News

The Lord Chancellor has pledged “rapid progress” towards a “fairer, more intuitive” payment system in which the trial advocate would receive the overall legal aid fee – driving forward a key recommendation in Sir Brian Leveson’s Review of Efficiencies in Criminal Proceedings before Parliament rises.  

Accepting all of the Review’s proposals in principle, Chris Grayling MP said on 11 March that he will implement “those which can be delivered quickly”. 

The Government has failed to target legal aid to those who need it most, a Justice Committee inquiry into the impact of the civil legal aid reforms has concluded.  

The final report of the cross-party committee of MPs, Impact of changes to civil legal aid under Part 1 of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, found that the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) had failed to achieve three out of its four stated objectives for the reforms. 

Over 2,000 delegates from 120 countries assembled at the three-day Global Law Summit in London in February to mark 800 years of Magna Carta, the rule of law and the future of global business, whilst lawyers and human rights activists marched from Runnymede to Hampton Court in protest against legal aid cuts.  

The “Not the Global Law Summit” march, organised by the Justice Alliance, opposed the “hijacking” of the anniversary into a “monstrous jamboree of corporate law, tax avoidance and global networking”. Several hundred protestors awaited the arrival of the march at Parliament, which held aloft an effigy of the Lord Chancellor, Chris Grayling MP, as King John in stocks. 

The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) still does not know whether its £300m cuts to civil legal aid represent “value for money”, according to the Public Accounts Committee (PAC).  

The PAC report, Implementing reforms to civil legal aid, was published on 4 February. The MoJ was found to be “on track” with its cost savings, but the PAC roundly criticized the implementation of its reforms and the failure to provide robust evidence of their effects, despite a commitment to do so in its 2012 impact assessment. 

The four criminal barristers challenging the Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates (QASA) have been granted permission to appeal to the Supreme Court.  

In R (on the application of Lumsdon and others) v Legal Services Board , the appellants sought judicial review of the Legal Services Board (LSB) decision to approve the introduction of QASA. 

Outsourcing giant Capita has been ordered to pay costs by the President of the Family Division for “serial failures” to provide Slovak interpreting services.  

In Re Capita Translation and Interpreting Ltd [2015] EWFC 5, costs of £13,338.15 were awarded to Kent County Council in respect of hearings on 7 May and 14 November last year. 

The President of the Family Division has again described as “unprincipled and unconscionable” the complexity and delays involved in obtaining legal aid for parents who lack capacity.  

In this already widely reported case, the local authority sought to place a young child for adoption. 

Barristers have responded in record numbers to the Bar’s wellbeing survey, the first of its kind to assess the mental health of a whole profession in any country.  

Over 2,500 members of the profession responded to the survey, conducted in October and November last year, which far surpassed the original target of 300. 

HHJ Pete r Rook QC reports on the roll-out of vulnerable witness advocacy training.  

Criminal practitioners frequently encounter vulnerability in their cases. 

Senior judges have spoken out on the plight of litigants in person (LIPs) and the “hidden additional burden” the judiciary shoulders.  

Lord Dyson, giving evidence to the Justice Committee Inquiry on the impact of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 on 1 December, said: “It is impossible to prove but it would be extraordinary, frankly, if there were not some cases that are decided adversely to a LIP which would have been decided the other way had that LIP been represented by a competent lawyer. It is inevitable.”