NPS.  The chaos created by the MoJ’s ineptitude has yet to be resolved and nothing appears to be being done to resolve it.

Family courts
Most of what I have been saying relates to criminal proceedings but of course the Tories and Mr Grayling began his war against justice in the Civil Courts removing the right to legal aid representation for most cases.  There has been no legal aid in medical negligence case for a few years now and complainants have to rely on ‘No Win No Fee’ arrangements with a local law firm.  However the removal of a right to legal aid has been extended to include child custody, divorce, domestic abuse, trafficking and other cases.

Judicial review

What happens if a government passes a law, introduces regulations or takes any action which is in itself illegal.  Until recently an individual or an organisation could apply for legal aid to argue a case with sufficient merit for a review of that matter in the court, this would be called a (JR) Judicial Review where a challenge may be made to the way in which the decision was made.  JRs are an extremely costly affair and legal aid is essential if a person or organisation of limited means is to be given the opportunity to have those decisions tested; however, the right to legal aid in these circumstances is being removed.

 

The Middle East and How To Understand It (or not as the case maybe)

I’ve never imagined that many people are that interested in what I have to say, especially when I look at the number of hits on my blog.  But over the last few weeks some of my musings on Facebook and Twitter have been receiving a bit more attention than usual.  This new interest began when I started to comment on the goings on in Gaza.  The responses I’ve had have been both positive and negative although some of the latter bordered on abusive.  I suppose it is not surprising that the subject evokes strong feelings from both sides given the history both ancient and modern, but the level of response to my utterings was a little unanticipated.  Facebook and particularly Twitter are rather unsuitable forums to fully present views on such a complex subject so I thought I would resort to this blog.

Let me begin by saying I do not have any axe to grind for any of the antagonists in the Gaza conflict.  I wouldn’t want to support any claim for righteousness on either side.  Hopefully my view will come across as pragmatic. 

The situation as ‘I’ see it:

1.         Israel was created as a Jewish state from land formerly occupied by the British (and others) with the sanction of the UN.  It is not clear to me how either the British or the UN felt they had the right to give away land that did not belong to them but it happened. 

2.         It is completely understandable why it was felt that the Jewish people needed a home to call their own given the illogical persecution the race have experienced over hundreds of years.

3.         The creation of Israel as a ‘Jewish’ state was a serious mistake, in doing so it immediately made everybody who wasn’t Jewish (the majority of whom are Arab Muslims although there were and are some Arab Christians) second class citizens.

4.         As Jewish immigration gathered pace more and more of the indigenous population (I call them that because given the time they had lived there unchallenged that’s what they became) were forced into smaller and smaller areas.  A situation exacerbated by the outcome of the six-day war.  The occupation of the West Bank and Gaza by Israel as a self defence strategy is no longer credible after nearly 50 years.

5.         Creeping settlement of occupied territories by Israeli citizens is illegal and inflammatory and a response to that from Palestinians should have been seen as inevitable.

6.         The continuing blockade of basic humanitarian supplies to Gaza (notwithstanding any blockade of military supplies) can only be seen as equally inflammatory and prejudicial (if not racist).

7.         Policing of the occupied territories by the Israeli Defence Force appears draconian.

8.         Hamas (even though they are a democratically elected government) appear to be a terrorist organisation.

9.         Firing of Rockets into Israel is stupid, ineffective and inflammatory.  It is never going to achieve anything other than the normal response from the IDF which is “Anything you can do we can do deadlier”. 

10.      At the end of WWII the Jewish people had enormous empathy amongst most of the rest of the world, and that was compounded by the aggression of Egypt, Jordan and Syria that led to the Six-day War.

11.      The continued occupation, immigration and settlement referred to in points 4 & 5 have eroded much of the empathy referred to in point 10 even though these are acts taken by the State of Israel not by the Jewish people.

12.      The current conflict that is taking place is resulting in thousands of deaths (Including hundreds children) on the Palestinian side with comparative few Israelis (mostly soldiers).  The physical damage to Israel is minute compared with the wholesale destruction of the infrastructure of an already impoverished area.  To say that these things are disproportionate is a massive understatement.

