Articles of clerkship, now transformed into two year training contracts, have long been the basis of qualifying as a solicitor. While most who have gone through it consider it to be a reasonable introduction to the profession, the drawback is the lack of any assessment, and therefore no guarantee of the competence of trainees when admitted to the solicitors’ roll. Then there is the problem that there are not enough training contracts for the number of students who pass the legal practice course (LPC).

So the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA), which regulates more than 120,000 solicitors in England and Wales, and is the independent regulatory body of the Law Society of England and Wales, has been piloting a system of work based learning (WBL). The scheme was initiated in September 2008 with the aim of developing a consistent and reliable method of assessment, and testing a different route to qualification which did not depend on the candidate securing a training contract. Seventy nine students took part in the pilot, of whom 70 passed following completion of the course in December 2010. The candidates were either nominated by legal firms who had already agreed to take them on for training as solicitors, or candidates who volunteered for the scheme and who were already employed in legal firms or in-house legal departments in legal roles which would not otherwise have led to qualification. In both cases they were assessed either internally by their employer or by an external provider against a set of eight learning outcomes involving practical legal experience.

The SRA has published a report on the results of the two year pilot scheme. The Middlesex Evaluation Report, produced by The Institute for Work Based Learning at Middlesex University, found that “the WBL framework demonstrated a level of success in providing the legal profession with a learning and development approach to the vocational stage of qualification that assures quality in assessment, and that can be monitored and contribute to enhancing standards across all set ups.” The report made several recommendations. These include further work to set out the skills and attributes for qualifying as a solicitor and the learning outcomes necessary to demonstrate competence. Key professionals should be trained in coaching and assessing within a WBL framework, and there should be an accredited learning scheme for prior learning.

Writing in the ‘Guardian’, Neil Rose, editor of LegalFutures.co.uk, notes that WBL offers a route to qualification for paralegals who have completed the LPC and are doing training contract-type work, though not within a training contract. But he adds: “WBL is not the silver bullet to sort out diversity issues in the solicitors’ profession, although the research indicates it can help break down socio/educational barriers to entry…For example, there is an increasing focus on having work done by the right level of fee-earner, which in many cases need not be a fully qualified lawyer. This will only increase when alternative business structures are allowed later this year and new players look to re-engineer the way legal services are delivered.”

To see either the full WBL report, or a summary of the report, go to: http://www.sra.org.uk/sra/news/press/learning-pilots-results.page?ref=search                      and follow the links.

Last November Ken Clarke took his knife to legal aid. The extent of the reductions revealed in the Green Paper – £350m a year to be taken out of a £914m annual civil and family legal aid budget by 2014 – had been widely anticipated, but the scale of cuts both to scope and eligibility occasioned much dismay.
Linked with these cuts the Ministry of Justice announced a very detailed consultation paper ‘Proposals for the Reform of Legal Aid in England and Wales’, aimed at providers of publicly funded legal services and others with an interest in the justice system. The consultation ran from 15 November 2010 to 14 February 2011. Thanks to archiving on the ilegal website it is possible to view the very detailed responses, universally opposed to the green paper and united in apprehension and foreboding.

The Child Poverty Action Group believe that the proposed reforms will have a negative impact on child poverty by reducing access to welfare rights and social welfare advice. “There is no alternative source of funding for welfare rights services; if legal aid is cut, law centres, citizens advice bureaux and advice centres will shut down, local authorities’ welfare rights units will go.” The Citizens Advice Bureaux submit that social welfare law raises complex legal issues, and problems are often extremely serious to users of the justice system. Limiting the scope of issues with which legal aid funded advisers can help means they will not be able to solve people’s problems fully, as many clients experience multiple problems across different civil justice and social welfare scope areas.

