The number of people who will lose out on access to civil legal advice services if the legal aid cuts are implemented was quoted as 502,000 in the Ministry of Justice’s impact assessment on scope changes published in support of the green paper. A significant number in all conscience, but the Legal Action Group believe that the true number of people who will lose out on legal aid services is 653,659, 30% greater than was previously estimated by the government.

The Official Solicitor to the Senior Courts represents the interests of those involved in litigation who do not have capacity. One of his primary functions is to act as last resort litigation friend in civil and family proceedings. As a matter of law individuals who lack the mental capacity to conduct their own litigation, and the majority of children, are not permitted to conduct their own litigation. He can see no alternative dispute resolution method identified in the Consultation Paper which would provide the protection currently recognised as necessary both for persons who would lack litigation capacity in court proceedings and for the other party or parties to the dispute. In his view there is a very serious risk that the proposals would act to limit access to justice for some of the most vulnerable in society.

The Law Society say the Government runs the risk of reduced social cohesion, increased criminality, reduced business and economic efficiency. “In a time of economic difficulties, the demand for legal aid services increases. More people will need advice. Increased poverty and financial stress may lead to crime, and to abuse or neglect in the home, requiring intervention from social services.” The Society does not agree that the telephone helpline should be the single gateway. A significant proportion of clients who qualify for legal aid find accessing services by telephone difficult or even impossible. The cost of calls may be a significant barrier. In addition, the consultation paper fails to recognise the combined impact of the proposed cuts on other areas of work. The removal of many categories of social welfare law and family work from the scope of legal aid is likely to hit the viability of many crime firms very hard.

Liberty believe that in excluding large areas of the law from the scope of legal aid, the proposed reforms will create alarming gaps in protection, denying justice to many but hitting the most vulnerable the hardest. This will contribute towards a culture of impunity amongst the rich and the powerful. They are “profoundly concerned about proposed measures which risk fundamentally diluting principles of transparent justice and due process. Liberty is further deeply troubled about the potential of these measures to erode the constitutional bulwark of the right to trial by jury.”

Legal Aid Practitioners Group find “profoundly objectionable…the Government’s idea that people are rushing to litigation and that lawyers in the legal aid system are encouraging this.” The number of providers of Legal Aid has dropped from 11,000 in the early 1990s to approximately 3,000 now. The number continues to fall as less and less can survive the poor remuneration and burdensome restrictions imposed upon them. The proposed reforms will lead to huge further losses, and the Legal Aid system is already rationed by the lack of providers. Young Legal Aid Lawyers  believes that, if implemented, these proposals will destroy one of the best legal aid systems in
the world. The impact assessments also confirm that the proposals are likely to disproportionately affect women, Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic groups and disabled people. The proposals will “shake the foundations of our society as they will mean that the rule of law will only apply to those who can afford the law or the very poorest in the most desperate of situations.” In their view the legal aid scheme is fundamental to the rule of law and for ensuring justice is properly administered.

Over 5,000 responses were sent to the MoJ from both individuals and organisations concerned about the provision of legal aid services. It remains to be seen whether this barrage of detailed, informed criticism will have any effect. The best way to access many of these responses is on the admirable ilegal site at:

http://www.ilegal.org.uk/

Home Secretary Theresa May went to the House of Commons on Wednesday to announce the results of the counter terrorism review which was one of the main commitments of the coalition government. The headline announcement was the proposal to scrap the very controversial control order regime.

Control orders are to be replaced by “a new package of measures that is better focused and has more targeted restrictions,” to be known officially as terrorism prevention and investigation measures (T-PIMs for short). There will be the removal of those aspects of control orders that most resemble house arrest. Curfews will be replaced by an overnight residence requirement. Forcible relocation will be ended and replaced with the power to order more tightly defined exclusions from particular areas. There will be the power to prevent foreign travel. Individuals will have greater access to communications, including to a mobile phone and to a home computer with internet access. They will have greater freedom to associate and will be free to work and study, subject again to restrictions.

The review accepts that the normal maximum period of pre-charge detention should be 14 days but recognises that in exceptional circumstances this might need to be temporarily increased to 28 days. Draft primary legislation will be drawn up to be introduced for parliamentary consideration only in such circumstances. On the use of section 44 stop-and-search powers, the Home Secretary said: “I have concluded that the current provisions, which were found unlawful by the European Court of Human Rights, represented an unacceptable intrusion on an individual’s human rights and must be repealed. We therefore propose to repeal section 44 and to replace it with a tightly defined power that would allow a senior police officer to make an authorisation of much more limited scope and duration for no-suspicion stop-and-search powers to prevent a terrorist attack where there is a specific threat. This targeted measure will also prevent the misuse of these powers against photographers.”