13.      As for allegations of anti-Semitism/anti-Zionism I’m afraid the actions of Israel against Palestine on the current scale will only ever make these things worse because some will only ever see them as Jewish actions.  Most of those I see expressing negative opinions about Israeli actions do so against the disproportionate nature of those actions not against the Jewishness of the actions, and many protesting are indeed Jewish themselves.

If your house is invaded by a nasty character who lives quite close by in a deprived neighbourhood and kills your sister, is it okay if you chase after him, follow him to his house and being unable to precisely locate him, then to kill his whole family and destroy his house and the surrounding houses in response?  If the family and neighbours of the nasty individual seek to defend themselves from the sort of action I’ve just described would it be okay if you then subject them to further deprivation by cutting off access to basic supplies and the means to improve their lot?  If this nasty family and their neighbours get fed up with the constant restrictions to their liberty and try to break out using violent means, is it out okay then to show your displeasure by destroying whole neighbourhoods and indiscriminately slaughtering anybody (including women and children) who happens to live nearby?  If your answer to any of these questions is ‘yes’ then I suggest that discussion with you by any right thinking person would be pointless.  Remember that the ‘you’ that I use in my analogies would have redress to the police but in Gaza the police are the very people conducting the extreme violence.

Many responses to my comments on Twitter seemed particularly bizarre as they wanted to know why I was not condemning the slaughter in Syria or by ISIS in Iraq.  The simple answer to that was that it wasn’t an issue that I was addressing, but that didn’t satisfy most of these people (from both sides of the argument) and they took that to mean that I condoned meaningless slaughter unless it was carried out by Israel.  Nothing could be further from the truth and as I tried to explain that there were only so much you could say in only 140 characters; needless to say that failed to satisfy some them too.  I attempted to rationalise by saying that the explanations why various groups of Arabs or Muslims seem hell bent on slaughtering each other are far beyond my meagre powers of reasoning, and if they weren’t I would probably be Secretary General of the United Nations and in line for a Nobel Peace Prize.  The only thing I think I can contribute to that discussion is that the West, be it US, UK or NATO should steer well clear of it as there is absolutely nothing positive we can contribute to the situation.  Every time we get involved in one of these disputes we only make things worse, not least of all because historically we were probably responsible (to some extent anyway) for the dispute in the first place.  When we become involved we only engender more hatred of us (as if we didn’t have enough already).  Try saying that in 140 characters.

Most of the disputes in this region are born out of religious differences which, from a personal point of view, I find particularly irritating because I am firmly and squarely in the school of thought that it is impossible to prove or disprove the existence of God.  Given that to be my case I fail to understand how sets of rules invented by men hundreds or thousands of years ago, which sink to governing such diverse and bizarre things as: food, haircuts, headwear, genital mutilation, subjugation of half the world’s population, clothes etc, can be taken seriously.  Even more so when in the intervening time various other men (and it is normally men) find the need to amend or supplement these rules with even more ridiculous ones.  (See more of my thoughts on this issue in my earlier blog ‘Another Day Another Deity’.

Furthermore, I cannot subscribe to the ‘Promised Land’ or ‘chosen people’ ideas because they make no sense whatsoever.  Why would a seemingly wise and all powerful being create all the other ‘peoples’ if he was going to have a favourite?  Was he just practicing?  And; if what is now Palestine/Israel is the ‘Promised Land’, why did the Jewish people up-sticks and leave it in the first place?

Those are my opinions on unrest in the Middle East.  I am sure they bewilder some, upset many, amuse others and bore the rest to tears.  But unless anybody can come up with substantive and convincing arguments to change my mind.  I am unlikely to shift any time soon.  I haven’t set out to offend anyone (Arab, Muslim, Christian or Jew) although I expect I have and for that I apologise.

The Scrapheap Challenge Approach to Public Services

I had a friend who was a great fan of ‘The Scrapheap Challenge’.  He loved to tinker, whenever anything went wrong he would be in his element finding a ‘fix’, he’d be there with his toolbox, a bit of wood, a piece of metal, some screws or wires and before you knew it the errant piece of machinery would be up and running once again; well up to a point anyway. 