Gingerbread, the national charity working with single parent families, is concerned that the loss of legal aid in private family law proceedings threatens the vital role of the family court as the final arbiter in difficult, complex or intractable parental disputes. “Approximately 10 per cent of separating parents use the family courts to resolve disputes over residence and contact. These families are often the ones facing the most difficult and extreme situations which involve high levels of dispute and/or child protection issues. If these proposals are implemented, access to justice will be severely curtailed for literally thousands of parents and their children.”

Rights of Women oppose the proposed changes, claiming that they are discriminatory and will entrench inequality, with the disabled, poor and marginalised disproportionately affected. Women will be at greater risk of violence and an important check to abuses of power and incompetence will be lost. While welcoming the proposed helpline they are “strongly opposed” to the move to a single telephone gateway. “What provision will be made for those without access to a telephone?” they ask. “How are asylum-seekers or those with an insecure immigration status supposed to access advice and representation? How are children – for example, separated children seeking asylum in the UK – supposed to use the helpline? How likely is it that a woman experiencing domestic or sexual violence will be able to disclose this to a (male?) operator?”

The Association of Lawyers for Children submit that the proposals take little or no account of the complexities of society today, will have major regressive impacts and should not be considered further until after the Family Justice Review has published its final report. In similar vein, the Royal College of  Psychiatrists do not accept the distinction that seeks to suggest that unless there is actual domestic violence then contact and residence disputes should be outside the purview of legal aid. “These matters are crucial to children’s lives. They are dependent and have no power in the situation. If their resident parent is coerced and appropriate resolution of the matter, if necessary by the courts, is not supported by the State, then the risk of mental health harm is much higher for the child.”

For these and many more responses go to ilegal at:
http://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.

There are two main sources of official statistics on crime: the police recorded series and the British Crime Survey (BCS). The BCS is a nationally representative sample survey of the population resident in households in England and Wales, now based on more than 45,000 respondents.
 
As a household based survey, the BCS does not cover all offences or all population groups. While police recorded crime has a wider coverage of offences, including crimes such as drug and sexual offences, and covers the entire population, it does not include those crimes not reported to the police. Both sources have their strengths and weaknesses but together provide a more comprehensive picture than either on its own. Home Secretary Theresa May has announced a review by the national statistician, with the publication of crime statistics transferred from the Home Office to an independent body to improve “public trust and confidence in crime statistics.”

The most striking new finding within the latest report is that both the 2009/10 BCS and police recorded crime are consistent in showing falls in overall crime compared with 2008/09. Overall BCS crime decreased by nine per cent (from 10.5 million crimes to 9.6 million crimes), and police recorded crime by eight per cent (from 4.7 million to 4.3 million crimes). Both sources are consistent in showing marked falls in vehicle crime (BCS vehicle-related theft down 17% and police recorded vehicle crime down 16%). In addition, the 9% fall in domestic burglary from the BCS is broadly in line with the 6% reduction recorded by the police. The 2009/10 BCS shows there were an estimated 659,000 domestic burglary incidents in England and Wales. The number of incidents of theft from the person fell by 28 per cent. Overall police recorded property crime fell by ten per cent between 2008/09 and 2009/10, from 3,352,989 offences to 3,032,182. There were falls in all main recorded property crime categories.

Over recent years there has been an overall reduction in violent crime estimated by the BCS, consistent with trends in police recorded crime. The murder rate in England and Wales has fallen from 644 to 619 over the last year to its lowest level for 12 years. Police recorded violence against the person fell by four per cent between 2008/09 and 2009/10. Longer term trends from the BCS show violent crime down by 50 per cent from its peak in 1995. Sexual offences recorded by the police increased between 2008/09 and 2009/10 by six per cent. Within this category, there was a seven per cent increase in ‘Most serious sexual crime’ and a two per cent increase in ‘Other sexual offences’ over the same period. This increase coincides with steps the police have been taking to improve the recording of serious sexual offences. Police recorded drug offences fell by four per cent between 2008/09 and 2009/10, this being the first year-on-year fall since the police were given greater powers to issue warnings for cannabis possession in 2004/05, which account for over two-thirds of drug offences.

