MINISTRY OF JUSTICE IS JUST A SHADOW

I doubt there is a single reader of this blog who is unaware of the drastic reduction in legal aid for those attending magistrates courts.  In 2019/20 the criminal legal aid budget in England and Wales was £897 million  compared with £896 million in the previous year. Criminal legal aid peaked in 2003/04 at over £2.6 billion.  Between 2005/06 and the most recent financial year it has fallen by £676 million in real terms. Civil legal aid has also been cut since 2005/06. After peaking at £1.2 billion in 2010/11 it fell to just £651 million by 2015/16. 

Not only does financial strangling of the legal aid availability reduce the numbers of lawyers in court it imposes a higher standard of performance from presiding justices to ensure that justice is done and seen to be done.  It has led to a reduction of the numbers of lawyers financially able to undertake work as duty solicitor.  The biggest cuts were introduced in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 but provision has been stripped away for decades. Hourly rates for legal aid haven’t changed in 20 years.  And to counter this appalling lack of resource for those who most need it the weasels in Petty France last week announced that the Ministry of Justice has most generously provided £3.1 million  to a range of regional and local services. This miniscule amount is not to pay for legal aid per se but to various groups and organisations such as advice centres. Once again the MOJ and its overfunded press and PR department is attempting to mislead a public that will not care a figg until they are faced with a court appearance. What was truly the finest justice system in the world is now not even a poor shadow of its former self. Shame on all involved from Tony Blair to Boris Johnson; from Lord Irvine to Robert Buckland.  

TV LICENSE EVASION TO REMAIN A CRIMINAL OFFENCE

Will they? won`t they? push me, pull me to the top of the hill and push me pull me down again.  These remarks seem to be the underlying propelling thrusts of the government`s policy on BBC TV licensing.  Literally for years Tory governments have been hinting that the bloated BBC cannot be reliant on the funding (read taxes)  provided by every household which receives live television broadcasting. This news was greeted      positively by many outside the family of luvvies who derive enormous proportions of their income and wealth from those who are unable to feed their families even with the support of social security payments. More recently the current occupants of political power have hinted strongly that failure to pay the license fee will be decriminalised; ie such charges would be brought through county court and not the magistrates court where currently around 130K such cases are heard annually which works out at about 15 per week per court. Many if not all these alleged offenders` cases are decided through the single justice procedure.    There are about 26 million TV license payers ie about 0.50% of TV viewers` households have been found guilty of evasion. Along with the vast majority of my former colleagues I was none too happy with the situation. Invariably the poorest and/or recently arrived immigrants seemed to form the bulk of offenders although it was not unusual to discover that a subscription TV service was being paid for when the license was not. Those appearing before us were distressed to discover that that they had committed a criminal offence.  License inquiry agents tended to hold the first person to open the front door of a suspected premises to be the person responsible for the offence. 

Most members of the public do not know that they are under no obligation to open the door nor allow entrance to their property to an inquiry agent. I recall a case where that unlucky door opening first person who appeared before me and my colleagues was a visiting American Harvard law graduate who now as a result has a criminal record in the UK.  When my son went to university I advised him not to overlook requiring a license for his flat`s TV and never to open the door to an inquiry agent. 

The BBC having spent over a £1,000,000 on outside lawyers notwithstanding their staff lawyers` wages  argued inter alia that decriminalisation would cut their revenues by £300 million annually.  And to indicate their humanity emphasised that were the offence to be decriminalised county courts cannot take offenders` means into consideration when finding for the plaintiff who in this case would be the BBC. In England in 2018  the majority of the few jailed not for neglecting to pay for a license but for wilful neglect or  culpable refusal to pay the resulting fine were women who make up almost 70 per cent of those prosecuted.  Indeed 30% of all criminal prosecutions against women in 2017 were for evasion of the TV licence. 

But all that flag flying of the last five years or more has gone with the wind. Ministers have decided not to end the criminal prosecution of evaders and this at a time when the only companionship for many home ensconced children as well as adults is their television with its five basic channels plus those free to air. The recent government statement is available here. 

The free marketeers on the extreme right who have championed Brexit and rally against lockdown seem to have lost this one. But so have the government by marching up the hill only to march down again behaving like a simpleton who agrees with the last argument fed to him. So poorer over 75s will still have exemption from the TV tax but not those 65-75 year olds of similar financial status. It is one thing for a government to listen to its citizens but it is another to vacillate over so many of the decisions that must be made. That leads to general calls for decisive action in a myriad of situations.  It is but an early event in the sequence which leads to demands for strong action and inevitably to a strong man to provide leadership to take that strong action.  And we can guess where that leads..........can`t we?

ARE THEY GETTING AWAY WITH IT?

Regular readers will be familiar with my gripes on exceptional hardship.  New readers might want to put those words into the search box for further reading. I have also opined on the pseudo secretive newish process of the single justice procedure. A recent case which has been reported here appears to involve the exceptional hardship defence against driving disqualification. What is not reported is whether or not the offender was represented or whether proof re his application was requested or supplied. Indeed when I was active (before the SJP) exceptional hardship application was usually made at a date announced after the original award of points that put a totter over the top. 

Perhaps somewhere there is information that would clarify in general situations as above. It is too easy to believe that as the "Sun" journalist might write, "Too many offenders are getting away with it."

