This week’s Queen’s speech has been described as a “mouse of a programme” but last year’s speech contained a raft of new measures to transform the justice system and keep both the legal profession and civil libertarians very interested. Twelve months on this is what has happened to them. Read the full story

It seems that client choice is following the path of so much else in the criminal legal system as it is threatened with being killed off in the proposed shake up of criminal legal aid.

Despite the fact we all believed this was protected in LASPO, it seems the minister allowed himself enough wriggle room and soon it will be like A&E, you simply get the first doctor to see you and no choice in the matter.

S.27 of LASPO says: Read the full story

Consultations are like buses. There must be one well on its way because two have just arrived at the same time.

On Monday, MoJ issued a consultation document which sets out the government’s proposals for further reform of the legal aid system in England and Wales. The expressed aim of the proposals is to deliver savings of £220 million per year by 2018/19. At its launch, justice secretary Chris Grayling said: Read the full story

A major study by the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), published last week, shows that slavery has made a comeback in contemporary Britain.

The report highlights the horrific reality of human trafficking and modern slavery in the UK. Christian Guy, Managing Director of the CSJ, said: “Our research has uncovered a shocking underworld in which children and adults, many of them UK citizens, have been forced Read the full story

In July 2005, Lord Falconer, then Lord Chancellor, asked Lord Carter to examine how to improve the arrangements for purchasing and procuring publicly funded legal services, particularly criminal defence services.

In his report, published in February 2006, Lord Carter recommended fixed pricing for all criminal legal aid work; a managed market, awarding contracts to efficient and good quality suppliers; and managed price competition between efficient, good quality suppliers. Read the full story

On Monday the Justice and Security bill came back to a packed Commons at Report stage. The bill extends the secret hearings, known as closed material procedures (CMPs), into the main civil courts in England and Wales. Read the full story

On Monday the Justice and Security bill comes to the Commons at Report stage, trailing unprecedented clouds of opposition from the length and breadth of the legal profession.

The bill extends the secret hearings, known as closed material procedures (CMPs), into the main civil courts in England and Wales. It would restrict access to some sensitive intelligence to the trial judge. Defendants or claimants will not be allowed to be present, to know, or to challenge the case against them, and must be represented by a security-cleared special advocate rather than by their own lawyer. Read the full story

You would have had to be living in a cave for the past week to have missed the Oscar Pistorius story. It bids fair to outdo the O J Simpson trial in terms of media coverage.

Even before his bail application the world had read that a bloodied cricket bat would be a key piece of evidence in the trial, that Reeva Steenkamp was wearing white shorts and a black vest when she died and that her skull had been crushed. The media was also full of stories about Pistorius’s character flaws.
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On Tuesday, Policing and Criminal Justice Minister Damian Green delivered a speech at the centre-right think tank ‘Reform’ on crime and justice policy.

One of the themes of his speech was the failure to exploit technology. He said: “Anyone who compares the way the criminal justice system works with any other modern workplace will be immediately struck by the terrible failure to take advantage of all the benefits that technology can bring. If you compare basic processes that take place across the country all the time Read the full story

A few years ago the Lord Chief Justice delivered a speech about the relationship between the internet and the jury system.

Lord Judge’s concerns were, and probably still are, twofold. Firstly the availability of the internet to jurors. At the outset of a trial, judges direct the jury not to look at the internet in connection with the trial. They must reach their verdict only on the basis of what they hear in the courtroom. But, inevitably, individual jurors will disregard the direction and make their own private enquiries.
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