There is a clear pattern from the BCS of crime reaching a peak in 1995 with a subsequent decline, with overall crime down by 50 per cent since 1995. The full 200 page text of the ‘Crime in England and Wales 2009/10’ report, full of fascinating details, charts and diagrams, can be found at:

http://rds.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs10/hosb1210.pdf

“Today accident victims are given the impression that they may be entitled to handsome rewards just for making a claim regardless of any personal responsibility – adding to a real sense that we live in an increasingly litigious society…Britain’s ‘compensation culture’ is fuelled by media stories about individuals receiving large compensation payouts for personal injury claims and by constant adverts in the media offering people non-refundable inducements and the promise of a handsome settlement if they claim.”

So said Lord Young of Graffham in his report ‘Common Sense – Common Safety’ following his review, commissioned by the Prime Minister, of the operation of health and safety laws and the growth of the perceived compensation culture in England & Wales. The Ministry of Justice quote examples of advertising by claims management businesses that promote inducements and which are currently permitted:

“We’ll pay you £200 immediately after our solicitors approve your claim.”
“As soon as we accept your claim, we promise to give you a £150 cash advance.”
“If the solicitor believes they can win the case for you and accepts it, we will award you £300 as an up-front payment.”
The Ministry intend to put a stop to all this by preventing claims management businesses from offering any kind of financial or similar benefit as an inducement for making a claim at any stage throughout their dealings with a client. The proposal is to amend Rule 6b of the Conduct of Authorised Persons Rules 2007 by deleting:

“6. In soliciting business through advertising, marketing and other means a
business must –
b) Not offer an immediate cash payment or a similar benefit as an inducement for making a claim.”

and inserting:

“6. In soliciting business through advertising, marketing and other means a
business must –
b) Not offer any cash payments or similar benefits as an inducement for making a claim.”
MoJ have launched a consultation exercise on this proposal and are seeking contributions by 10 February.
For the full text of Lord Young’s report “Common Sense – Common Safety” see:

http://www.number10.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/402906_CommonSense_acc.pdf

The MoJ consultation paper is at:

http://www.justice.gov.uk/consultations/docs/consultation-claims-man-reg-cp1910.pdf

In May the Coalition Programme for Government committed to a full review of sentencing and rehabilitation policy. That review has now produced a detailed green paper in which Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke seeks to tear up rules on fixed jail terms for offenders and restore the discretion of judges when sentencing murderers and other serious offenders.

In the foreword to the green paper, the Justice Secretary said that, despite a 50% increase in the budget for prisons and managing offenders in the last ten years almost half of all adult offenders released from custody reoffend within a year. “It is also not acceptable that 75% of offenders sentenced to youth custody reoffend within a year. If we do not prevent and tackle offending by young people then the young offenders of today will become the prolific career criminals of tomorrow.” He was reported in the ‘Guardian’ as saying that the strategy in David Blunkett’s 2003 Criminal Justice Act, which lays down sentencing ‘starting points’ of 15 years, 30 years and ‘life must mean life’ for specified types of murder, had proved “ill-thought out and overly prescriptive”.

He added: “We do not need to tell judges that murder is a serious offence. They are perfectly capable of setting a minimum term. We need a more sensible approach that is not too prescriptive in cases such as mercy killings or husband and wife killings. All murders are wicked and some are more wicked than others.” He therefore proposes to simplify the sentencing framework to make it more comprehensible to the public, at the same time enhancing judicial discretion and reforming the indeterminate sentence of Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP)

Other proposals in the green paper include making offenders work hard through the discipline of regular working hours in prison, rehabilitating offenders by getting them off drugs and benefits and into honest work, and increasing reparation to victims. Youth justice is to be improved to prevent and tackle offending by young people and stop them becoming the career criminals of tomorrow. Working with communities is also proposed to reduce crime, with local people playing a more central role in criminal justice with increasing transparency so that local communities are better able to hold services to account. The aim is to move the focus from the centre to local areas and create more opportunities for other providers to deliver services.