One day my friend’s wife complained to him that the washing machine was playing up.  It was still working, sort of, but sometimes it just wouldn’t go through the whole cycle; it would stop on rinse or spin and had to be coaxed though the routine by manually turning the knob on the front.  She insisted that they needed a new one.  Well the thought of spending three or four hundred pounds on a new appliance when he was sure he could repair the old one horrified my pal so he set about conjuring up a solution.  Unfortunately though whatever he tried failed to get the trusted old machine working again and he had to conclude that the fault lay within the electronic control box, repair of which was way beyond his expertise.  After making extensive and unsuccessful enquiries about a replacement component he was forced to conclude that the faithful old appliance had washed its last underwear. 

Standing arms crossed at the kitchen wearing a smug expression, his wife announced, “I told you, we need a new one.” 

That evening, as he settled down to watch TV, my friend’s mind began to wonder how he might bring all his skills to bear on the problem of the broken washing machine.  After an hour or two of consideration he resolved that a piece of laundry equipment was not going to defeat him and decided that he would build its replacement a la Scrapheap Challenge. 

First thing the following Saturday morning he was waiting at the gates of the scrapyard as they opened and within the hour was driving home again with a selection of used parts in his van.  He had a motor, a pump, some rubber piping, a copper drum with a heater and various other bits and pieces which together with some the parts of the old machine he was confident he could construct a working appliance.  By the end of the weekend looking very satisfied with himself he announced to his wife that he had built a replacement piece of machinery and saved them ‘a fortune’ into the bargain.  The ever suffering spouse reluctantly agreed to have it installed in the kitchen before fetching the full load of washing that had accumulated after the demise of her previously loved equipment.  At this point she should have been reminding herself that they had been down similar routes to this many times before.

The replacement looked on the outside very similar to its predecessor and apart from a few bumps and scrapes, and the rather odd looking control knobs at the top it appeared harmless enough.  So she stood back and watched as hubby bent to load the best part of their combined wardrobes and some soap powder through the door of the contraption.  He then straightened and with a proud smile that would not have been out of place on Brunel as the Clifton Suspension Bridge was opened, he switched the power on at the wall and turned the control knob.  There was a brief pause before the drum began to turn and a loud whoosh of water passing through a pipe at high pressure became audibly and ominously present.  The machine began to shake and rattle and the lady turned to her husband looking for reassurance.

“It’ll be fine once it’s settled down.”  He said with a confidence that was not reflected on his face.

By this time, as the speed of the drum increased, behaviour of the machine became increasingly agitated, banging itself violently between the oven and the fridge and with each movement it inched its way out from the beneath the worktop.  The realisation dawned on the pair that perhaps this venture might have been an experiment too far but by this time unfortunately the wayward equipment had assumed a life all of its own.  It was now dancing around the kitchen at the end of its water supply pipe making a dreadful noise and bashing against all the cupboards and releasing a lot of their contents all over the floor smashing plates and containers of foodstuffs and cleaning materials.  The violent lurches of the apparatus by now made it all but impossible to safely reach the control knob or the electrical socket, but nevertheless being the intrepid man that he was, my friend attempted to outflank the machine with moves he had observed from Jason Robinson in the 2003 Rugby World Cup.  But this courageous manoeuvre was doomed, the water pipe suddenly separated from the machine and began pumping gallons of water all over the room.  Without this restraint the only thing holding it back was the electric cable which sadly gave it enough wiggle room to bash my friend against the wall several times breaking his leg in the process.  Thankfully before the injuries became life-threatening the ferocious thrashing about at the end of the cable eventually caused the plug to come out of the socket, the machine stopped and allowed the terrified wife to wade through inches of water to her half-conscious husband.  The pipe was still pumping huge volumes of water all over, but having seen how her dear husband was hurt the good lady ran to the telephone to summon an ambulance.

The arrival of the paramedics was a great relief and they quickly had hubby on a stretcher and inside the vehicle and whisked them both away to the hospital.  A helpful neighbour turned off the water pipe and everybody thought that was that. 

However, all the water sloshing around the kitchen had got into the house electrics and in the absence of any occupants a fire started, which became quite serious before it was discovered.  The conflagration even burned through the ceiling into the roof void of the bungalow and spread into that of their next door neighbour.

