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.

First There Were Public Services Then Came Public Service-Lite.

In the Service of the Public

Once upon a time a long time ago, in a land they used to call the United Kingdom where common-sense reigned; there lived a nation of folk content in the knowledge that when they were in difficulty there would always be someone to help them.  The people didn’t expect that all their problems could be instantly solved but they were confident that if their lives, livelihoods, liberty, homes or health were under threat someone would be there to lend a hand.  One thing that made them feel most re-assured was that when those troubles arose they always knew exactly where to go to get that help.  In those times a quick telephone call to 999 would rapidly connect them to the Police, Fire Brigade or Ambulance Service; and in some areas, also the Coastguard or the Mountain Rescue Service.  If they needed to consult a doctor they called their local surgery and made an appointment that was convenient to both parties; and when a medical problem was more pressing such as a broken bone or an imminent birth they could drive to the nearest hospital confident that a competent practitioner would be there to help.  They also knew that if the worst were to happen and they found themselves on the wrong side of the law, then access to a solicitor to act in their best interest and advise them of their rights and best course of action.

The Police

That was then of course, now things are not so straightforward.  So there has been a crime, who do call, well the police of course, but what is the number?  Three nines I hear you say well maybe, or maybe not?  It might be 101, first you must ask yourself, is it an emergency, because apparently police control officers are unable to tell the difference.  Well you might be forgiven for thinking, ‘My home has been broken into and some of my possessions have been taken, and I would like the perpetrator caught and my belongings recovered.  Of course it’s an emergency.’  Not so, apparently it’s not an emergency because someone in a uniform can take down the particulars at any time.  Not a detective then.  Probably not.  Someone in a uniform don’t I mean a police officer?  Well sort of.  Did I mean a well-intentioned volunteer a Special Police Constable, a hobby bobby?  Well not exactly.  What then?  Well it would likely be Police Community Support Officer.  What’s that?  Well usually, a slightly over-weight individual sometimes of rather worryingly advancing years without a lot of training.  Why’s that then?  They’re cheaper.  Oh.

The Fire Service

But things are still the same with the Fire Service aren’t they?  Well the telephone number hasn’t changed.  What’s different then?  After you’ve made the first call, the time that you might expect the first appliance to arrive might be longer.  But surely time is of the essence when your house is on fire?  Of course it is, it’s just they just don’t want to waste all that money having all the those stations not being used most of the time so they closed some down.  That’s quite worrying, but at least they’ll be properly equipped when they arrive won’t they?  Possibly.  Possibly, why ever might they not be properly equipped?  Well, all those big fully equipped fire appliances were so expensive to maintain and it was terribly dear paying all those well-trained firefighters.  So what happens now?  You’ll probably get a converted Mini with two firefighters and a couple of extinguishers.  What!?  Will one of them be an officer to assess the situation?  I doubt it, they don’t have officers anymore.  What do they have?  Team Leaders and managers.  It sounds more like a call centre.  What if they need to make a rescue?  They’ll have to wait until the second attendance arrives.  Why?  Because they are only allowed to go into a building in pairs wearing breathing apparatus and a third person has to act as a control officer (sorry I meant manager) and stay outside.  How long before I can expect a second attendance?  Well it varies in some areas it could be up to a further 20 minutes.  You can’t be serious another 20 minutes before I get a fully equipped appliance with a trained and fit team of firefighters to rescue my family and save my house?  I didn’t say they would be fully trained or fit.  What do you mean?  Well they’ve increased the minimum retirement age to sixty; and since the overzealous enforcement of health and safety regulations much of the training is thought to be too dangerous so they don’t do it.  What do they do then?  Well between incidents they tour the streets fitting free smoke detectors to any house that doesn’t have one.  And when they do get to a fire some stand outside and squirt water through the window while the others try to find something soft for your family to jump onto when they throw themselves out of the window.

