Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

When we sit down for Christmas Dinner let us remember those people less fortunate than ourselves.

May God bless you, keep you safe and ease your trouble and help you see the beauty that there is in this world and in you.

This song may be about God??!

Ken Clarke QC before Justice Committee

Share |
Ken Clarke QC is an interesting politician. He has held high office. He appears to be "liberal" in thought and word-yet I cant help thinking his motivation is more to do with simply saving money.

It is so easy to start talking about outcomes as a tool by which to measure success. Imagine if that happened in health care where hospitals only got paid if a patient survived, or in eduaction where teachers only got paid or schools funded if a certain percentage of pupils got certain grades.

Why is criminal justice and sentencing any different?

On the other hand addressing issues through intervention stratagies that work makes sense. There would be no point having Probation courses for sex offenders that involved cleaning out canals. The core problem related to offending by the specific offender must be addressed-the problem is some don't want to be changed-so is that the fault of Probation?

Enough!

Here's Ken Clarke QC, Lord Chancellor and Justice Secretary of England and Wales before the House of Commons Justice Committee.

Courts to close

Share |One of the great joys of English and Welsh Justice is the connection that a community can feel with its Magistrates' Court. Local people can apply to become magistrates and dispense local Justice in both criminal and family cases to those whpo appear before the Court.

Now some 140 Courts are to close.

Is this a bad thing? Yes. Was it inevitable? Yes, with this Government. Why? Because it is clear that price is much more important than worth. One cannot easily place a price tag on value.

The fact that people will have to travel further, that soem jobs will be lost, that the local connection will disappear is of concern. It also seems to conflict with the idea of the Big Society.

On the other hand the numbers of people coming to Court were reduced through Government policy (that is of the last Government) by allowing cautions and conditional cautions and Penalty Notices for Disorder to be issued on people who would have in the past appeared at Court. Allied to this is a reluctance-again as a result of Government policy-to charge people to Court unless they really are guilty. People who may in the past have pleaded or who may have been found guilty are not even charged with an offence. Too many people in the CPS are scared to make decisions that go against policy. Is this Justice?

Add into it the desire to reduce the numbers in custody-quite correctly-and I wonder how long it is before the ConDems start getting attacked by all sections of the community and media.

 

Justice Committe ask the MoJ Mandarin some questions on costs and legal aid

ParliamentLive.tv 
click on the Title or ParliamentLive .tv link to view the session. Better than the "X Factor"!!

Share|

A very interesting committe examination of the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Justice by the Justice Committee.

1 hour 15 minutes may seem like a long time out of your life but if you are interested in legal aid, wish to get a glimpse into the thinking of the Permanant Secretary and his staff and understand how MPs view the MoJ and legal aid then it is worth watching.


If you are a mediator, an advice worker, a barrister or a Solicitor then it is of interest to you.

What would also be interesting would be to see the research that the MoJ has undertaken/reviewed to show that England and Wales spends £38 per head and countries such as Australia and New Zealand on £7-£8 per head of population on legal aid. Hopefully it will be disclosed.


The question was asked is it a question of volume or value. The answer seems to be that alternatives such as mediation in family cases will save money.


So family solicitors bid for contracts in relation to which the plan is to cut eligibility and to limit solicitor involvement.

A guide to ABS's

If you can get by the lengthy and noisy intro this is an interesting Introduction to ABS's provided by Birmingham Law Society and the threat that ABS's MIGHT pose to Solicitors. Whether they will pose a real threat or not is unclear. The full extent of the activity of ABS's is more limited than some would have you believe.

Well worth viewing

Please BLS, less pyrotechnics in the next one and get straight to the point.

Someone you know may need our help

Share | Does your relationship feel like a 5-1 defeat?

It can be difficult-especially at Christmas-to leave partner, children, home and start anew. You may not have to.

We encourage all clients to think about Marriage/Relationship Counselling.

If the relationship has ended that does not mean you should be cut off from your children. You can mediate, you can negotiate and, if necessary, you can litigate.
Men especially are put under a lot of pressure to keep the kids out of it and to agree with whatever contact the ex allows. In fact this behaviour by the ex-unless of course the contact is reasonable-is putting the children right in the middle of the dispute as weapons to punish and control the former partner.

Many men go along with it whilst goodness knows what is being told to the children. We have had situations where men have been so compliant with the ex partner's demands that they were unaware that the children were being told that Daddy no longer cared.