The ultimate consequences were that by saving a few quid on the price of a washing machine, my friend destroyed his kitchen, smoke damage most of the rest of his house, burned the roof off his and his neighbour’s house, and shredded most of his and his wife’s clothes.  This is not to mention his broken leg which had him off work for several months.
Now most of his and his neighbour’s losses were insured but by the time loss adjusters and insurance excesses were taken into account my friends were considerably out of pocket.  That is without considering the personal impact on them and their neighbours.

***

What on earth have I been going on about, I hear you ask, as well you might?  Well the sort of approach that my friend adopted to solve his problem of an expensive replacement washing machine is very similar to the method that the government is using to solve what it perceives as public services that are too expensive. 

Instead of relying on professional people with decades of experience and training in their field to provide services (ie washing machine manufacturers), our wonderful government takes upon itself to hire random companies with no experience or training (like my friend) to carry out the tasks.  This disparate group of organisations, many of which have no history in the field, bid for the job because they think they can bodge their way through the task and at the same time make a profit.  Needless to say this leads to a huge downturn in the quality of services because these companies employ unqualified or poorly trained people and give them less resources to carry out their tasks (they pay them less, it saves money, improves profits).  And of course if it all goes wrong which it frequently does they can just pull out and leave the public in the lurch and the taxpayer to pick up the pieces and pay a second time to put it right.

The reason that public services are ‘public’ is because, almost by definition they are essential services which, if they had any real commercial value, the private sector would be providing them already.  These services include those that provide for the needs of the most vulnerable in our society, in other words the health, education, social service, fire brigade and justice systems.  When those systems fail sick people don’t get treated correctly, our children are not adequately educated, old people are abused in care, people’s homes, lives or livelihoods are lost to fire, and guilty people walk the streets while innocents go to prison.  The workforce of these services consists of professional doctors, nurses, teachers, carers, firefighters and lawyers.

So why is it that the services need fixing anyway?  They always seemed to work okay in the past didn’t they?  Why are they too expensive?  Well the systems in which these highly skilled, qualified and dedicated professionals operate are not designed or supervised by similarly qualified professionals but by civil servants that in the main have little or no knowledge or experience in the disciplines they oversee. 

The departments are led by politicians, most of whom have little or no experience of any workplace let alone the ones to which they are appointed.  These people arrive at their desk one day, having been attempting to operate in a totally different field the day before (or even having been previously unemployed) and then basically wing it until they move on to some other unsuspecting department.  They all seem to hope that by the time it all goes toes up they will be long gone; but if they are ever caught in the act, they appear to suffer some sort of amnesia (“I have no recollection…” etc) along with an innate ability to find someone else to blame.  When asked to make a statement about an event in their department’s field, they are provided with a prompt sheet of soundbites by one the afore-mentioned civil servants which will contain a selection of rhetoric and lies for them to use to obfuscate their way through the process. 

The appointment of a new department head whether due to an election or a cabinet reshuffle will almost always result in a new broom sweeps clean approach which called ‘reform’, (remember: “no more top-down reorganisations of the NHS”). Interestingly enough it very rarely involves getting rid of the civil servants who are probably at least 50% to blame for it being wrong in the first place; and if any do move on it will only be to do the same sort of damage in another department. Translated, the ‘reform’ they speak of means to rip everything up and start again it never means to put things back the way they used to be when they worked.  None of these individuals ever heard the expression, “If ain’t broke don’t fix it”.

The foot soldiers of these departments, the services they provide and the general public will always bear the brunt of the actions of these incompetent oafs, and the taxpayer will always bear the cost.  And the scrapheap?  That will be where this country will end up while they carry on this way.

Another Letter To The Lord Chancellor

Over the last year or so I have written either directly or indirectly to the Lord Chancellor quite a number of times on the subject of changes to our Legal Aid system.  In every case I have received a reply containing the normal selection of platitudes, rhetoric and misinformation.  The latest such response can be found here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/86yz9vjpvl3rin6/Grayling%20Response.pdf 

Given all that has happened and continues to happen the contents of his reply have particularly enraged me so I thought I would share my responding letter with you.

