From Contrary:

‘The criminal legal aid system is doomed to spiral into ever greater crisis unless the Ministry of Justice’s plans are urgently rethought, the Law Society of England and Wales warned today.’

I’ve tried to do a comparison here between what seems to be an urgent breakdown in the criminal justice system in England and Wales, with what we have in Scotland. The difficulty has been to find anything scandalous in Scotland. I have focused on Legal Aid, as this is a social justice and human rights issue.

Legal aid and the criminal justice system…

Legal Aid exists because everyone should have the right to a fair trial. There is a crisis in England and Wales, the system has been depleted by the English government, and many people now do not receive any representation. Some legal bods opinions:

In England and Wales:
https://www.lawsociety.org.uk/news/press-releases/be-prepared-for-justice-to-fall-apart/?fbclid=IwAR0LGIEpqJfAVe2bBUVebm_u4FG6uZNN2aW029pTJOFol3Qay_0H7VSKS50

“The criminal legal aid system is doomed to spiral into ever greater crisis unless the Ministry of Justice’s plans are urgently rethought, the Law Society of England and Wales warned today.

The Law Society had hoped that the interim proposals from the criminal legal aid review – the ‘accelerated items’ – would provide some urgent relief from the deepening crisis in the criminal legal aid profession.

Today the Law Society rejected any suggestion they are adequate to match the scale of the problem.

Law Society president Simon Davis said: “We have warned time and again that the very existence of criminal defence practitioners is under threat. Unless the package is adjusted to address the depth and urgency of this crisis, then extinction may be firmly on the horizon.

“There are increasingly large areas of the country where there are no defence solicitors available. The very notion of British justice is in jeopardy – with victims left in limbo and the accused potentially deprived of a fair trial.””

“Extinction”? Well, that doesn’t sound too good.

There have been numerous reports of the dire state of the English criminal justice system – trials put back for years because courts are closed etc. This next Twitter thread doesn’t describe any of these, but reviews how a newspaper reporting on a case, involving legal aid, causes harm, by lying and influencing people into blandly accepting political policies that will, in the end, have a devastating impact on society:

Lawyers in England frustrated, in particular at harmful reporting by the press:
https://mobile.twitter.com/BarristerSecret/status/1234092960989556736
Thread:
“Gutter journalism. #FakeLaw.
1. This man was not “handed £400k”. This is a lie. That was the overall cost of legal aid in his criminal and immigration proceedings. This is like saying someone who receives a NHS heart transplant is “given” the cost of the operation.
Ref Article: https://mobile.twitter.com/DominikLemanski/status/1234028313888350208
2. Readers are invited to conclude that £400k is too much to spend on this case. The journalist has not bothered to tell you any of the context that you would need to even *begin* to assess whether that cost is too high, too low, or about right. Such as…
3. How much of that figure includes VAT, which goes to the Treasury? How many lawyers & support staff worked on the case? What work was involved? How many hours, days, months went into this extremely serious case where the defendant was looking at a potential life sentence?
4. £400k sounds like a lot out of context. But the figures are gross, not net. Solicitors’ firms have staff to pay, business costs, rent, insurance, tax etc. Likewise barristers. When all that is broken down, what is the actual *profit* for these professionals?
5. What is the hourly rate? How does that compare to the hourly rate of other professionals? What does this Sun journalist suggest *should* be paid to the most highly experienced professionals in their fields dealing with the most serious criminal and immigration cases?
6. Because this is is what it boils down to: if you are going to run a “news” story or give quotes to the tabloids decrying legal aid spending as “ridiculous”, you should be able to give full context to show why it’s too much, and what sum would have been reasonable.
7. Finally, a journalist or editor with any regard for accuracy would have told their readers that the legal aid scheme under which this 2008 case was funded no longer exists. The Sun is railing against a system which has been cut significantly and repeatedly since 2008.
8. The real problem, the article invites us to conclude, is that he was a bad person, and that is wrong for taxpayer money to be spent ensuring that bad people are fairly convicted. (Note also that he *won* his immigration case. The government was in the wrong here.)
9. This attitude is ignorant, exploitative and dangerous. It is also prevalent. This thread is copied from a response to a near-identical story in The Sun in January. I make no apology for this – as long as they copy and paste trash #FakeLaw, I’ll copy and paste my rebuttals.
10. I don’t care if I am stuck on repeat. These #LegalAidLies have been allowed to flourish unchecked for years. Stories like these are like fake health cure articles – they cause irreparable damage not only to public understanding, but to people’s lives. They must be challenged.
11. The lies you are told by The Sun and others about legal aid – what it’s for, what it costs, why we need it – are the reason governments have been able to remove legal aid from the most vulnerable in society without any political consequence.
Don’t let them lie to you. [ENDS]”

Note: this sort of critical thinking is absolutely essential for reading any kind of news item – always question what you hear or read.

Meanwhile, for comparison, In Scotland:

CAB webpage shows what is covered with legal aid
https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/scotland/law-and-courts/legal-system-s/taking-legal-action-s/help-with-legal-costs-s/

Legal aid review 2018 by Scottish government – reasoning for updating legislation (the current one is fairly old & predates human rights laws 1998, and fees systems could be simplified)
https://www.gov.scot/binaries/content/documents/govscot/publications/corporate-report/2018/11/scottish-government-response-independent-review-legal-aid-scotland/documents/00543475-pdf/00543475-pdf/govscot%3Adocument

Law society of Scotland response to consultation 2019
https://www.lawscot.org.uk/media/363609/19-09-19-la-consultation-legal-aid-reform.pdf
(Welcomes 3% increase in fees for legal aid. Asks for clarification on many of the questions. Many of the consultation questions are not agreed with, some as unnecessary, many agreed with.)

Review on fees Feb 2020 – Scottish law society thinks fees should be increased:
https://www.lawscot.org.uk/news-and-events/law-society-news/your-views-wanted-scottish-legal-aid-fee-review/

I’m struggling to find a crisis in Scotland – perhaps slightly underfunded (perhaps not, the government thinks it’s fine!). You can still fully access legal aid is the main thing, and get representation in court for criminal cases, in Scotland. Folks, just DO NOT get arrested in England, they are headed towards the uncivilised dark ages.