If it is at all possible both adult parties should agree contact that allows the children equal access to both parents.

Children need their parents-both parents. They too can suffer terribly if the divorce is conducted like  some horrific PS 3 war game.

“Where did it all go wrong?”

Share | Those were the words of Christina who came to see us recently. Her husband had told her that their marriage was over and that he was leaving her. She had thought that they had a strong relationship and she was very happy. Roger however, had told her that he had been unhappy for a long time.


Christina did not know where to start, she did not know where she stood legally and she now sought legal advice.Christmas can be a very stressful time for people if their relationship is already difficult. Often a couple will find themselves together for nearly two weeks when usually they do not spend much time together at all. This can exacerbate problems. In some cases one person has been having an affair and they decide to leave after Christmas. January and February are the busiest months for divorce lawyers.

If you find yourself in Christina or Roger’s position do not panic. It may be that relationship counselling will work for you as a couple. If however, you have concluded that your marriage or relationship cannot be saved then seek initial advice. We have included a list on the family pages of our web site (emmersons-solicitors.co.uk) which is designed to help you. Your solicitor will need basic financial information from you in order to give you advice in relation to a financial settlement. Different rules apply depending upon whether you are married, in a civil partnership or cohabiting.

Many people come to see us thinking that everything has to be sorted out immediately. This is a normal reaction to what is often a huge shock. My advice would be to seek initial information from a solicitor so that you will have an overview of your position. Then consider giving yourself some thinking time. If your spouse or partner is demanding that you leave the house or that the house be sold this does not have to happen today or even this week. The decisions you make now could have long term consequences. As a solicitor I see my job as being to help a client plan as far ahead as possible. Eg. What will your pension provision look like ten years from now?

If you want to know where you stand legally see a solicitor before you make any decisions especially in relation to leaving your home.

Life is a maze-sometimes you need help to get through it.

Jacqueline Emmerson
Senior Partner

The Justice Secretary's view on sentencing and rehabilitation

Share | I like these proposals. They are fresh and challenging. The truth about prison is that it is a very good place to keep people out of society-away from potential victims. The truth about that is that prisoners dont feel part of society.
For many prisoners simply trying to get to grips with the idea that someone else matters is a big deal. Many lack empathy-that's why they persistently commit crime. The most important person in their world is them. They are in fact their entire world.
Giving a prisoner a conscience, making them empathise with others will reduce offending-that and addressing issues such as not being able to read and write, drug addiction and alcohol abuse. Many prisoners I have met are angry. That needs to be addressed.
There are too many prisoners who require access to resources in prison who cannot access them fully because resources are limited.

I have heard people describe prison as a holiday camp. I have been in the prisons of the North East and in Belmarsh, London. I cant describe any as a holiday camp. What do people mean by that? I guess the feeling is that if prison is an awful place people wont wish to return. The last thing any person committing an offence thinks about is the punishment.

Recently on FiveLive when the sentencing of offenders was discussed one caller described how a person he knew and had visited in Notingham Prison viewed it as a "holiday camp". Its not a horrible place but HM Inspectorate's latest report doesn't describe a holiday camp.

In the Green Paper questions are asked as to how sentencing can be explained better to the public. Apart from organising visits to prison for those who would like to feed the animals I guess more documentaries that accurately show what goes on in prison would help.

I have also heard people saying that prisoners have more rights (or more human rights) than the victims-what does that mean? How can a person in custody have more human rights than someone not in custody? Prisons are cramped-prisoners spend lots of time locked up unless they are lucky enough to have a job and violence and the threat of violence along with drug abuse is rife.

One of the reasons that Labour introduced IPP sentences is because they wanted to be seen to be tough. They wanted to put the victim first. How IPP sentences affect families of offenders is of little concern to most people but if what IPP sentences does to offenders and families (as set out in an article on Guardian online by Charlotte Rowles) was taking place abroad there would be uproar.

The whole point about the criminal justice system is that the defendant is at the centre of it. Efforts to move the focus to victims or to introduce "punishment" so as to placate the editors of UK tabloids (without properly assessing the worth of the proposals or properly funding the processes) has created a mess. The Green paper addresses IPP sentences.

This is the start of a consultation-well worth taking part in.