Dear Mr Grayling

LEGAL AID REFORM

I am responding to your letter of the 29^th May 2014 to John Hayes MP which was in itself a response to a letter I had written to him on this subject.  Your letter was quite long and includes a number of matters with which I have to take issue and I shall deal with them in order that they arise in your letter.

1.    It was entirely unnecessary to explain to me that, “The justice system in England and Wales has a world class reputation for impartiality and fairness and is a model for many other systems the world over.”  Especially in view of the fact it was me that has reminded you and Mr Hayes of that fact in several of my earlier correspondences, I find it more than a little patronising.  I think you will find that the damage that your policies have done is more than likely to discredit our criminal justice system in the eyes of the world.

It is particularly infuriating to see you state that “publicly funded legal services must be provided in as efficient a way as possible” when it obvious to all but those that do not want to see that the whole way that services are provided have been and continue to be neither efficient nor effective; and very little of that is to do with the lawyers themselves who you seem to want to punish for it.  The (LAA) Legal Aid Authority and (CPS) Crown Prosecution services are without doubt amongst the most incompetent of all government services and none of your ‘transformations’ have even started to address that.  In fact tales that I regularly hear tell of LAA behaviour that would not be at all out of place in an episode of ‘Rogue Traders’; and the regularity of CPS failure to disclose documents to the defence seem like deliberate attempts to pervert the course of justice.

Furthermore to claim that any of the actions that you have taken will make the system in any way ‘fairer’ is without doubt an outrageous falsehood when it is quite obvious the reverse is true.

2.    Once again you reiterate the roundly discredited soundbite about Legal Aid costing £2bn per year with around £1bn on criminal legal aid.  This figure has been falling steadily over the last decade or so and continues to do so.  Constant repetition of an inaccurate statement will never make it true.

3.    You talk about maintaining the credibility of legal aid.  I fail to see how you can possibly achieve this by making it inaccessible to those who most need it; and protesting as much as you like about it still being available to those who have little or no resources would also be disingenuous as the reality regularly proves that not to be the case.  In your letter you say, “Access to justice and access to taxpayer-funded legal aid must not be confused”; which of course would be true if you were only referring to wealthy people accused of crime, however that is not the case in point here.  Already people accused of crimes who are unable to fund representation are regularly coming before courts as litigants in person, their ineptitude is understandably causing massive wastes of court time and God knows how many miscarriages of justice.  In previous times many of these accused would on the advice of their lawyer have plead guilty at the first opportunity thereby saving hours of court and prosecutors’ time.

It is a well-known fact that a very large proportion of people charged with a crime either never reach trial or are found not guilty at trial and your changes to legal aid mean that someone on even a modest income may have to use their life-savings or even sell their homes in order to fund a defence against a publicly-funded prosecution for an offence they may not have committed.

4.    Your letter refers to the government’s undertaking in 2010 to carry out a fundamental review of the legal aid scheme to make it work more efficiently.  It appears though, that what was really intended to just unilaterally cut costs across the board without regard to the consequences.  The evidence suggests that you have paid little or any attention at all to the warnings or opinions of the professional bodies and other than a few cosmetic changes following tens of thousands of responses to your ‘consultations’ you have just ploughed ahead regardless totally ignoring very workable suggestions that could save the amount of money you say need to..  The consequences of the various legislative and regulatory changes to the legal aid system amount to little less than a catastrophic erosion in both criminal and civil justice systems.

5.    The embarkation on your next step of ‘reform’ outlined in the document Transforming Legal Aid’ delivering a more credible and efficient system, which can hardly have been more inappropriately named, has continued to wreak havoc upon our once great (CJS) criminal justice system.  Although one could hardly argue with its claim to have transformed legal aid, however the resulting chimera that has emerged is a hideous representation that in name only is similar to what has gone before.  Once again you insult my intelligence by providing a link to it, as if by following it. it was going expose some sort of Rosetta Stone providing the legend to explain some kind of sense in your methods.  Did you really imagine that I would not have already have read the ridiculous document? 

