Features

David Wurtzel examines the giving of evidence by children, their cross examination and section 28 of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999  

On July 24 we marked the tenth anniversary of special measures, the legislative package which was brought into effect in 2002 in order to improve the quality of evidence of vulnerable witnesses in the criminal courts ‘in terms of completeness, coherence and accuracy’. 

It was therefore an apt time to publish “Children and cross examination: time to change the rules ?,” a book based on papers delivered at an internationally-attended seminar at Cambridge University in April 2011. It is edited by Professor John Spencer and Professor Michael Lamb; Professor Spencer wrote the introduction and conclusion. The underlying issue in the book is the need in England to bring into effect section 28 of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999. This is the one special measure still languishing unused on the statute book. It would allow a vulnerable witness’s entire evidence including cross examination to be pre-recorded. The witness would not then have to attend the trial and the whole process would be completed for them much closer in time to the events in question. 

Toby Craig and Charles Hale review this year’s party conference season for Counsel 

Life imitating art
Returning to our screens to satirise life in Coalition, The Thick of It  has long sought to shine a light on some of the more ridiculous elements of party politics. Its success lies, in part, in the extreme caricatures it adopts. Real life couldn’t possibly be that bad. And that must have been on the writers’ minds when they thought up an episode in which the fictional Lib Dem team agreed to launch a ‘Community Bank’, requiring a mere £2bn of public funds, to the horror of their Coalition partners. So imagine their glee when that episode was broadcast in the same week as Vince Cable took to the Lib Dem conference stage to announce...a state bank requiring £1bn of public funds and extensive Government guarantees. Apparently you could make it up. And there was still time to bring back the spectre of a Mansion Tax, which lasted all of a few days before the Conservatives ruled it out. 

A. Hayden QC, HHJ J. Penna, M. Allman, S. Greenan, E. Latvio
ISBN: 978 1 84661 319 7
March 2012
Publisher: Jordan Publishing
Price: £55

Children and same sex families (Family Law, Jordan Publishing 2012) by Anthony Hayden QC, Marisa Allman, Sarah Greenan, Elina Nhinda-Latvia and Judge Jai Penna highlights the many complexities which arise from same sex couples becoming parents.  The very meaning of parenthood is being re-evaluated in courts dealing with same sex couples, especially if such couples have an arrangement with a sperm donor or a surrogate mother. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 (HFEA 2008) does away with the old presumption that a biological parent is, in fact, a legal parent, as the book’s fascinating chapter on parenthood shows in detail.  

Toby Craig and Charles Hale analyse the recent reshuffle and its implications for the Bar 

Shuffling the deck

Cecil Parkinson once observed, probably with a fair degree of personal experience in mind, that “in politics, you get what you deserve, rather than what you want”. Both, it must be said, are relative concepts. But when David Cameron finally undertook his first major reshuffle, two and a half years into the Coalition Government, the conflict between desire and desert would have struck a number of disappointed Parliamentarians. The problem for many MPs is an inability to distinguish between what they want and what they deserve. Politics is necessarily a fairly ego-driven business and never more so than when a reshuffle comes around. 

Jane Treleaven and Sa’ad Hossain report on the International Council of Advocates and Barristers’ advocacy-themed World Bar Conference.  

The International Council of Advocates and Barristers arranges a World Bar Conference every two years. This year’s conference was devoted to the theme of advocacy itself with participation from skilled and superlative advocates from around the world. 

Whether preparing for a case or a wedding, the best laid plans... 

September 9, 2012: “People only see what they are prepared to see.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson. 

Human beings seemingly spend a vast proportion of their lives preparing for things, only to find that when the event occurs they are, in fact, wholly unprepared. It is a perpetual theme of the Criminal Procedure Rules that we are all to spend endless amounts of time before a trial getting prepared, but which of us has ever arrived at court to find our opponents and co-counsel beaming and ready to go, our clients happy that they have told us all we need to know and a judge in command of the situation, only waiting to fire the starting gun? You may get some of it. You never get all of it. In fact, the more the case might seem to be suitable for such careful forethought, the more that chaos will intrude: the last-minute service of evidence, the lay client who starts sending you notes for the first time half-way through the initial witness, people who turn up to court with some file that has never previously seen the light of the day from which crucial nuggets fly forth – or not as the case may be.

Job title - Silk. Devereux Chambers

Devereux Chambers, a civil and commercial set, specialises in insurance and reinsurance, professional negligence, tax, employment law, telecommunications, finance, energy, sport, education, personal injury, clinical negligence and health and safety law

You have been chosen to advise the Treasury Committee in an investigation surrounding the Libor scandal. What exactly is your role?

I have been advising the Treasury Committee on the existing regulatory framework, and in particular, the civil and criminal enforcement aspects. Also, I have been offering some assistance on the handling of evidence presented to the Committee. I had better not say anymore – it would breach legal privilege! 

This year’s conference will be focusing on the Bar’s need to adapt to its changing environment. Alison Padfield, Bar Conference Chairman, previews the event and its speakers... 

The Bar Conference, which will take place on Saturday, November 10th, is the largest event in the Bar’s calendar and provides an opportunity for all parts of the Bar to come together and discuss current issues of importance to the profession. This year’s theme is The Modern Bar – Accessible, Adaptable and Relevant. We will again be at the Hilton Metropole Hotel in London, but with a difference – this year, all of the conference activities take place in the same area, thus dispensing with the need to migrate from one wing of the hotel to the other between sessions. 

BRINGING JUSTICE HOME

Kate Aubrey-Johnson provides an overview of civil mediation today 

In the past year, mediation was attempted in nearly 12,000 small claims and an estimated 8,000 fast and multi track cases with settlement rates of 68-90% (Small Claims Mediation Service Annual Report, HMCTS, 2011/12; CDER Fifth Mediation Audit May 2012). This is in addition to the many potential civil disputes being resolved using community mediation and mediation schemes. Members of the public and businesses, organisations and public bodies who may otherwise turn to the courts to protect and enforce their rights are discovering that mediation can offer an alternative process which is both empowering for clients and reaches creative solutions not achievable through a contested court hearing. 

Privacy and libel law: the clash with press freedom
Paul Tweed
ISBN: 978 1 84766 902 5
May 2012
Publisher: Bloomsbury Professional
Price: £19.99

Privacy injunctions and the media: a practice manual
Iain Goldrein QC
ISBN: 9781849462846
April 2012
Publisher: Hart Publishing
Price: £125.00 

2012 brings forth two new books which share a concern with the relationship between individual privacy and the press, a relationship which (to adapt HL Mencken) is broadly akin to that between lamppost and dog. They are Paul Tweed’s Privacy and libel law: the clash with press freedom (Bloomsbury Professional) and Iain Goldrein QC’s Privacy injunctions and the media: a practice manual (Hart).