The LSC before the Justice Committee 30/11/10

On parliament.tv I watched recently the quizzing of the LSC hierarchy by the Justice Committee.
The LSC still maintains that it indicated that membership of a panel would be an important criteria of the family tender process. It doesn’t seem to matter to the LSC that at no point before Feb 2010 when the tender documents were published did the LSC mention that caseworkers would have to be members of an accreditation panel. This was the real reason along with the lack of time to prepare that the Administrative court decided for The Law Society and against the LSC (something the LSC seems to wish to ignore).
What has also been ignored is the fact that the LSC and Resolution and The law Society and others knew in June 2009 that accreditation was not an indicator of quality. How then the LSC felt able to rely upon membership of an accreditation panel as a bidding criteria is also unclear.
Extract from QWG minutes

Accreditation Research
AS (Avrom Sherr of IALS) gave a very brief update on the result of the research carried out to find whether there was a correlation between accreditation profile and peer review results.
257 family providers were sent a questionnaire and 18% of them returned it. AS said that the questionnaire was too detailed and slightly confusing, which he thought had affected response rate and data quality. Analysis of the results indicated that there was no correlation between the number of accredited advisers working at a firm and the peer review score. However, the proportion of fee earner time spent on legal aid work did correlate with a higher score at peer review. AS stated that accreditation had not yet been proved a meaningful measure of quality.
In response to points made about the low number of Below Competence scores in peer review, AS commented that it appeared that practitioners did understand what peer reviewers, who are themselves practitioners, were looking for when reviewing files. This meant that Peer Review had an effect more generally than just on those providers reviewed.
AS said that a more formal report on the outcome of the accreditation research would be made available to the group.

No “formal report” has been provided to QWG or if it has been provided it has not been disclosed. What is there to hide? That Accreditation is a waste of time and merely a money-spinning exercise for those who accredit Solicitors? A robust and meaningful system of CPD and assessment (aligned to a pro-active education programme in relation to business management, marketing etc etc and Ethics) is far better than accreditation and re-accreditation, in my view.
What is most worrying about the Judgment against the LSC is the fact that Sarah Kovac Clark was found to have made an unjustifiable assertion concerning approval by The Law Society and others to the criteria for caseworker accreditation

“By January 2010 the LSC still did not know what the selection criteria were to be, and they had not yet been announced. But there is controversy as to whether the representatives of the Law Society, at a meeting on 15 January 2010, were asked to endorse the selection criteria which it was proposed to adopt.
70. In her statement dated 13 September 2010, Eleanor Druker, an employee of the LSC, states that the purpose of the meeting was to seek the views of the representative bodies on the proposed criteria. Sarah Kovac Clark goes so far as to say that the approach of awarding points for panel membership and experience was endorsed by the Law
Society, Resolution and the LAPG (see paragraph 47).
71. This we reject. We can only attribute this unjustifiable assertion to the pressures of urgency in the preparation for this litigation imposed on LSC's officials. The contemporaneous document that has been produced by Mr Miller in his third statement at paragraph 34 (an e-mail in November) shows that what was proposed was an
informal workshop-style session to review the terms of the tender documentation (see paragraph 34 of Mr Miller's third statement).
72. Ann Graham, a policy adviser in the legal aid team at the Law Society, describes in her statement how the documents containing the criteria were circulated at the meeting and had to be handed back at the end of the meeting. There was no possibility of consulting
those for whom the Law Society was responsible, since neither advance sight of those documents was given, nor could they be taken away. It is difficult in the light of the process described by Ms Graham to see how it could have been called an endorsement.
73. Further, the meeting of 15 January demonstrates what we were told during the course of argument by Mr Lewis QC, frankly, on behalf of the LSC that the final decision as to the criteria had not even been made then. On the contrary, at that meeting there was
still a possibility that scoring would allow of experience to count as highly as accreditation by panel membership (see Graham's statement at paragraph 16 (and in relation to domestic abuse experience and accreditation see Druker at paragraph 22).
74. Moreover, as the e-mail of November 2009, quoted by Mr Miller, indicates, apparently a decision had been made not to publish the criteria and scoring in advance of the announcement of the tender. That, it was pointed out by Ms Druker in her e-mail, would give an unfair advantage to those who were consulted who themselves proposed
to tender (see Druker at paragraph 18). It is difficult, in the light of those factors, to describe any reaction at that meeting as being "approval on behalf of a representative body".”
The Judgment