Your GP

One place where you could always be sure of a sympathetic ear was your local GP.  Minor ailments were always dealt with by a brief word or two of advice and a prescription, and more serious conditions referred further up the health service chain to the appropriate specialist.  Nowadays that uncomplicated system has been replaced by arrangements that involve dialling the surgery number probably upwards of twenty times before making a connection and hopefully before all the appointments for that morning have been taken.  Of course if you are out of luck and the appointments have all gone then you will need to start the whole process again at one o’clock and repeat twice a day until you are lucky enough to be awarded an appointment.  But that won’t happen until you have negotiated with the receptionist; this is usually someone without any medical knowledge whatsoever who will want to know all the intimate details of your alleged ailment and who began their training as an interrogation officer for either the KGB or Stasi.  Of course being ill at night or over the weekend presents an altogether different set hurdles; those heady days where you rang your GP surgery and spoke to either you own doctor or his immediate colleagues who gave advice directly related to your history or if necessary even visited your home accompanied by your notes, those days have long since gone.  Now, if you ring your surgery after-hours your call will be redirected to something called ‘NHS Direct’.  You will be connected to a ‘trained nurse’ who will tell you one of five things; (a) There’s nothing wrong with you, (b) Wait till your doctor’s surgery is open and go and ask him, (c) Go to your nearest hospital and see the on-call GP at 3am and if you can’t drive get a taxi, (d) Go to your local A&E department and if you can’t drive get a taxi, or (e) Wait where you an ambulance is on its way and try not to die before it gets there.  Usually (c) and (d) are the default answers.  But all is not lost because the government has brought in a new service called ‘111’.  This new innovative service is exactly the same as ‘NHS Direct’ but has the distinct advantage of having a different name and different telephone number, but unfortunately has one minor problem in that it doesn’t work.

The Post Office

Remember those days when you wanted to send someone a letter and all you had to do was put a stamp on the envelope and pop it in the post box at the end of the road, knowing that it would arrive at its destination the following day?  Well it’s not quite like that now, somebody thought it would be a great idea to sort all the mail out first into urgent and non-urgent post, they called these first-class and second-class post and charged differently for each.  This new arrangement still seemed quite easy to understand, although it was never made clear how much time it took to carry out the sorting process.  The idea was that first-class post would arrive the following day and second-class the day after.  However, although these arrangements started well, this sorting business became quite a difficult problem and it seemed that first-class letters were taking longer than one day to deliver and second-class were taking anything up to a week and on occasion not at all.  This problem prompted someone in the Royal Mail to come up with the inspirational idea of sorting the mail by weight and envelope size as well.  To accommodate these arrangements they gave every household a folded sheet of paper with a hole in it for them to gauge the size of their envelope.  They never did solve the problem of how everyone was supposed to weigh the letters (not everyone owns scales suitable for that purpose) nor did they manage to inform everybody of the various prices of stamps appropriate for different sizes/weights of letters.  The result of this is that every letter that is larger or heavier than your common or garden small envelope with two pieces of paper inside requires a trip to the Post Office (if you can find one that is still open) and a half-hour wait in a queue.  After a while it became clear the new system was not going to work, it seemed that many urgent first class letters were taking anything up to four or five days to arrive and second-class up to a month.  This was clearly not acceptable to businesses and the legal profession where it is essential the mail arrives on time so the Royal Mail wheeled out their tame mastermind again and he came up with the idea of ‘Special Delivery’ where next-day delivery could be guaranteed.  ‘Wait a minute’, I hear you ask, ‘isn’t that what First-Class is supposed to do?’  Well yes but this way they can charge a King’s ransom and take people off normal deliveries to make sure they meet their obligations, thereby making First and Second class post even slower.  But does it work?  No of course not, but heigh-ho they’re going to sell it off anyway and leave it for someone else to sort out.

