*/
Let me start at the end: Sir Henry Brooke’s speech received a standing ovation; it was spontaneous, heartfelt and thoroughly deserved. As one tasked to report it, the question is, can I do it justice? Fortunately the text of the speech is widely available but reading it will not fully explain the surge that brought the audience to its feet. Certainly there were rhetorical flourishes and it might be tempting to imagine a passage such as ‘... now that the office of a tough old-style Lord Chancellor is as dead as the dodo, Parliament must give teeth to a new Justice Commission, to see that justice, in all its emanations, can never again become a Treasury lickspittle...’ had been delivered with a Churchillian relish.
However, this was not an orator’s speech but one delivered with a quiet and building power. There was no lack of passion (read the speech on sirhenrybrooke.me and you will see it and you may even detect an underlying cold fury in the text) but there was none of that in the delivery, which was almost dispassionate and all the more compelling for it.
The distilled essence of the careful research that went into the Bach Commission report The Right to Justice was given the spotlight: the government has spent £1bn less on legal aid than the £450m saving it had anticipated; fewer than 100 people had received exceptional funding in the last year as against the 1,000s anticipated when exceptional funding was introduced; almost 100,000 fewer people are now entitled to early legal help with housing law than was the case five years ago. But these are not real savings as Sir Henry pointed out, the government accepted a study that suggested £1,700 spent saving a 16-year-old girl from being wrongly declared intentionally homeless had probably saved the Treasury in the region of £20,000 in the long run. The family courts inevitably featured significantly; their problems encapsulated by a letter from an unnamed district judge who had written to Sir Henry shortly before publication of the Bach Report: ‘Every day in the family court, with so many unrepresented litigants, is a long nightmare. So very many have mental health problems, drugs, language, learning difficulties. I can no longer do justice or protect the vulnerable child or adult. I am in despair.’
Rawdon Crozier is a barrister at KBG Chambers, Plymouth, specialising in property law. He is a member of the Counsel editorial board, writes for several legal journals and also writes poetry. In 2015 he went straight from Arnold v Britton [2015] UKSC 36 in the Supreme Court to starting chemotherapy and ‘got the right result in the latter’.
Let me start at the end: Sir Henry Brooke’s speech received a standing ovation; it was spontaneous, heartfelt and thoroughly deserved. As one tasked to report it, the question is, can I do it justice? Fortunately the text of the speech is widely available but reading it will not fully explain the surge that brought the audience to its feet. Certainly there were rhetorical flourishes and it might be tempting to imagine a passage such as ‘... now that the office of a tough old-style Lord Chancellor is as dead as the dodo, Parliament must give teeth to a new Justice Commission, to see that justice, in all its emanations, can never again become a Treasury lickspittle...’ had been delivered with a Churchillian relish.
However, this was not an orator’s speech but one delivered with a quiet and building power. There was no lack of passion (read the speech on sirhenrybrooke.me and you will see it and you may even detect an underlying cold fury in the text) but there was none of that in the delivery, which was almost dispassionate and all the more compelling for it.
The distilled essence of the careful research that went into the Bach Commission report The Right to Justice was given the spotlight: the government has spent £1bn less on legal aid than the £450m saving it had anticipated; fewer than 100 people had received exceptional funding in the last year as against the 1,000s anticipated when exceptional funding was introduced; almost 100,000 fewer people are now entitled to early legal help with housing law than was the case five years ago. But these are not real savings as Sir Henry pointed out, the government accepted a study that suggested £1,700 spent saving a 16-year-old girl from being wrongly declared intentionally homeless had probably saved the Treasury in the region of £20,000 in the long run. The family courts inevitably featured significantly; their problems encapsulated by a letter from an unnamed district judge who had written to Sir Henry shortly before publication of the Bach Report: ‘Every day in the family court, with so many unrepresented litigants, is a long nightmare. So very many have mental health problems, drugs, language, learning difficulties. I can no longer do justice or protect the vulnerable child or adult. I am in despair.’
Update from the Chair of the Bar
By Clement Cowley, Partner at The Penny Group
Modernising communication and collaboration at a leading Chancery set. A Zexi case study
How to build profile without compromising professional duties. By Naumaan Farooq, Co-Founder of Inked PR
Marie Law, Director of Toxicology at AlphaBiolabs, examines the role of cut-off levels, and the wider range of factors that must be considered when interpreting results for family court proceedings
Endometriosis Awareness North, a charity raising awareness of endometriosis and supporting those affected across the North of England, has received a £500 boost from AlphaBiolabs via the company’s Giving Back initiative
The case against judge-only justice – and why efficiency is not enough. By Professor Leslie Thomas KC
Jemima Coleman and Zoë Leventhal KC on the evolving global movement seeking to reframe how we view nature: to recognise that nature possesses inherent rights and to enshrine these rights in law
Heritage as an anchor and a compass, finding our common humanity and embracing the power of the outsider – Melina Antoniadis’s lessons learnt
Seeing the full picture – Baljit Ubhey OBE outlines the CPS action plan to tackle violence against women and girls, offering insights directly relevant to courtroom practice
Lauren Fullerton examines the how, what and why of setting up a second chambers base
