Thread by @BarristerSecret

@davidbarrett David, you’ve read my book. You’re an intelligent man who knows that we have an adversarial system, unlike most other European states, and that therefore our legal aid budget is relatively high, and the rest of the justice budget is relatively low.

You chose not to include this

@davidbarrett You know (because you’ve read it both in that very report and in my book) that, because we have different systems, isolating legal aid and drawing the conclusion that we spend too much cannot in good faith be done.

Yet that fallacy is the premise of your article.

@davidbarrett You include context-free claims about certain criminal legal aid cases which ignore publicly-available corrections such as this: tuckerssolicitors.com/response-to-th…

@davidbarrett You made no reference this independent HoC report published this week about the extent of legal aid cuts in England & Wales, which provides vital context for your readers: commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-brief…

https://twitter.com/kittyfromage/status/1319662627539329025

@davidbarrett I’m afraid to break it to you that journalism involves a little more than “reporting the top of the press release”.

https://twitter.com/davidbarrett/status/1319670546892771328

@davidbarrett To deal with your “rebuttals”:

1&2: Your premise and conclusion is that the report “torpedoes claims by lawyers in this country that legal aid is underfunded”.

It does no such thing. The report says no such thing.

Hence unsupported and fallacious.

@davidbarrett 4. (You seem to have omitted 3):

You know why legal aid is near the top. It’s always going to be near the top because we have an adversarial system. See earlier tweets (and my book which you’ve read). And you know why it’s fallacious to draw the conclusions that you invite.

@davidbarrett 5. You are quite right. By inhabitant, as opposed to as a percentage of GDP, England & Wales is just above the median.

You can see that because I provided in that very tweet the source material.