It is reckoned that the sentencing reforms will generate savings of £210m a year as a result of needing 6,000 fewer prison places than previously planned. The estimate is that the daily prison population in England and Wales by 2014 will be 3,000 lower than the record 85,500 it is today. The policy of encouraging defendants to plead guilty early by offering a discount of up to 50% instead of 34% would mean 3,400 fewer prison places needed in 2014/15. Reducing the remand time in prison for people accused of minor offences who would not get a prison sentence on conviction will save a further 1,300 places a year.

The consultations on proposals continue to 4 March 2011, and a response setting out plans will be produced in May 2011. The full text of ‘Breaking the cycle: effective punishment, rehabilitation and sentencing of offenders’ can be found at: http://www.justice.gov.uk/consultations/docs/breaking-the-cycle.pdf

And a merry Christmas and a happy New Year to you all.

On Tuesday MPs were told the results of the consultations about court closures. Public consultations were launched in June and produced 2552 responses. Decisions have been made to close 93 magistrates’ courts and 49 county courts, with ten magistrates’ courts and five county courts on the original list being retained.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice, Jonathan Djanogly, said that the court estate had not kept pace with the changing nature of society or with the demands modern society places on the justice system. An estate of over 500 court buildings is not now considered necessary, sustainable or a reasonable expense for the taxpayer. He said: “We are closing the worst courts in the estate – so we can concentrate our limited resources on the best ones. We are investing in the court estate with new buildings and with refurbishment of facilities.” He told MPs that the closures will not mean people losing access to local justice, and the provision of a better, more efficient and more modern justice system with good facilities and efficient courts would provide better local justice. He said: “Much has been said by Members about travel times to court. I can reassure the House that our plans will only very slightly reduce the percentage of the population able to access their nearest court by public transport in under an hour, from just under 90% to 85%.”

He estimated that the closures will save £41.5 million during the spending review period, excluding closure costs, and bring in £38.5 million in receipts from the sale of assets. He also announced that £22 million of capital will be reinvested to improve and modernise the courts to which work will be transferred. “The timetable is that the first courts will start to close on 1 April next year, and I can confirm that travel arrangements will be organised on a local basis. It is important to make the point that during these reorganisation proposals, we have been considering not just closures but how we can best reorganise the remaining Courts Service. That includes looking at how people can best get to their local courts.”

Responding to the announcement, shadow justice minister Andrew Slaughter said that courts are an important part of many communities. He added: “Claimants and defendants, witnesses and victims will all be inconvenienced and, in many cases, disconcerted by the loss of the local criminal or civil court, or both, only to find them replaced with anonymous court centres many miles away. Secondly, not everyone has the mobility or resources to travel long distances to find justice, especially in rural or remote areas.” He said: “The Minister said that some capital will be reinvested in specific projects, but there is no allowance for the extra pressures on remaining courts. Is that not proof that this is no more than a crude cost-cutting exercise with none of the benefits that he half-heartedly claims?” He quoted the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Justice Goldring, as noting that poor public transport meant it would be difficult for many people to arrive at court before 10am or return home after 4pm.

The full list of courts to be closed and those to be retained can be found at:

http://www.justice.gov.uk/news/newsrelease141210a.htm

The Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe (CCBE) is the representative organisation of around 1 million European lawyers through its member bars and law societies from 31 full member countries, and 11 further associate and observer countries.

The Council holds as first principle that access to justice is a fundamental right, an essential part and instrument of human rights, stipulated and protected by the European Convention on Human Rights. Article 6 of the ECHR provides for free access to justice for any individual, without regard to his or her social status or economic position. Legal aid is an essential tool in ensuring such access and the Council considers it the duty of states and governments to guarantee, organise and finance such legal-aid systems, which permit those with the least means to obtain access to justice.