My conclusion is that the LSC is willing and prepared to say anything but the truth to advance the policy of the MoJ in “reforming” legal aid.
What this also shows (see para 74 above) is that there were some firms and groups who had been consulted about the criteria who had an advantage in that they could have surmised (correctly as it turned out for the tender process) that accreditation for all staff and the office cat would be worth pursuing to gain an advantage.
My suggestion for reform of legal aid is to scrap the LSC. Court and Tribunal based legal aid should be granted and controlled and paid by HMCS. Non Court based legal aid should be granted by The Law Society and scrutinised by the SRA. In one fell swoop we could rid ourselves of an unnecessary level of bureaucracy that adds nothing to the delivery of publicly funded advice and representation to those who need it. As MoJ sets the policy then MoJ can set the legal aid Regulations and Funding Code.
The MoJ needs to look at the Justice systems and consider how they are funded and how access to those systems should be funded. They should have no pre-conceived ideas or pathways or any other pseudo-biz speak notions and should consult openly with Solicitors and other participants in the systems.
An understanding of what legal aid is should be reached: is it a benefit (as with Income Support) available to consumers of legal services direct for them to spend (that would sort out eligibility) or is it a method by which those who cannot afford to pay for legal advice are able to obtain that legal advice at no direct cost to them with the provider of legal advice or representation being compensated directly by the State. This distinction provides a different emphasis with the “consumer” becoming a client (again) of the Solicitor and with remuneration coming from the State.
The problem at present is that the LSC, as a Commissioning body, believes that Solicitors’ clients are in fact their consumers and their responsibility-hence a huge and disproportionate bureaucracy.
Does the State have an obligation to ensure quality legal advice is provided or is that a job for the Regulator? This discussion has not yet been started-it must be. All the past and current chatter about legal aid reform is spume on the sea of justice reality.
There is a huge gap between the LSC’s desire to ensure that only those entitled to legal aid should have access to legal aid and the need of those seeking advice-who cannot afford to pay for it-to have access to legal advice. This deficit is acknowledged in the way that the CLA delivers publicly funded legal advice by telephone. In those circumstances the documentary evidence that Solicitors offering face to face advice must obtain do not apply. Anyone can get two hours free legal advice from the CLA without adducing evidence of means-the same does not apply to Solicitors giving advice to a client. The LSC would say that in an emergency the requirement for documentary evidence does not apply. The truth is that upon audit an LSC auditor will find any reason to go behind the reasons given by the Solicitor for giving emergency advice and demand repayment. To ensure there is no recoupment Solicitors demand the documentary evidence from clients who are desperate for advice. All this for about £60.
The point is that Solicitors are paid fixed fees. One would have thought that this would mean reduced bureaucracy but no, the bureaucracy increases with demand for greater certainty of entitlement for relatively low fees.
The other great lie is that spending on legal aid has increased. In fact inflation accounts for the increase and legal aid spending has actually fallen. Fees paid for work have been reduced and bureaucracy and red tape and form filling and rules have increased.

“Following questioning from former City solicitor Lord Phillips of Sudbury, Djanogly conceded that the legal aid budget has not doubled over the last two decades, as he has frequently claimed in justification of the government’s proposed budget cuts.
The minister said the £2.1bn budget had doubled in ‘absolute’ terms, but he could not contradict Phillips’ assertion that in ‘real’ terms that amounted to a ‘significant shrinkage’.
Djanogly said the budget had shot up and then evened out over the lifetime of the last government, with a big change when personal injury work was taken out of scope.”
The Gazette 2 December 2010

What is worst of all is that those charged with criminal offences are means tested and have to fund their defence before guilt is established. A fairer system would be to ensure that those convicted of an offence pay for the defence costs and the prosecution costs. In that way the State funds the process and those who are guilty repay the State’s loan to them.

England lose-again!!

It was a bit like South Africa all over again. One hell of a lot of anticipation. The English bid was well and truly talked up and criticised in equal measure before the final presentation was made.

Will the media play the blame game-Prince William should have worn an England football shirt, Beckham shouldn’t have sniffed so much or will they blame underhand Johnny Foreigner for winning the right to hold World Cup 2018?

It was a competition and England lost.

It might have made more sense if Northern Ireland had bid for it or Wales. That would have been a huge opportunity for the World Cup to become a lot less commercial and a lot more about football. It would have helped regenerate the poorer parts of the UK. Northern Ireland’s football fans have won awards for how they support their team and behave when abroad.

