Features

The DPP’s guidelines on assisting suicide are welcomed but are unlikely to make a fundamental difference to the way the CPS handles suspects, suggests Nicholas Kazaz 

On 25 February 2010 Keir Starmer QC, the Director of Public Prosecutions, issued “The Policy for Prosecutors in Respect of Cases of Encouraging or Assisting Suicide”, which sets out the guidelines that must be followed in respect of cases of assisting suicide. 

Siobhan Grey discusses the Gray’s Inn Seminar on press freedom and the Select Committee Report “Press Standards, Privacy and Libel” 

The incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights into English domestic law has had a dramatic effect on the perpetual conflict between media freedom and media intrusion into private life; a conflict which is unremitting and which sometimes seems irreconcilable. The rights enshrined in art 8 (respect for private life, including reputation) and art 10 (freedom of expression, including press freedom) are of equal value, but how can a judge strike a fair balance between them? This dilemma has been given greater urgency by the technological developments that are changing the face of the media. An injunction obtained in one national court in one jurisdiction can quickly be rendered ineffective by the new virtual, stateless and unregulated chaos of information exchange, as the Twitter campaign in the recent Transfigura case revealed. 

Amid reports that the Revenue will soon start a concerted campaign targeting the tax affairs of self-employed barristers, Ashley Hayman considers what the Revenue will be looking for.  

Giving evidence to the Public Accounts Committee in 2008, Dave Hartnett, Acting Chairman of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs  (“the Revenue”), reported that there had been 57 barristers who were in the “hidden economy” and not paying any tax at all. Maybe such cases were deliberate; maybe they were due to astonishing oversight. But if you happen to be in the hidden economy you need to take urgent advice about putting your affairs in order before the Revenue launch a tax enquiry into you. Even the vast majority who do submit accounts and tax returns to the Revenue are not immune from challenge. The Revenue have recently shown a close interest in the tax affairs of a number of respectable professionals (including, for example, doctors and vets), and there is a specialist team at the Euston Tower tax office charged with enquiring into the affairs of barristers. 

Three years on from the Corston Report, Kim Hollis QC, who has recently visited Styal Prison, outlines the implications of sending women, many of whom have children, to prison 

In 2007 the Corston Report: a review of women with particular vulnerabilities in the criminal justice system (“the Corston Report”), commissioned by the Home Secretary following the deaths of six women at Styal Prison in Cheshire, took a hard look at whether and for how long women needed to be sent to prison. Baroness Corston recommended the immediate establishment of an Inter-Departmental Ministerial Group for women who offend to govern a new Commission and to drive forward an agenda properly to address specific issues relating to women’s criminality, and with a visible direction in respect of women in custody. She further crucially recommended that custodial sentences/remands into custody for women must be reserved only for serious and violent offenders who pose a “threat to the public”. 

Paul Mendelle QC and Ali Naseem Bajwa argue that safety interviews should only be conducted when it is absolutely necessary to do so 

There is a growing trend in terrorism investigations to conduct one or more interviews with a suspect in circumstances where he does not enjoy his usual minimum statutory rights. These interviews have no formal title and the term “safety interview” does not appear in any Code of Practice. They would be more accurately described as “urgent interviews” but investigators and courts usually refer to interviews conducted in these circumstances as “safety interviews”; accordingly, for the sake of consistency, we too shall use that term. 

The practice of conducting safety interviews is controversial and open to abuse. Moreover, there is a degree of uncertainty amongst lawyers, the public and even investigators as to what a safety interview is, what rules govern its conduct and admissibility and the value of such an interview. Each of these issues will be addressed in this article. 

The Bar Council has been running a joint roadshow with the BSB to initiate a debate on the business implications and opportunities presented by the Legal Services Act 2007 and the BSB’s rule changes. Paul Mosson and Ariel Ricci report back.  

On 20 November 2009 the Bar Standards Board (“BSB”) announced decisions that have the potential to change the face of the Bar as we know it. While the BSB waits for these proposed changes to be approved by the Legal Services Board (“LSB”), the Bar Council put into motion a plan of action to begin educating and obtaining feedback from the profession. Last December, the Circuit Leaders, together with the Chairman of the Bar, Nick Green QC, and the BSB began scheduling a national roadshow to initiate a debate about how the profession can not only survive, but grow stronger and retain its unique attributes. 

Oliver Doherty, who attended the 2009 annual Salzburg Summer School on international criminal law, commends the course to students and junior practitioners alike.  

At the end of the Bar Vocational Course, (soon to become the Bar Professional Training Course) many aspiring barristers, whether or not they have secured pupillages, seek opportunities for volunteering and broadening their horizons, including short university courses which focus on particular areas of practice. 

With the general election looming, Richard Gordon QC argues that the price of restored trust in democracy may be a codified constitution 

Is it time for the UK to have a written constitution? In suggesting that we had no constitution, the 19th Century French political theorist Alexis de Tocqueville was wrong. Britain does have a constitution but it is old-fashioned, top-down and—as far as the rest of the free, democratic world is concerned—of a fast-disappearing kind. 

What causes confusion is that, unlike us, nearly all democratic States have a written (in the sense of codified) constitution. Only Israel and New Zealand join us in relying on a nebulous body of rules, some contained in Acts of Parliament, some in constitutional conventions, some scattered around in the most diverse sources. The expenses scandal and the ensuing loss of trust in politics led many (myself included) to think we needed fundamental change. 

David Wurtzel meets Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, the Vice-Chairman of the Bar Standards Board and discovers  it is a wise regulator who knows his own profession 

Sir Brian Neill, Richard Rampton QC, Heather Rogers QC,
Timothy Atkinson, Aidan Eardley
LexisNexis, 3rd edition (Aug 2009), £195.00, ISBN 978-0406178312 

Since the first edition of Duncan and Neill in 1978 the libel landscape has changed dramatically and looks set to continue doing so. Juries are no longer “in the position of sheep loosed on an unfenced common, with no shepherd” as Lord Bingham famously described them. More detailed directions are now commonplace and jury awards correspondingly smaller than in their zenith in the 1980’s; to the considerable relief of the popular press.