Yesterday Thanks to my colleague @CrimeGirI I was named as a "stirrer of discontent". Why might that be the case? Let me explain. In a career that has now lasted 40+years I have seen an assault on the rights of those accused of crime, all presumed innocent under the law
The requirement for the judge to warn juries about the lack of corroboration was abolished, the right to silence emasculated, hearsay evidence and bad character evidence allowed, police allowed onto juries and cross-examination curtailed by s.41 and now s28 xx in advance
Failures by police to disclose material they obviously should which would have caused disaster for an innocent man in R v Allen save that his legal aid barrister sat up all night to find the material the police already had to show his innocence
A policy of "believe the victim" that encouraged fantasists like Carl Beech and Jemma Beale to spout vengeful gibberish because no one would challenge their nonsense
Increased sentences that have gone through the roof on the basis of no proven need, people still serving indefinite sentences of IPP 8 years after they were abolished, a probation service shattered by that moron Grayling
Legal aid rates cut year after year so that today solicitors can get paid LESS for a case than the equivalent case would have paid back in the 1980s, where you spend more on the train to court than the fee for the case, untold hours of work for which there is no fee
Legal aid rates so bad that women wanting to return after having their children find the nursery fees exceed what they can earn in court
Run down courts with leaking ceilings, blocked toilets and heating that only works in the summer, judges paid not to come to court, so-called "reading days" and part-time judges prevented from working to save costs all leading to a backlog of 40,000 long b4 Covid-19 came along
A Court of Appeal that routinely brushes errors aside cos it prefers to uphold convictions rather than admit things go wrong
A Supreme Court that holds that for 30 years courts were misdirecting juries about #jointenterprise as @Jliffe knows but promptly slams the door on those asking for their cases to be reviewed
@ccrcupdate set up to review miscarriages but cowed by the Ct of Appeal, then stripped of its funding and senior staff, a succession of useless politicians parading as Lord Chancellors, the legal aid community dubbed "fat cats" for doing poorly paid but vital work for society
And now if you please judges and politicians considering abolishing the 800 year old right to trial by your peers and introducing deeply discriminatory longer unsocial hours on the pretext this is required to combat the backlog created by @MoJGovUK and @HMCTSgovuk
I'm lucky. I've been in silk ten years, my fees aren't bad but the reality for my junior colleagues is that they'd be better off as plumbers or electricians, to whom I mean no disrespect and today more of them than ever are seriously wondering if the struggle is worth the effort
or whether they should accept that there is no future as a legal aid lawyer. And that, after all of this just break my heart. Our system was never the finest in the world as politicians pretend but it worked after a fashion, its was fairer and you cd earn a living in legal aid
So yes, I am a stirrer of discontent and if you have got to the end of this I think you may agree I have every right to be. So should we all, not just the lawyers but you, the public. Legal aid is to your legal problems what the NHS is when you are sick. Fight for it.