Never mind. The Rugby Union World cup is in England in 2015. Something to look forward to that won’t cost the country a cent and will attract foreign visitors and their much needed spending money.

ACCESS TO JUSTICE AND SENTENCING PROPOSALS

Share |
The Justice Committee, Chaired by Sir Alan Beith has launched an inquiry on Access to Justice and Sentencing Proposals.
On 15 December 2010, the Committee will question the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, Rt Hon Kenneth Clarke MP QC, on the court closure programme and the proposed reforms to legal aid and sentencing.
On 15 November 2010, the Ministry of Justice launched Green Papers on the provision of legal aid and the implementation of the Jackson review on civil litigation funding and costs that seek to effect a “fundamental reform of the system”.

The Committee is inviting written evidence with particular reference to the questions set out below, by 6 December 2010.

•  What impact will the proposed changes have on the number and quality of practitioners, in all areas of law, who offer services funded by legal aid? 
• The Government predicts that there will be 500,00 fewer cases in the civil courts as a result of its proposed reforms. Which cases will these be and how will the issues they involve be resolved? 
• What action could the Government be taking on legal aid that is not included in the proposals (for example, on Very High Cost Cases)? 
• Do the proposals to implement the Jackson report recommendations on civil court funding and costs adequately reflect the contents of that report? 
• What are the implications of the Government’s proposals?

It is anticipated that the Government’s proposals on sentencing and rehabilitation and the administration’s response to the consultation on court closures will be released before the Secretary of State appears before the Committee.
The Committee would also welcome written evidence on these proposals once they are released.
Submissions must address the terms of reference. They should be in the format of a self-contained memorandum and should be no more than 3,000 words.
Paragraphs should be numbered for ease of reference, and the document must include an executive summary.
Further guidance on the submission of evidence can be found at www.parliament.uk/parliamentary_committees/witness.cfm
Submissions should be original work, not previously published or circulated elsewhere, though previously published work can be referred to in a submission and submitted as supplementary material. Once submitted, your submission becomes the property of the Committee and no public use should be made of it unless you have first obtained permission from the Clerk of the Committee.
PLEASE BEAR IN MIND THAT THE JUSTICE COMMITTEE IS NOT ABLE TO INVESTIGATE INDIVIDUAL CASES.
 
 

LAW FIRM HITS ITS GOAL

Share |
Sunderland law firm Emmersons Solicitors has reported a 120
per cent rise in turnover of its conveyancing department, as it
provides organisations like the Sunderland fan magazine, A
Love Supreme, with critical property advice.


THE FAMILY-RUN solicitors firm, which has
offices on John Street, Sunderland, and
also on Gosforth High Street, Newcastle,
has assisted the magazine in securing a
long-term lease on its offices.

A Love Supreme (ALS) previously didn’t
have a permanent lease on its premises on
Stadium Way, next to the Stadium of Light,
but with a new landlord in place,
Emmersons managed to cement a formal
fixed tenancy agreement on the office.
As the club had operated out of the
building for more than 11 years, the team at
Emmersons negotiated a ‘right to stay’
clause in the new contract in accordance with
the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954, giving it
permanent rights and residency of the
office.

Emmersons Solicitors’ head of conveyancing,
John Coulter, said: “ALS’s new
lease deal comes only days after
Emmersons’ calculated turnover in its convenyancing
department up by more than
120 per cent on last year’s figures.
“It’s great news that despite tough economic
times, when conveyancing has typically
been at an all time low, that we have
actually bucked this trend and are holding
our own.
“This year we have seen a huge rise in
the amount of work coming into our conveyancing
department. We have been particularly
pleased with the amount of commercial
property work that we have undertaken.
I think this comes off the back of
more Sunderland-based companies realising
that they don’t have to take their legal
work outside of Sunderland, and that we are
capable of providing all of their legal
requirements.

“We deal with business disputes, commercial
conveyancing and leases for a large
number of businesses. Also, as far as we
believe, we are the only solicitors firm in
Sunderland undertaking commercial litigation.”
A Love Supreme editor Martyn
McFadden said: “We are very grateful to
Emmersons Solicitors for the swift and professional
service they gave us in helping us
to secure a fixed tenancy agreement at the
club, which was potentially a complex job.
Emmersons were excellent and the research
and planning stage of our lease agreement
as well as offering advice on the content of
the lease and other business arrangements.
This really was a ‘back of the net’ deal.”