On the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, Mrs May promised implementation of the commitment to prevent the use of these powers by local authorities unless for the purpose of preventing serious crime and unless authorised by a magistrate. She expressed concern at “the use of counter-terrorism legislation by local authorities in respect of matters that clearly had nothing to do with counter-terrorism, such as dog fouling and whether or not children had the right to go to a particular school in a particular catchment area.” Surveillance will only be authorised for offences that carry a custodial sentence of at least six months.
Writing in the ‘Guardian’, Lib Dem MP Tim Farron said: “The ridiculous, heavy handed and easily abused powers brought in by the last Labour regime trampled over centuries of British tradition and liberty. That’s why the Liberal Democrats and other civil liberties campaigners fought to prevent them and railed against them once they were imposed. And that’s why we should all be proud of the steps taken by the coalition government today.” Shami Chakrabarti, Director of Liberty, was less fulsome. She said: “We welcome movement on stop and search, 28-day detention and council snooping, but when it comes to ending punishment without trial, the Government appears to have bottled it. Spin and semantics aside, control orders are retained and rebranded, if in a slightly lower fat form. As before, the innocent may be punished without a fair hearing and the guilty will escape the full force of criminal law.” On ‘This Week’ last night, former Home Secretary Charles Clarke called it “a complete fudge” that endangered national security.

Home Secretary Theresa May told Parliament yesterday that the government will change how stop and search powers under section 44 of the Terrorism Act are used, with immediate effect.

The move is in response to a decision by the European Court of Human Rights,  which found that the use of stop and search powers under section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000  amounted to a  violation of the right to a private life. The court said the powers were drawn too broadly at the time of their initial authorisation and did not have enough safeguards to protect civil liberties. The Home Secretary told the House of Commons: “I will not allow the continued use of section 44 in contravention of the European Court’s ruling and, more importantly, in contravention of the civil liberties of every one of us.” She added that the new government had been concerned about the use of section 44 powers for some time. The changes are designed to comply with the Strasbourg ruling and provide clarity for the police before a review of all counterterrorism legislation this summer. The terms of reference for the review are expected to be announced next week.

The Home Secretary has sought urgent legal advice and consulted police forces, and interim guidance for the police has been introduced which sets a new suspicion threshold. Officers will no longer be able to search individuals using section 44 powers. Instead they will have to rely on section 43 powers, which require officers to reasonably suspect the person to be a terrorist. Police may search only vehicles under section 44 of the law, and then only if they have reasonable suspicion of terrorist activity. The changes will bring the operation of counter-terrorism use of stop and search powers fully into line with the European Court’s judgment. Theresa May concluded: “The first duty of government is to protect the public. But that duty must never be used as a reason to ride roughshod over our civil liberties. I believe that the interim proposals I have set out today give the police the support they need and protect those ancient rights.”

In reply, Alan Johnson, the former Labour Home Secretary, said he was ‘amazed’ that his successor had not tried to appeal against the Strasbourg ruling. He went on to say: “I am deeply concerned about the Home Secretary’s intention to restrict section 44 powers to searches of vehicles. That quite clearly restricts the powers of the police.” But Lord Carlile, the government’s independent reviewer of anti-terror legislation, speaking on BBC’s ‘World at One’ yesterday, said section 44 had been ineffective in combating terrorism, had caused community tensions and was used arbitrarily and for incorrect purposes. He added: “You don’t have to search people to discourage terrorists, the evident availability of police officers in the area, obvious uniformed policing, is just as much of a deterrent.” And Shami Chakrabarti, director of the human rights group Liberty, said: “Liberty welcomes the end of the infamous section 44 stop and search power that criminalised and alienated more people than it ever protected. We argued against it for ten years and spent the last seven challenging it all the way to the Court of Human Rights. It is a blanket and secretive power that has been used against school kids, journalists, peace protesters and a disproportionate number of young black men. To our knowledge, it has never helped catch a single terrorist. This is a very important day for personal privacy, rights to protest and race equality in Britain.”

Over the past decade there has been a wholesale removal of rights that were apparently protected by the Human Rights Act and set down nearly 800 years ago in Magna Carta. The liberties that were assumed to be guaranteed by British culture have been compromised, as have constitutional safeguards that were once considered beyond the reach of a democratically elected legislature. The attack has been as broad as it is deep, with over 25 Acts of Parliament and some 50 individual measures involved so far.

