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.
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.
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]
Don’t let them lie to you. [ENDS]
