Anya Blog

25th June 2009
Criminal firms have seen the introduction of fixed fee schemes for police work and a standard fee system in magistrates courts following a review of legal services by Lord Carter three years ago. Now the consultations on proposals for competitive tendering by criminal defence work firms have come to an end, with solicitors’ firms across the country voicing strong opposition to the proposed system.

The Law Society, the Bar Council and the Criminal Bar Association are all gravely concerned about BVT as currently proposed by the LSC, involving a limited scheme which would cover lower crime work in police stations and the Magistrates’ Courts. This would probably be extended should it prove successful. BVT involves competitive tendering based on price for criminal defence work, as solicitors’ firms will bid for blocks of work, with the lowest bidder getting the work. Strong concerns are expressed that criminal legal aid firms could be drastically reduced, meaning the number of firms available to clients will diminish, as the already financially vulnerable supplier base is put at risk. "The widespread use of BVT is likely to… deny clients access to many competent and dedicated solicitors who want to serve them. The bidding processes proposed are opaque and not suited to the commissioning of professional services, where the freedom of the individual is put at risk", said Paul Marsh, Law Society President.

In their response to the proposals, the Law Society said that they will have a hugely detrimental impact on the quality of representation in police stations, and thereby damage the criminal justice system as a whole. Of equal concern is the failure to conduct a full and proper impact assessment, taking account of the potential disproportionate impact on women and BME practitioners. Desmond Browne QC, the Chairman of the Bar, said that “we cannot afford to sacrifice the present robust system for a scheme which lacks all economic justification, and which will have a disproportionate impact on BME practitioners. The LSC’s failure properly to assess the impact on BME practitioners is potentially discriminatory and may be unlawful; it has a statutory duty to avoid discrimination and promote equality of opportunity, and it has comprehensively failed to comply with this requirement”.

Speaking at a conference organised by the Legal Action Group to celebrate 60 years of legal aid, justice department minister Lord Bach said that BVT is “not a simple cost cutting exercise. It’s aimed at securing a sustainable, effective and efficient supplier base”. In an interview with the ‘Guardian’ he acknowledged that his policies are deeply unpopular among many former colleagues, adding that “I have to do what I can to ensure the legal aid is spent in the best possible way, and that's what I'm trying to do."

The Law Society's response to the Legal Services Commission's consultation on best value tendering for CDS contracts 2010 can be found at:-
http://www.lawsociety.org.uk/secure/file/180185/e:/teamsite-deployed/documents/templatedata/Internet%20Documents/Government%20proposals/Documents/bvt_response180609.pdf

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23rd June 2009
“Examples of poor or unnecessary use of section 44 [Terrorism Act 2000] abound. I have evidence of cases where the person stopped is so obviously far from any known terrorism profile that, realistically, there is not the slightest possibility of him/her being a terrorist...In one situation the basis of the stops being carried out was numerical only, which is almost certainly unlawful…A section 44 stop, without suspicion, is an invasion of the stopped person’s freedom of movement…It is totally wrong for any person to be stopped in order to produce a racial balance in the statistics”.

Not the words of a crusading civil libertarian but the sober judgement of Lord Carlile, the government’s official anti-terror law watchdog, in his annual report. Under section 44, police can stop and search anyone in a designated area without suspicion that an offence has occurred. Last year out of a total of 117,278 people stopped and searched, 73,967 were white, 15,218 were blacks and 20,768 were Asians. Lord Carlile said that he can understand the concerns of the police that they should be free from allegations of prejudice, but it is an invasion of the civil liberties of the person who has been stopped, simply to “balance” the statistics. According to the ‘Guardian’, he later went on to say that “if, for example, 50 blonde women are stopped who fall nowhere near any intelligence-led terrorism profile, it’s a gross invasion of the civil liberties of those 50 blonde women. The police are perfectly entitled to stop people who fall within a terrorism profile even if it creates a racial imbalance, as long as it is not racist”. He could here be accused of validating the concept that it's OK to stop a non-white, but not OK to stop a blond woman, even though the vast majority of Asians and black people are as far from any known terrorism as he perceives blond women to be.

Nearly 90 per cent of the searches were carried out by the Metropolitan Police, whose officers use section 44 to carry out stop and search between 8,000 and 10,000 times a month. Lord Carlile admits a sense of frustration that the Metropolitan Police still do not limit their section 44 authorisations to specific boroughs, rather than to the entire force area. He can see no justification for the whole of the Greater London area being under permanent special search powers. None of the many thousands of searches has ever resulted in conviction of a terrorism offence, and he says that its utility has been questioned publicly and privately by senior Metropolitan Police staff with wide experience of terrorism policing.

Lord Carlile calls for greatly reduced use of section 44 powers and repeats what he calls his “mantra”, that terrorism related powers should be used only for terrorism-related purposes. Otherwise their credibility is severely damaged. “The use of section 44 has attracted particular criticism as having a negative effect on good community relations. Its purpose and deployment are poorly understood”.

The full text of Lord Carlile’s report can be found at:-
http://security.homeoffice.gov.uk/news-publications/publication-search/general/Lord-Carlile-report-2009/Lord-Carlile-report.pdf?view=Binary

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