6.    You conclude by saying that ‘we cannot ignore the financial situation we face’; and yet in all your actions you appear to be doing exactly that.  The courts, prisons and probation services are in chaos, the court interpreter system is in meltdown the prison transport and tagging arrangements have been brought into disrepute; and this is all as a direct result of your policies.  Your relentless privatisation strategy which you have explained as being ‘ideological’ have not saved any money and in actual fact have cost a great deal more which you will no doubt deny by not revealing additional costs appearing in different budgets.  Your actions have resulted in such pandemonium in the courts that you have been forced into a massive expansion of the (PDS) Public Defender Service, paying publicly employed barristers almost double what you would have to pay them in private practice to do the same thing.  It seems to me to be an extraordinary state of affairs when we hear of a Conservative led government conducting the nationalisation of a private service.  You have appointed whole lists of outsourcing companies to provide services formerly in public control and the catalogue of ineptitude, fraud and mismanagement that resulted is there for all to see.  Not least the court interpreter services costing double what they had under previous arrangements.  One can only guess at what the motives are behind this ‘ideological’ shift.  I can only think of two and neither are very flattering.

Destroying the criminal bar and bankrupting thousands of solicitors in order to clear the way for outsourcing companies without experience or knowledge in the practice of criminal advocacy will not provide ‘a more credible and efficient system’ but will no doubt have precisely the opposite effect.

All of these matters are extremely serious but none as serious as for the victims of crimes where the perpetrators have gone unpunished; nor for the wrongly convicted who may have lost their homes, livelihoods or even liberty as a result of your government’s woeful mismanagement of the justice system. 

Numerous experts who have lived and worked in the CJS all their lives from all sections of the profession, the bar, solicitors, CILEX, ACPI, NAPO, the judiciary and even lawyers within the Treasury Department have all condemned the changes.  Knowledgeable commentators from the quality press have seen through the rhetoric and misinformation that issues forth from your little citadel in Petty France.  The continued denial of these consequences by you and others at the MoJ by maintaining the charade that all is okay insults the nation in every possible way. 

Over the last couple of years, at every given opportunity you and your underlings at the Ministry of Justice have attempted to justify your actions by trotting out some tired old cliché or other about the country’s financial situation.  So if we are to take you at your word then basically what you are saying is that justice is okay if the country is doing quite well, but as it stands we are currently so broke it’s a luxury we can’t afford, it’s a shame but there it is.  Well Sir, I have news for you, it is the duty of every government to insure and protect the basic rights of all persons to life, a decent standard of living, security, dignity, identity, freedom, truth, due process of law, and justice.  Justice is not optional and in your position as Lord Chancellor you should know that before anything or anyone else.

Yours Sincerely,

 

CR Mardell

What's So Wrong With Democracy?

There many models for governing countries; monarchies, republics, ocracies and isms galore.  Well our system is a bit of a hybrid democracy and whilst not being perfect, seems to have worked reasonably well up until now.  I can hear some of the alternatives being bellowed even as I write.  I can even understand a lot of the objections some people have.  However, I think most people in this part of the world seem to think that whatever model they prefer, they believe that it should have a basis in democracy.  If that is the case then will someone please explain to me why we are all sitting practically silent in the face of a deliberate dismantlement of our own democracy. 

This government has embarked on an enormous programme of privatisation of public services going way beyond anything that has been attempted before, some of it has happened overtly such as The Post Office, but much, much more is happening.  I imagine most people still believe we have a National Health Service, a public service staffed by public employees funded directly from taxation. However, that is no longer true.  Piece by piece, and in larger and larger chunks it being 'outsourced', in other words privatised.  Huge parts of the service have been sold off to the lowest bidder with increasingly negative impact on the quality of service provided. This is not a criticism of those people at the coalface of providing the healthcare; they can only do what they can with the resources given them.  Let me explain what I believe the problem is.  I have used this analogy before and I can't claim to be it's author but it's which rather cleverly demonstrates what is happening.  If you think of outsourcing in the following terms:

1. Hold your hand out to one side, level with your shoulder and think of that as the service you are paying for.
2. Now hold your hand out once again this time level with your waist and think of that as the service you are getting.
3. The space in between you can regard as profit for the supplier.

