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4 Jun, 20 tweets, 9 min read
It’s time for some Friday #FakeLaw! Welcoming back an old friend of the show, it’s...

The Mail! With its new double whammy in its misrepresentation of legal aid and the rule of law!

Buckle up, kids. [THREAD] 👇
1. Let’s start with the headline. In a fun twist on yesterday’s court judgment, apparently it was “Human rights lawyers” who “helped brand Napier Barracks illegal”, rather than, say, the Home Secretary deliberately accommodating asylum seekers in dangerous and decrepit conditions
2. Given the dubious news value of lawyers specialising in asylum and human rights law being involved in asylum and human rights cases, this little intro must serve another purpose.

Subtext: this lawyer helps people we disapprove of (in this case, asylum seekers & travellers).
3. On with the substance.

The first paragraph is, well, it’s false. Completely untrue. Put aside the infantile assumption that anybody who represents asylum seekers is “left-leaning”, the suggestion that the law firm “cost the taxpayer £20million” is false.
4. The £20m figure relates to the overall estimated cost of evicting travellers from Dale Farm. It comprised policing and council costs.

Not, as the article disingenuously suggests, costs incurred or caused by lawyers.

Pure #FakeLaw.

standard.co.uk/hp/front/trave…
5. Straight in here with legal aid. Here’s the thing - when you represent asylum seekers who have no money and are prohibited from earning a living, you find that a lot of your clients need legal aid.

Although (Chapter 7 Fake Law) legal aid has now been removed from most people.
6. Another tasty morsel designed to dial up the reader’s rage, although there is no information given about the merits of these legal challenges. You are just invited to assume it is a vexatious exercise to line the pockets of lawyers and foreigners.
7. Again, if the Home Office is acting unlawfully, it is not the fault of the lawyers who represent the people who have suffered. If costs are incurred to the taxpayer, this is the fault of the minister responsible - the Home Secretary.
8. And now onto criminal law! The bad man defending murderers and terrorists.

Spoiler: everybody, no matter what they are accused of doing or have done, is entitled to be treated fairly and lawfully. This requires legal representation. This is the essence of the rule of law.
9. And now onto criminal legal aid.

“Extortionate fees paid to barristers defending criminals”.

No supporting evidence at all. No examples.

Why?

Because it’s a lie. An enormous, whopping lie.

As you can see if you read this story in, umm, The Mail. dailymail.co.uk/femail/article…
10. But more than that, the figures cited are, well, completely wrong.

The total legal aid bill - civil AND criminal - *was* £2.1bn.

In 2010.

There has since been a real terms cut of over *a third* to criminal legal aid.

commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-brief…
11. Why the outdated figures and an odd reference to 2018/19? And why the suggestion that the now-divorced couple still live together?

It’s because this is copied and pasted from a Mail article from 2015. pressreader.com/uk/scottish-da…

They can’t even be bothered to make up new lies.
12. But wholesale disregard for accuracy aside, it’s the message that is most important. Because it is simple, it is insidious, and it is dangerously wrong.

It is:

Lawyers representing people we dislike are bad.

Legal aid for those we dislike is bad.
13. Legal aid for those we dislike, I’ve dealt with a thousand times before, in threads like these.

TLDR: Legal aid is the (fanatically low) price we pay for justice in a democracy. Without it, innocents are convicted, the guilty go free and power cannot be held to account.
14. But the more imminent danger is the personal and hateful attacks on lawyers simply for doing their jobs.

This has been furthered and encouraged by both @pritipatel and @BorisJohnson, despite warnings that lives are at risk. theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/o…
15. This is not an issue of bruised legal egos. It is an issue of safety to life and limb. As I set out in #FakeLaw, death threats have been sent to to lawyers following mendacious and misleading reports, of the same genre as this one.
16. The notion that lawyers who represent unpopular causes are “leeches”, “enemies of the people”, “left wing activists” or whatever other intended pejorative is preferred - it risks lives.

Intimidating lawyers for representing their clients is the work of authoritarian regimes.
17. Without lawyers fearlessly defending those whom the majority would rather be defenceless, the rule of law collapses into tyranny.

This should be obvious to anybody who cares to give it a moment’s thought.

But especially a journalist.
18. Such basic failures to understand how our justice system works lie at the heart of he problems with how we discuss justice.

#FakeLaw breaks down the lies and explains the truth.

You can pick up a brand new paperback today. Or post one to the Mail.

amazon.co.uk/Fake-Law-Truth…
#FakeLaw is available at all manner of booksellers, including some in this thread.