 

 

News reaches Emmersons, and it is worrying, that there has been a delay in setting out how the ConDems wish to deal with the prison crisis.
There had been an expectation, raised by the Government, that prison policy and sentencing would be a high priority and that a Green Paper would be published in October-and then in November. Now we understand it is delayed.

In the meantime the ConDems have issued a Report into anonymity for those accused of rape.

Unfortunately rape is one of those offences with a low conviction rate. Those who wish to protect the victims of rape-although as with domestic abuse the focus tends to be on women as victims and men as the criminals-have yet to come up with any suggestions as to how this can be improved-except to say that the system needs to be changed to make convictions more likely.

How is this aim achieved? Rape tends to be an offence involving two people. The person who alleges rape and the person accused of it. My experience is that the complainant is believed. That special measures are put in place so she may give her evidence via videolink or on tape.

My experience is that the accused is disbelieved.

The problem is thatunless there are injuries to teh complainant consistent with having been beaten or forced to have sex a jury find it hard to convict the accused. It is the nature of the offence and what it entails that is the problem rather than the system that tries to establish the defendant's guilt.

When sentenced-which takes me back to the start of this article-the Judge will be looking at reasons to impose a Life sentence or sentence that is Indeterminate.

Recently, whilst talking to a barrister about a client's case concerning rape of family members, she told me of a case which she had prosecuted whereby a 6 and 8 year old girl has lied about sexual assualts upon them by a step parent simply because they were not allowed to watch certain programmes on television. How did those girls know how to complain about sexual assault? How was such a case allowed to go all the way to trial-only then for both girls to admit that they had made it up? What about the accused and how the experience of those events will have impacted on her/him?

One assumes they knew what to say from the television programmes they had been allowed towatch. One can say that the CPS/Police will pursue allegations of sexual assault and domestic violence with vigour. One can also say that often there is not the objective analysis of evidence nor the willingness to review a case to consider if it ought to proceed to trial.

The problem is that the complainant is entitled to anonymity-the accused is not. Is that fair? 

Decision Points

Kindle Wireless Reading Device, Wi-Fi, 6" Display - with New E Ink (Pearl) Technology

So why on earth do I need an LPA?

Obviously the same reasons for having LPAs applies to those who co-habit, those in same sex partnerships or if you are single and wish for someone to be able to manage your affairs should you become incapable of so doing.
Not to consider an LPA is as daft as jumping out of a plane without a parachute!

Dont touch that snow-we’ll get sued

Thankfully Lord Young is no longer an unpaid adviser to David Cameron. Unfortunately he left behind a report which was supposed to look at Health and Safety but actually seemed to focus on “compensation culture”.

This is a much loved topic of libertarians and of the media. Any time anyone claims compensation which, due to the way the case is reported, seems barmy the media scream and shout about “no win-no fee”, “ambulance chasing” and “lawyers”.

Lets start with no win-no fee. These agreements were introduced at the behest of the insurance industry to stop claimants using legal aid to seek compensation for injuries sustained. The ABI (Association of British Insurers) seems to hate people being able to claim a reasonable amount for injuries sustained so screams wildly about any unusual claim and how ridiculous compensation payments are without mentioning that the award about which they complain is unusual and failing to mention in detail the circumstances surrounding the cause of the accident. The greatest irony is that most of these claims are backed by ATE insurance or BTE insurance  (such as with DAS or Home Insurance) and before a claim proceeds the insurer reviews the potential for success.

“No win-no fee” does not mean that there is no risk to the Claimant. The Claimant could face a costs bill if the claim is unsuccessful. The “no fee” element relates to paying one’s own lawyers-and does not mean that there is no risk of having to pay the defendant’s lawyers. This is why costs insurance is usually so essential. Unfortunately most media coverage of “ compensation culture” screams about “no win-no fee” without understanding what it means.

Along with “no win-no fee” (actually called conditional fee agreements) came Claims Management Companies. They were unregulated, wide boys who would advertise hard, approach people in the street, at home via cold calling and then sell the claim to Solicitors if they couldn’t get a settlement before having to issue. Eventually they were regulated and many companies left the “industry”. Still ABI wasn’t happy.