A meeting of the CCBE in Brussels at the end of last month was addressed by Europe’s commissioner for justice, fundamental rights and citizenship, Viviane Reding. She said: “Justice is a right, but without the means to pay for it, it is denied.”
Toon Musschoot, the representative of the Belgian Minister of Justice, said: “Justice is a public service and, as such, it must receive particular political attention, both in terms of quality and in terms of means.” Council President José-María Davó-Fernández called on governments and EU institutions to pay more than lip-service to legal aid and to deliver on what they have committed to in fundamental rights instruments.

The Council made specific recommendations to achieve Union wide equality of legal aid provision. Firstly legal aid should be dealt with as a fundamental right that guarantees access to justice and allows real and effective defence, granted to all irrespective of residence or nationality. A specific EU budget line should be set up to ensure the development of a European legal aid scheme and to support national schemes within Member States. Legal aid coverage should be available for all legal areas, jurisdictions and alternative dispute resolutions, including the assistance of a lawyer at all stages of the proceedings, the assistance of experts, translation and interpretation, and other trial costs, with specific coverage for additional costs arising out of cross-border trials. Common minimum standards should be set for granting legal aid within the territory of the EU. And there should be support for specific training for lawyers who provide services in the framework of legal aid.

Writing in the ‘Law Gazette’, Jonathan Rayner examines the possibility that the EU pledge to set mandatory levels of civil and criminal legal aid for member states from 2013 could cut across government proposals for drastic UK savings. He quotes the Law Society’s head of legal aid policy Richard Miller as saying: “The UK government’s proposed cuts to legal aid will put us out of step with the rest of Europe, which is embarking on a programme of broadening access to publicly funded representation, not shrinking it. There is a real danger that the proposed cuts will make us dip below the minimum standards imposed by the EU. We will have to make a humiliating U-turn and drag ourselves back up to an acceptable level.”

Last week the Scottish Parliament voted against a reform in the law on assisted dying by defeating Margo MacDonald’s Bill. Coincidentally in the same week came news of the launch of an independent inquiry into assisted dying in the UK.

The Commission on Assisted Dying, chaired by the former lord chancellor Lord Falconer, will review evidence from experts and the public and consider what system, if any, should exist to allow people to be assisted to die and whether any changes in the law should be introduced. The commission has been set up with funding provided by the author Terry Pratchett, who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease, and businessman Bernard Lewis. On their behalf Dignity in Dying has made the arrangements for its formation, and Demos will act as Secretariat, providing administrative and research support.

At the launch Lord Falconer said: “The purpose of the commission is to hear evidence, consider all the relevant material and then to write and report, addressing the issue of whether there needs to be a change of approach to the issue of assisted dying, and making recommendations as to what, if any, changes of the law and practice should be implemented.” The former Metropolitan police commissioner Lord Blair, a member of the Commission, said: “The legal and ethical questions surrounding assisting the already terminally ill or those with catastrophic injuries to choose the manner and timing of their deaths make the investigation of such deaths very difficult for the police and the families involved but the issues go far wider and have implications for all of us and the kind of society we wish to create.” The Commission, which will run from 30 November 2010 to September 2011, with a report launched in October 2011, has issued a public call for evidence and will publish all evidence submitted on its website.

The new Commission has had a mixed reception. Sarah Wootton, Chief Executive of Dignity in Dying said: “It is important that serious minds from different disciplines and perspectives give thought to the mechanisms of an assisted dying law; one of the most important social issues of our time.  No one wants people to suffer unnecessarily and against their wishes at the end of their lives, and of equal importance, no one wants potentially vulnerable people to be at risk of harm under new legislation.” The head of public affairs for the British Humanist Association, Naomi Phillips, said: “Earlier this year the BHA joined calls for an independent inquiry into assisted dying, to examine the evidence relating to a change in the law, to help towards evidence-based policy making on this sensitive issue. We very much welcome the launch of a new Commission and inquiry into assisted dying.”

