Gutter journalism. #FakeLaw from beginning to end.
1. Khan was not “given £350,000”. This is a lie. That was the overall cost of legal aid in his criminal proceedings in 2012. This is like saying someone who receives a NHS heart transplant is “given” the cost of the operation.
1. Khan was not “given £350,000”. This is a lie. That was the overall cost of legal aid in his criminal proceedings in 2012. This is like saying someone who receives a NHS heart transplant is “given” the cost of the operation.
2. Readers are invited to conclude that £350,000 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 defendants were looking at potential life sentences?
4. £350k 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 cases?
6. Or is the problem, as MP @Pauline_Latham appears to suggest, that Khan was a bad person, and that is is a “disgrace” for taxpayer money to be spent ensuring that bad people are fairly convicted? I’d direct the above questions to Ms Latham too. What sum *should* have been paid? 
7. 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 “a disgrace”, you should be able to give full context to show why it’s too much, and what sum would have been reasonable.
8. Finally, a journalist or editor with any regard for accuracy would have told their readers that the legal aid scheme under which the Khan case was funded no longer exists. The Sun and Ms Latham are railing against a system which has been cut significantly since 2012.
9. 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.
10. 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]
Don’t let them lie to you. [ENDS]