The Government introduced a portal so that all RTA claims had to be commenced through it. Costs which had been fixed for RTA claims in an agreement between Insurers and Solicitors were reduced even more. Insurers started to approach claimants direct-even those who were represented-and attempted to settle claims at much less than the claim was worth. it is suggested that this portal be extended for other claims.

Still ABI whinged about “spiralling costs and claims”-yet remarkably now accepts that “compensation culture” does not exist. Lets say that again, all together now “compensation culture does not exist”. Lord Young says so in his own report!!

The problem of the compensation culture prevalent in society today is, however, one of perception rather than reality.The number of claims for damages due to an accident or disease has increased slowly but nevertheless significantly over recent years. Furthermore, there is clear evidence that the public believes that the number of claims and the amount paid out in damages have also risen significantly. [page 19]

Goodness!

The insurance industry is competitive. Those who run such companies seek business and profits. Premiums are too low. The money to pay claims in a low interest economy is not there-answer blame the “lawyers”, talk about excessive claims and excessive costs but don’t mention the fact that premiums are ridiculously low for most people.

What has this got to do with health and safety-absolutely nothing. The health and safety regulations are not oppressive, they are necessary and again if insurers charged proper premiums they would gather in appropriate sums to ensure that claims, including costs, could be paid.

Insurers need to work with the insured to address issues of behaviour to reduce claims whether this is motor car drivers or owners of companies with obligations to employees. Employers need to review and fully understand what the health and safety regulations are and what they require rather than listening to a consultant who may be motivated to be overly cautious. Educating employees is highly important.

The media needs to stop churning out old stories of “compensation culture” and analyse what is actually going on.

Can you get sued if you clear snow from in front of your house or shop that is on the public highway and someone slips? No-absolutely not. Could a local authority be sued if children came to school and slipped on snow? No. Those who make decisions fear, perhaps, being sued through ignorance. The reason schools close is that teachers cannot make it into school-or the boiler blows up!!

Can you be sued if a hazard remains on your property and someone who enters your property is injured and you do nothing about it? Perhaps?

A good day for Justice

A Northumbria Police Officer has been convicted of sexual offences, including rape, and misconduct charges having spent years preying on vulnerable women with whom he came into contact whilst on shift.

The trial lasted for a few weeks, the jury took time to consider their verdicts, the defendant was acquitted of some offences and now he faces some considerable time in custody. A good day for English Justice?

Absolutely.

The witnesses were the sort of people who when they appear in Court as Defendants are not believed. Indeed those of them who were drug addicts would have turned lying into a fine art. Not only that their memories would be shaky to say the least. They gave their evidence, the jury listened to what they had to say to the Prosecutor and in cross examination by Defence Counsel.

The trial will have cost money-quite a bit, of that I have no doubt along with the costs of the investigation and the defendant’s legal aid.

The jury members gave of their time too and took part in the process in what I believe is the second most important role a citizen of England and Wales can participate in after voting.

Already Northumbria Police have had to apologise for recruiting the Officer in the first place when there were warnings of his future conduct ignored-and they failed to deal with him properly when previously made allegations were investigated.

It was Northumbria Police Officers who undertook hours of work to gather evidence against their former colleague.

There is a monetary cost to Justice and there is the cost to lives-already fragile lives made even less bearable through the actions of someone in whom all of us should have immediate trust.

But there is also a price paid by the Defendant. We often we hear of the rights of victims and of rebalancing the scales of Justice in favour of “victims”. The truth is that the Defendant is and must be the centre of the Justice process. When a shift is made away from that position we see excesses perpetrated in the name of Justice. Too many people being arrested and charged to Court when the policy was “the Party’s over”. Too many children brought to Court under the guise of addressing anti-social behaviour. Sentences being created and imposed which take away all hope of rehabilitation and release (IPP) and turn too many people into Life prisoners. We have a ridiculously high proportion of our population in custody. The alternatives do work and could work better if properly funded.

The jury system works. The criminal investigation and prosecution system works. The defendant was properly and rigorously represented. All of these things require proper resources. Too often we have seen politicians promise too much for too little investment.

However sometimes, in relation to less serious matters, the resources are not made available to ensure that Justice is properly served. In those cases-often involving minor offences and incidents-people feel let down and disappointed.

I hope for a Justice Secretary and home Secretary who is not overly worried about what the papers say and is more worried about making sure the Justice system is just that a system that delivers Justice.