Top judge: “It has not worked”

Today’s Express carries a story in which judge Sir Anthony Hooper – a former Court of Appeal judge – remarks on the Ministry of Justice’s proposals to auction off criminal defence work to the lowest bidder are recorded (posts passim). These proposals could ultimately see the criminal legal aid system run by corporations like London 2012 Olympics security fiasco specialists G4S and trucking giant Eddie Stobart.

As a precedent for the kind of chaos m’lud foresees under the criminal legal aid proposals, Sir Anthony cites the disaster that is the courts and tribunals interpreting service farmed out to Capita Translation & Interpreting (posts passim):

We have already seen what has happened when the Government appointed a single company to provide all the interpreters for courts around the country. It has not worked.

Regarding the criminal legal aid proposals themselves, Sir Anthony doesn’t pull any punches and foresees miscarriages of justice ahead:

The purpose of our criminal justice system is to acquit the innocent and convict the guilty. This requires a competent prosecutor, competent defence advocate and competent judge. If you take any of these elements away, the results will be costly and potentially disastrous, with innocent people being convicted and potentially dangerous individuals wrongly acquitted.

Under the Ministry of Justice’s proposals (currently out for consultation. Ed.), misleading entitled ‘Transforming Legal Aid’, Justice Secretary Chris Grayling wants to cut £220 mn. from the annual £2 bn. legal aid budget by tendering contracts to 400 firms and mega law shops in England and Wales. People unable to afford their own solicitor will be allotted one by the state, thus removing the all-important element of choice (isn’t the government trying to increase choice in other parts of the public sector such as the NHS? Ed.). Legal advisers appointed under that system will receive a single fixed fee to represent a client, irrespective of whether the client pleads guilty, raising fears that there will be little incentive to conduct a defence properly.

This was also criticised by Sir Anthony, who declared: “I’m afraid we are abandoning quality and replacing it with the lowest bid.”