JUSTICE DOWN A DARK ALLEY

There are so many so called "initiatives" brought about by government departments that only those with intimate knowledge of the associated areas of activity can offer substantive opinions.  The Ministry of Justice with its enormous PR department certainly is not lacking in efforts along those lines. Only since its pilot scheme ended a couple of weeks ago on December 31st has it become public knowledge that a scheme by which offenders without an admission of guilt can avoid prosecution and a possible criminal record by agreeing to such conditions as rehabilitation or paying compensation to "alleged" victims. According to the Policy Evaluation Research Unit just Scotland Yard and West Yorkshire Constabulary had been chosen as pilots. The results must have been truly impressive since within two weeks of the scheme`s ending it has been expanded and  that  apparently placing those chosen offenders into the scheme was justified by "senior police officers" in the now revealed participating eight police forces in England and Wales.  This has to be PR nonsense.  Any such study must require many hundreds of hours of analysis and with the best resources could not have been through all the levels of a rigorous examination mathematically, socially and politically to have become operational unless such examination has been foreshortened or the outcome was politically pre-determined.  Nevertheless in London 175 alleged offenders have been placed on the scheme and 74 in West Yorkshire. Offences include criminal damage and assault for which the maximum sentences are six months custody. There has been to my knowledge no information forthcoming on those cases regarding whether they were eg first offences, subsequent to input from victims or ethnicity of offenders but from reading the above report it would appear that racial bias alleged or otherwise had more than a marginal effect on conclusions. 

A spokesperson from the MOJ has been quoted as follows, "a key feature is that an admission of guilt is not necessary", but added that prosecution was still on the table for those who failed the requirements of their rehabilitation programmes. I make no apology for belonging to a generation that believes justice must not only be done but be seen to be done.  If that makes me an outcast amongst current legal thinkers and practitioners; so be it.  But secret justice lives down a very dark alley.  The deeper it becomes the more dangerous for us all and operated by a government that is amongst the most arbitrary in its decision making for many years it is another pointer of how authoritarianism arrives when least expected despite warnings of its nascent emergence. 

BLEAK PROSPECTS IN THE HOUSE

This is a first post of a new year but unfortunately although not unexpectedly once again we are forced to listen to an aspiring warlord of a home secretary telling us how we are going to be kept so much safer in our daily lives by the actions she is undertaking for our protection. Methinks we have heard it all before.  In the last few days she has pledged to use new stronger powers to deport criminals and deter illegal immigration.  Considering the latter proposal it has been apparent for the last year that this country just does not have the naval facilities to combat the illegal flow across the channel and even if it had what actions could it undertake accepting of course that it is against international law to use force lethal or otherwise to stop such people reaching their desired destination. Prevention is often said to be better than cure but even with willing partners in France and Belgium it is impossible for them to police 50 miles from Ostend to Calais 24 hours daily. Knowing that such illegal traffic is directed by criminals,  authorities in all three countries involved have scarcely made any inroads into arresting and convicting those gangs who, by all accounts, are making millions of pounds from their human cargoes. These usually impoverished people consist of some who are fleeing repression in their homelands of Iran, Syria or Africa and the remainder who seek to improve their economic status by coming to Britain. It has been considered that the numbers of unaccompanied young males is indicative of the latter group. But the official numbers by their very source can provide only a fleeting glimpse into the whole problem analyses of which provide great difficulties for those with vastly more knowledge than I. 

On her other assurance to a public which she presumes to be as spectators at a medieval hanging at Tyburn she has outlined plans to make it easier to remove offenders who are subject to custodial sentences of six months.  On this topic I can opine with some personal knowledge. Current policy imparts any person of 17 years or over who does not have the right of abode who is convicted of an offence is liable to a custodial sentence and recommended for deportation by a court which has the power to sentence him.  The fact that a court has decided not to make a recommendation for deportation does not debar the Secretary of State taking such action on the basis that such an offender is non conducive to the public good.  In May 2006 it was recognised by the Labour government that there was a need to prioritise cases by the level of risk that a person posed to the public for those given a 12 month custodial sentence either in one sentence or as an aggregate of sentences over a five year period. That provision, of course, enabled an offender who received two consecutive six month sentences at a magistrates court; infrequent but not unusual, to be subject to deportation. These and other provisions became law under the terms of the UK Borders Act 2007. I recollect in that year my bench, against the advice of our legal advisor at the time, instigating such a process against an East European who had been convicted and sentenced to be within such provisions. After voluminous correspondence it was rejected.  To reduce the required prison sentence from 12 to 6 months for the sanction of deportation to be available the Home Secretary is behaving with a similar  mindset as Nero throwing Christians to the lions. She is offering what she believes is the public demand to deflect much warranted criticism of her own follies. Thus many offenders convicted of low level drug offences, thousands of motoring offences and common assault  could be on her "deport them" wish list not to mention a multitude of other offences tried summarily at magistrates courts.  Considering her recent outbursts against lawyers and political opponents who offer logical criticism in principle and of the logistics involved there is no doubt in my mind that her proposals will meet short thrift unless the current incompetent and overtaxed prime minister decides to use parliamentary dictatorship and his political capital to force through such measures through the House of Commons. 

This is the state we have reached in this country: an inability for many years to provide enough hospital beds and equipment, a myopic money saving effort involved in the closure of half the country`s magistrates courts with the resultant delays, a transport infrastructure in disrepair to be balanced against the spiralling costs of a new railway which is already outmoded, a population of ever increasing child poverty, a miserable housing situation for a large minority who will never be able to buy their own home and so many other public services not fit for purpose.  One does not have to be a member of the Corbyn cult to realise that something is failing in the way in which we are governed.  And as previously mentioned that time honoured method of diverting public criticism is alive and well in this new year as it has been in every year previously; get rid of the foreigners who are the cause of it all. Italy, Germany, Rwanda, China, USA...........  The numbers, methods and enforcement might vary but the underlying motivation is the same.  I`m an optimist but the prospects are bleak.