No matter how wrong you might think that is, however enraged you might feel about this enormous earth-shift in policy that is happening without you being consulted, what I have described is only a tiny part of what is happening. They have no electoral mandate for any of this, the Tory party made no reference to privatisation on this scale prior to the last election and they haven't informed us what they were doing or how far they intend to go. In fact the only clue as to what their intentions are is in a quote from Oliver Letwin made in a private meeting prior to the last election, 'the NHS will not exist within five years of a Conservative election victory'.  And as I mentioned earlier, this is only the tip of the of the iceberg. Here are just a few of the services going under the hammer either now or in the near future: Legal Aid, The Land Registry, Crown Prosecution Service, the Fire Service, what is left of the Ambulance Service, and the Police. Yes you did read that correctly 'THE POLICE', West Midlands and Surrey police forces are to be the first up for grabs.

What seems so wrong with this process is not just that this ideological shift has taken place without our knowledge or permission; and not either because we are told it will save money (because in most cases it actually costs more, it just shifts expenditure into a different budget); but many of the companies bidding to take these contracts have long histories of incompetence and fraud.  Many of these company names will be familiar to you such as G4S, Serco, and Capita but there a few others.  Often they are awarded a contract in an area of expertise that they have no history or experience in, purely on the basis of the size of their bid.  The contracts are enormous and so when they fail, the government has to try to find a new contractor at very short notice meaning they may have to pay much more to get the fulfilled. 

I'm not sure that a lot readers will be aware that this is happening, I'm even less sure if many will support it.  But one thing I'm completely certain of is that the only way to stop it is to protest about it to your MP about it. If enough people make enough noise they will have no choice but to rethink.  For those of you that have never written to your MP, it's easy; just go to the BBC News home web page. Near the bottom of the page under 'Democracy Live' there is search box called 'Find a representative'  where you can just type in your postcode and it will take you to the information page for your MP including his/her email address. Just click on the link and send your thoughts off to your parliamentary representative. He/she will normally reply by way of an automated email, and perhaps more formally a week or few later by post.

Divesting Ourselves of Statehood

If any of you out there are still paying attention to any of my rants you may remember that one of my pets subjects has been ‘outsourcing’.  Well today I discovered why this slimy bunch of worthless scum we call a government are so hellfire bent on selling off everything we have, it’s because of something called TTIP.  Ever heard of it?  No, I didn’t think so.  It seems it’s an obscure little deal currently being negotiated between the EU and the US which, to quote EU Commission website is, “The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is a trade agreement that is presently being negotiated between the European Union and the United States.  It aims at removing trade barriers in a wide range of economic sectors to make it easier to buy and sell goods and services between the EU and the US.” 

Sounds pretty innocuous doesn’t it?  Unfortunately it isn’t; the ramifications for the UK are absolutely massive.  It will mean that practically every service currently the responsibility of government or local government will be required to be available for tendering by private companies.  That will be schools, hospitals, ambulance services, fire services, possibly police forces, the courts, civil service functions in other words almost everything.

So why haven’t we heard of any of this?  Well once again to quote the EU Commission website, “For trade negotiations to work and succeed, you need a certain degree of confidentiality, otherwise it would be like showing the other player one's cards in a card game.”  Politician speak for “We didn’t want you to know until it’s too late.”

According to David Cameron we are not going to hand over any more powers to the EU without an in/out referendum.  However, included in this little soupcon of legislation is something called “Investor to State Dispute Settlement (ISDS)”.  This a tiny snippet of legislation that to all intents and purposes emasculates a country’s courts in cases where a supplier is in dispute with the state.  To illustrate what this might mean to the UK let me remind you of the recent scandal involving outsourcing companies G4S & Serco overcharging the government by tens of millions of pounds for work on offender tagging contracts that they either didn’t do or they did entirely incorrectly.  Notwithstanding the fact that this corrupt government is in the process of allowing these maleficent organisations to buy their way out of any prosecutions, which in itself smacks of corruption; under TTIP the UK courts would be unable to enforce a punishment if it chose to award one.

I don’t know if the EU’s plans for a federal Europe have yet progressed as far as developing a system of honours and awards; but if and when it does rest assured Cameron and Grayling will be among the first up there to collect their gongs.