Legal Aid

So there you are one evening going home from the cinema with your wife, you are walking down the high street and bunch drunken unruly youngsters spill out of a pub and bump into your good lady.  Your protests, demanding they take more care, are met with a violent response from one or more of the mob and understandably you defend yourself and a fight breaks out during which one of your assailants receives an injury to his face.  The police are called and the time they have arrived the group of youths have largely disbanded leaving just the injured man and a couple of others.  The youths maintain a united front and all claim that you were the aggressor and in the end the police have no choice but to arrest you on suspicion affray or assault or maybe even causing actual bodily harm.  You are a British citizen you know your rights and at the police station you ask to see a solicitor before you are interviewed and to represent you should this lead to you being charged.  Now would you prefer to have a Legal Aid lawyer whose job it is give you the best possible advice and who has no advantage from you pleading guilty or otherwise to any possible charge?  Or would you prefer someone who is paid the same whether you plead not-guilty (requiring a defence case to be prepared and presented at a trial which may take a day or two; or if you plead guilty (in other words very little work for him/her to do).  In other words your lawyer would have a financial incentive to persuade you to plead guilty perhaps even to a crime you did not commit.  Would you prefer a lawyer to be experienced in dealing with the type of crimes you may be charged with or perhaps one you may have used before and that you trust?  Would like to be able to change your lawyer if you are unsatisfied with his/her performance?  Well if the Ministry of Justice have their way none of those things will be possible.  You might be just as likely get a representative that has only just left grammar school with an A level in law and a crash course in advocacy employed by Eddie Stobart (yes that’s right, the lorry company).  Furthermore you would have no right to choose anybody different.

First there were Public Services then came Public Service-Lite.

The Matter Before You

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the matter before you is of national and constitutional importance, and goes to the very heart of the equal availability to justice for all. 

The case for the prosecution has been hastily prepared and presented to you by a TV producer without any experience or qualifications in law and with a record of dubious expense claims, before absenting himself from the court for most of the argument. 

Junior counsel, another with a woeful absence of qualifications and who has allegiances that swing from one part of the political spectrum to another with almost monotonous regularity, has enthusiastically but rather ineptly taken the baton to carry it forward.  His bumbling attempts to argue the case exposed a lamentable ignorance of the facts and his inadequacies often led him to resort to scurrilous and at times libellous denigration of a respected profession in desperate attempts to support his position.

Their pupil, who has at least some qualifications in the legal profession but has an undeclared interest, has presented some supporting arguments with half-hearted enthusiasm and has often appeared uncomfortable with the case.

Much of the evidence presented has been discredited for lack of providence or accuracy.  Arguments that have attempted to demonstrate a financial imperative have not been supported by a) a well presented business case for change, nor b) accurately demonstrated a significant deficiency in existing arrangements.  Little evidence appears to be available to show that the proposed new arrangements would be able to provide consistent quality of service or indeed would be able to provide a service at all in some remote areas.

Leading Counsel has demonstrated a total unwillingness to meet with recognised experts in the field to discuss alternative solutions to a perceived need to save money.  A similar disinclination has been demonstrated to examine inefficiencies in existing arrangements that might achieve the savings as have been reported to be required.  The irrational preference shown for handing services over to huge corporate organisations with no experience in the field, must lead one to suspect an ulterior motive.

Support for the prosecution case has only so far been voiced by three people outside prosecution team, two tabloid journalists one a failed barrister and another who has an established reputation for writing right-wing gibberish; the third a Member of Parliament who has made vociferous but misleading arguments in the house.

The case for the defence has been eloquently presented by acknowledged experts from all branches of the law (including the Bar Council, the Criminal Bar Association, the Law Society, and the judiciary.  Even the government’s own Attorney General and the Treasury Council) have spoken against the proposals)  These objections have been made in a passionate yet measured manner without resort to personal abuse (although it must be said the subject has provoked many questions regarding the parentage and sanity of leading counsel by some supporters of the defence).  The proposals have been roundly condemned as unjust and dangerous.

Convincing arguments contradicting the evidence given by the prosecution have been made, and incontrovertible rebuttal evidence placed before the court.

Existing practitioners have expressed a willingness to discuss alternatives but understandably refused to engage in negotiations that would ultimately lead to the destruction of their profession (one might say that turkeys don’t vote for Christmas).

A back-bench debate in the house almost with one voice expressed dismay at the proposals with members from all parties speaking strongly against them.

Interested parties from peripheral professions have widely condemned the proposals and a petition demanding a debate in the House about it has attracted over 100,000 signatures.

Media interest has focussed on the more sensational aspects of the case and most of the general public have exhibited a typical disinterest born out the mistaken belief that it won’t ever affect them.

So members of the jury consider your verdict how shall you decide?  That’s a really tough one.