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More from @BarristerSecret

The Secret Barrister Profile picture
1 Jun
This story in today’s Times is a complete mess.

1. The prosecution doesn’t cross-examine prosecution witnesses.

2. Questions about sexual history are already “all but abolished”, and can never be asked to impugn a complainant’s character.

thetimes.co.uk/article/rape-v…
This isn’t legal nitpicking. These are important news stories and public confusion over this area of the law is already widespread after years of misinformation by politicians and campaigners.

If you don’t understand what you are reporting, please ask somebody who does.
Would also add that the most significant change the government could make to increasing confidence in criminal justice and tackling “rock-bottom prosecution rates” is to fund the police, CPS and courts so that people don’t have to wait 3-4 years for trials.
Read 4 tweets
The Secret Barrister Profile picture
31 May
The government is cracking down on out-of-control whiplash fraud! Saving YOU, the motorist, £35 a year on your premium! Huzzah!

Only, as Chapter 3 of #FakeLaw explains, you’re not being given the truth.

Those in power are misleading you.

[THREAD] 👇
The government and certain media have claimed for years that the UK is, variously, “the whiplash capital of Europe” or “the whiplash capital of the world”.

The truth?

The figures used for these claims don’t stack up.

Insurers have also made the same claim in other countries.
When the House of Commons Select Committee published its 2018 report into the government’s “reforms”, it criticised the “absence of reliable data” behind ministers’ - and the insurance industry’s - repeated claims about whiplash fraud.
Read 9 tweets
The Secret Barrister Profile picture
30 May
I regret to announce that, despite trying for what has been angrily described as “an ungodly amount of our limited family time”, I have been unable to find a way to rewrite the lyrics to Underneath Your Clothes by Shakira to plug the paperback release of #FakeLaw.

I’m sorry.
Partly I’ve diagnosed the problem as the shameless egotism (even for me) of opening with

🎵You're a book written by the hands of God🎵

I don’t feel that even my talent for false modesty can row back from a start like this.
Partly it’s the character limit stopping me hitting the chorus in a single tweet:

🎵You're a book written by the hands of God
Don't get me wrong, this might sound to you a bit odd
But you own the place where all my thoughts go hiding
Right inside this book is where I find them🎵
Read 5 tweets
The Secret Barrister Profile picture
26 May
As Saint Dom offers his unique brand of self-exculpatory truth to the country today, a reminder that his self-interest and wholesale ignorance of the rule of law posed a very real threat to our justice system during his fifteen minutes of power. [THREAD]

👇
After the Supreme Court ruled that the government acted unlawfully in proroguing Parliament without offering a single reason (let alone a good reason) for doing so, Dom started briefing that he was going to “get the judges sorted”. ft.com/content/6ac426…
When Priti Patel’s Home Office acted unlawfully, and the courts ruled that her Home Office had acted unlawfully, Dom waded in with his size sevens again, briefing (or allowing it to be briefed without correction) that he was plotting “revenge”. mirror.co.uk/news/politics/…
Read 11 tweets
The Secret Barrister Profile picture
23 May
In what is looking spookily like a tandem publicity campaign for the paperback release of #FakeLaw, the Mail on Sunday offers a classic from Chapter 7.

The Burden and Standard of Proof in criminal cases.

Or Why A Not Guilty Verdict Does Not Mean A Complainant Has Lied

[THREAD]
Lavinia Nourse was acquitted by a jury last week of serious criminal charges relating to child sexual abuse.

Amanda Platell’s thesis is that this acquittal proves that the Crown Prosecution Service were wrong to prosecute.

Let’s start with the basics.
When deciding whether to charge a criminal allegation, the CPS apply a two-stage test.

1) Is there a realistic prospect of conviction based on the evidence?

2) If so, is it in the public interest to prosecute?

Yes to both = a prosecution.
Read 18 tweets
The Secret Barrister Profile picture
20 May
Oh boy. It’s been a while since we’ve had one of these.

Presumably this is in honour of the paperback publication of #FakeLaw next week, 27 May 2021.

Let’s look at why this trash from the Mail is as misleading as it is dangerous.

[THREAD]
1. Readers are invited to conclude that £66,000 (not £70k) is too much to spend on this very serious case, in which a child was killed. A “vast sum of taxpayers’ money”, we’re told.

And there’s a quote from this chap.

(We’ll come back to his searing legal analysis, don’t worry)
2. But 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 for a criminal trial like this. Such as...
Read 25 tweets

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