Upper Case - The Anya Legal Journal. News, Comment & Opinion on Law, Technology & Legal Practice.

Government backs down on means testing at police stations

Tuesday was the fifth day of the line-by-line scrutiny of the Legal Aid bill in the Lords and it produced the first positive result for the opponents of the bill. The government announced that one of the most controversial elements of the bill – the means testing of suspects held in police stations – has [...]

Committee day three in the Lords

The Lords continued their examination of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill on Monday, starting with Clause 8, which makes provisions about when civil legal services would be made available. Amendment 21 was moved by Lord Beecham. He said that the bill sought to make legal aid provision a matter of exception [...]

Legal aid cuts to save less than predicted

As the legal aid, sentencing and punishment of offenders bill returns to the House of Lords at committee stage, an independent report from a leading university reveals how the legal aid changes will incur new costs for the taxpayer by simply shifting the burden onto other parts of the public purse. The King’s College London [...]

LASPO in the Lords

Line-by-line scrutiny of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill continued on Tuesday in the House of Lords. Members continued where they left off before the Christmas recess when four amendments to clause 1, which defines the Lord Chancellor’s responsibilities, were debated and then withdrawn without being put to the vote. Lord Beecham [...]

Lord Tebbit fights to save legal aid for children’s medical cases

Michael Foot once memorably described him as a ‘semi-house trained polecat’ in recognition of his fierce right wing views. So when the same Norman Tebbit, now ennobled, proposes what can only be described as liberal minded amendments to the current Legal Aid bill it is a moment of significance. He has put his name down [...]

Are Solicitors ‘superfluous intermediaries’?

Barristers are renewing their efforts to capture the territory that has traditionally been the preserve of solicitors. To this end two initiatives have been launched. The public access scheme was first established in 2004 and allows a barrister to be instructed directly by a lay client without the need for a solicitor. In order to [...]

Slippage at the MoJ – Competitive Tendering and Legal Aid reform

Last Wednesday Secretary of State for Justice, Ken Clarke, made a written statement to the Commons on Competitive Tendering. The proposed timetable has yet again slipped back. He told the Commons: “The Government believe that tendering criminal defence work for competition, alongside regulatory changes, has the potential to significantly modernise legal aid provision, improve the [...]

High street law firms survey

On Monday the Law Society announced that, jointly with the Ministry of Justice and the Legal Services Board, it intended to commission research to understand more about ‘high street’ law firms, the main providers of legal services and legal aid. The aim of the research is to understand more about the providers of legal services [...]

Youth Justice Board

The government has abandoned plans to scrap the Youth Justice Board (YJB). The decision came shortly after another U-turn over plans to axe the post of chief coroner. Both issues had threatened to derail the passage of the Public Bodies Bill through the Lords last Wednesday. In October 2010 it was announced that the YJB [...]

Reprieve for the post of Chief Coroner

The creation of the post of Chief Coroner for England and Wales was at the heart of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009. The role was designed to introduce national leadership of the coroner service, considered a crucial step in tackling unacceptable delays, inconsistent standards of service delivery and lack of accountability. Then, in a [...]

Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill in the Lords

On Monday the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill came before the Lords for its second reading. In eight hours there were over fifty contributors to a high quality debate. Part 2 (litigation funding and costs) and part 3 (sentencing and punishment of offenders) did not feature greatly in the exchanges, and were [...]

Barristers ready to take direct action

There is much talk of strikes in the air at the moment, with wide and varied organisations planning to take industrial action on 30 November. In a different context it now looks as if they could be emulated by barristers. As reported in the ‘Law Gazette’, the new chair of the Criminal Bar Association, Max [...]

Stalking

One in five women and one in ten men suffer from the obsessive attention of a stalker at some point in their life. British Crime Survey figures show that up to five million people experience stalking or harassment every year, but only around 8,000 people are convicted of harassment-related offences each year. According to the [...]

Means tests at the police station

Clause 12 of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill provides that advice in the police station in future could be subject to a means test. This would drive a coach and horses through the universal right to representation by a solicitor at a police station, enshrined in section 58(1) Police and Criminal [...]

Fighting Fraud

For the first time government, industry, voluntary groups and law enforcement agencies have joined forces to tackle fraud. Thirty-seven organisations have come together to launch ‘Fighting Fraud Together’, a new strategy that aims to reduce fraud, estimated to cost the UK £38 billion every year. Speaking at the Fighting Fraud Together launch event, minister for [...]

Dangerous drivers to face longer jail terms

Dangerous drivers who seriously injure others could spend longer in jail thanks to a new criminal offence. For the vast majority of dangerous driving cases the maximum penalty of two years’ imprisonment provides the courts with sufficient and proportionate powers to punish offenders. The new offence of ‘causing serious injury by dangerous driving’ will carry [...]

Mandatory prison sentences

Word has it that there have been some fierce knock’em down and drag’em out battles in cabinet between Theresa May and Kenneth Clarke on the subject of mandatory prison sentences. If that is the case the home secretary has triumphed. David Cameron has intervened and decided. Clarke made clear his personal opposition to the use [...]

Crisis in the civil courts

As justices of the supreme court express fears that legal aid cuts will cause a courts logjam, a Manifesto for Family Justice has been published by an alliance of organisations which represents the rights and needs of women, children, families and victims of domestic abuse. In a special report on the workings of the supreme [...]

Grand panic or total objection?

As always with these events, I arrive with my exhibitors head on and leave with my former practitioner’s one thinking long and hard on all that I have heard. Let me say from the top of this piece that I am a great believer in the UK legal profession and the work it does for [...]