But Richard Hawkes, chief executive of the disability charity Scope, said: “We are deeply concerned that this pseudo ‘Commission’ will not reflect the concerns and fears of many disabled people” and questioned how independent it really can be. Baroness Campbell, a leading disabled campaigner against legalising assisted suicide, shared this concern, and added: “If the commissioners and funders are heavily weighted towards those who support assisted suicide then the manner with which they will look at the evidence will be seen through this prism.” She said that she was keen to discover whether the commission would involve “knowledgeable disabled people with the experience of severe impairment.” Dr Peter Saunders, Director of the pro-life campaign group Care not Killing, said: “The fact that an ‘independent’ commission on ‘assisted dying’ is to be chaired by a peer who just last year tried to relax the law on assisted suicide, is being funded by a celebrity novelist who is passionately pushing for a change in the law and was dreamt up by a leading campaign group will certainly raise eyebrows.”

Anyone wishing to obtain the consultation document and/or contribute to the debate is invited to contact the Commission at:
http://commissiononassisteddying.co.uk/

Last year this column had cause to comment several times on the bill that became the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 as it made its progress through Parliament. The Act received Royal Assent on 12 November 2009 after receiving, importantly in view of current events, cross-party support in both Houses of Parliament.

The creation of the post of Chief Coroner for England and Wales was at the heart of the Act. The role was designed to introduce national leadership of the coroner service, a crucial step in tackling unacceptable delays, inconsistent standards of service delivery and lack of accountability. The Act also contained measures to introduce a Medical Adviser to the Chief Coroner, deliver an improved service for bereaved people, including the introduction of a Charter for Bereaved People, and a system of appeals against coroners’ decisions. It also introduced national standards that coroners should meet, supported by training and guidance.

Then came the hammer blow. In a House of Commons Written Ministerial Statement on 14 October 2010, Justice Minister Jonathan Djanogly said: “However, after careful consideration, we have decided that in the current economic climate we cannot go ahead with plans to implement national leadership from a Chief Coroner, an appeals system, or a medical adviser. We have proposed that the abolition of the office of the Chief Coroner should be included in the Public Bodies Bill…and we are further considering the transfer of some of the Chief Coroner’s functions to suitable alternative bodies.” He went on to say: “We will continue to work collaboratively with coroners, local government and police authorities to deliver service improvements. We will also explore with voluntary sector organisations how we can work together better, so as to provide further support for people when they suffer a sudden or unexpected bereavement.” Peter Thornton QC, a Senior Circuit Judge at the Central Criminal Court, had been appointed to the post of Chief Coroner but had not yet taken up his duties. Now he won’t.

This announcement has provoked widespread dismay. The Royal British Legion had welcomed the original legislation, believing that the establishment of a Chief Coroner’s Office was critical to improving the working of the inquest system in relation to military inquests and provided necessary reforms to the inquest system, such as oversight and monitoring of investigations into Service deaths, compulsory training for coroners carrying out military inquests, and new rights of appeal for families. Reacting to the abolition, Chris Simpkins, Director General of the Legion, said: “We are concerned that the families of our fallen heroes will no longer have confidence that the circumstances of their loved ones’ deaths will be thoroughly investigated.” He added: “We believe this decision would be a deep betrayal of bereaved Service families.”

INQUEST, a charity which provides free legal advice to bereaved people, also condemned the announcement. Deborah Coles, Co-Director, said: “The dysfunctional and flawed inquest system is in need of complete reform. It is dishonest to suggest today’s proposals to tweak rules and regulations will deliver the fundamental change that is needed urgently.” She added: “Not only does this decision fail bereaved families but also society, which should have an inquest system fit for purpose in the 21st Century. The inquest is usually the only public forum in which contentious deaths such as accidents, deaths at work, deaths in custody or deaths of military personnel are subjected to public scrutiny. The current system is failing to perform its preventative function. Today’s announcement by the Coalition government will frustrate the opportunity to create a system which saves lives. This is a false economy if there ever was one.”