That is the conclusion of “What We’ve Lost”, a report by the UCL Student Human Rights Programme, compiled for the Convention on Modern Liberty. This conclusion is backed by many examples. The presumption of innocence and the principle that every defendant has the right to be tried by a jury have been weakened by the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act 2004. The important distinction between standard of proof for criminal and civil law was eroded with the introduction of ASBOs. The right to silence was further eroded by the Counter-Terrorism Act 2008. Under the same Act an individual and his lawyers may be barred from court proceedings. Freedom to communicate in private has been effectively extinguished by the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000. Under the Identity Cards Act 2006 and the Children Act 2004 a record of all the important transactions in a person’s life will be created by electronic verification. The rights to freedom of assembly and demonstration have been eroded by the Anti-Social Behaviour Act 2003 and the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005. Jack Straw’s Coroners and Justice Bill will end the independence of coroners, who until now have been able to investigate the cause of suspicious or uncertain deaths and criticise government departments and agencies. And so on.

In “The Assault on Liberty”, a ‘radical polemic on the state of the nation’, Dominic Raab, Chief of Staff to the Shadow Home Secretary, asks whether we can really defend our freedom by sacrificing it. “In the last ten years the government has launched an unprecedented assault on our civil liberties”. Writing in the ‘Guardian’, Timothy Garton Ash maintains that Britain has more CCTV, a larger DNA base and more police powers and email snooping than any comparable liberal democracy, coupled with a bungling bureaucracy that keeps losing vital information. He asks “how can a government of intelligent and often liberal-minded persons behave so illiberally, arrogantly and stupidly?” He sees hope in a three pronged fightback, led by judges and lawyers, the House of Lords Constitution Committee (see ‘Big Brother parts 1 & 2’, posted here on 10 February) and a rainbow coalition, many of whom have joined together to launch the Convention on Modern Liberty.

The full text of the “What We’ve Lost” report is at:- http://www.uclshrp.com/images/uploads/pdf/Abolition_of_Freedom_Act_2009.pdf

An earlier blog (10.06.08) contrasted ‘Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’, where 42 is the answer to the meaning of life, the universe and everything, with the Government, for whom 42 is more a problem than an answer. 42 achieved the status of a threat to the leadership of the Government through the wheeling, dealing and almost daily concessions to get the provisions of the Counter-Terrorism Bill through the Commons, with the actual number itself seeming to be sacrosanct.

This week the headache became a full blown migraine for the Government when plans to give police up to 42 days to question terrorism suspects were crushed by the House of Lords. Peers voted against the measure by 309 votes to 118. This came after opposition to the proposals from all sides, with 24 Labour rebels including two former Lord Chancellors, Lord Irvine and Lord Falconer, as well as Baroness Manningham-Buller, the former head of MI5, Lord Justice Woolf, the former Lord Chief Justice, and Lord Condon, the former Metropolitan Police Commissioner.

In an emergency statement to MPs, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith conceded defeat and said that the Counter-Terrorism Bill would continue its journey through Parliament without the 42 day measure. According to the ‘Guardian’, Government sources said the Prime Minister’s hand was forced because whips in the Commons told Downing Street that they would struggle to muster a majority in favour of the proposal. The 42 day plan was only passed by MPs in June by nine votes after the Prime Minister won the support of the nine Democratic Unionist MPs. If ministers had insisted on keeping the 42 day plan there would have been the need for a series of votes in the Commons to overturn the Lords’ rejection and eventually the use of the Parliament Act to force the bill through next year.

The capitulation was defiantly unrepentent. In her Commons statement, the Home Secretary was positively reproachful. She said “The other place has tonight voted to remove from the Counter-Terrorism Bill the protections that the government believes should be in place. Not to amend; not to strengthen; simply to remove. Mr Speaker, my priority remains the protection of the British people. I do not believe, as some hon. members clearly do, that it is enough to simply cross our fingers and hope for the best …that is not good enough. Because when it comes to national security, there are certain risks I’m not prepared to take.”

In what some see as a face saving gesture, the Home Secretary announced that she had “prepared a new bill to enable the police and prosecutors to do their work – should the worst happen, should a terrorist plot overtake us and threaten our current investigatory capabilities… The Counter Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Bill now stands ready to be introduced if and when the need arises. This would enable the Director of Public Prosecutions to apply to the courts to detain and question a terrorist suspect for up to a maximum of 42 days. Individuals could only be detained where this is authorised by a judge.” Once again the totemic 42 days.

The climb down has pleased a wide diversity of groups, and it is reported that David Davies, who resigned his seat and fought a by-election over this issue, shared a celebratory bottle of champagne in the Commons with Shami Chakrabarti, the director of Liberty.