Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Debate between Lord Bach and Lord Carlile of Berriew

Wednesday 1st February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Carlile of Berriew]

There is certainly that possibility.

I wanted to add something else about hospitals. When I was a Member of another place, I often visited a celebrated orthopaedic hospital in the next county. At that time—I cannot say whether it is the case now—at the end of a long corridor in that hospital there was a solicitor’s office. That was an unusual arrangement but one that no doubt brought some rent to the hospital. I have real reservations about that kind of arrangement. I am all in favour of general advertising and it is right that solicitors’ firms should be able to advertise in local and national newspapers so that people are aware of the kinds of specialist services that they provide. But we must take this opportunity to reject anything that smacks of ambulance-chasing.

[Lord Bach]

My Lords, the Committee seems to be at one in its attitude towards the amendments, and I include those of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, as well as those in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, who has spoken so persuasively. I hope that we are as one and that that includes the Minister. The amendments really cannot be argued against.

I intend to be pretty short in what I have to say as there is other business waiting to get on and we have had a long session today, but I have to say to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, who talked about the Jackson report, that it is wrong to ally the Jackson conclusions with the conclusion that the Government have reached on his report. Lord Justice Jackson’s balance obviously appeals to the noble Lord and no doubt to many others, but it did not appeal to the Government, who have picked and mixed from Lord Justice Jackson’s findings.

In particular—I am afraid that I have used this example before and no doubt I will use it again—Lord Justice Jackson could not have been clearer that he did not believe that civil aid should be cut further, particularly with regard to clinical negligence. Indeed, when the Government decided that that was exactly what they were going to do, Lord Justice Jackson made his now quite famous Cambridge speech, which attacked—if that is the right word; a better word might be “criticised”—the Government for the stance that they have taken. So there is a difference between what Lord Justice Jackson said in his report and how the Government have responded. I am not saying that any other Government would have taken everything that Lord Justice Jackson said, although of course he saw it as a package. But I am saying that in this instance there is a difference.

On the question of claims management cases, I shall briefly mention that my right honourable friend Jack Straw, whose name has come up already in discussions today, gave the example in another place of a friend of his who, just like the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, was bombarded with texts and personal calls from claims management firms following a minor accident in which he suffered no injury. In that case, apparently, the details had been sold to the claims management firms by his own insurance company. I just wonder whether that might have been a possibility in the noble Lord’s case, although it may be that his insurance company did not know about the accident. Actually, there is no reason why it should have known as he suffered no injury and he was a back-seat passenger. It is interesting to consider exactly how the company found out in the time that it took for him to get back to Heathrow, but the point that he makes is clear.

Unsolicited spam, which we are talking about here too, is incredibly intrusive. Worse than that, it must be appalling to have a minor prang and find people trying to prey on you for, effectively, a quick buck. This is a real problem.

It is not as though whiplash does not exist; it does. There are genuine cases and it can cause real pain, discomfort and disruption in people’s lives. However, when ordinary people are encouraged or persuaded to exaggerate their symptoms, knowing that it is difficult for a doctor to diagnose the degree of impairment in a particular case, that is when the problem really shows itself. We support the amendments and hope that the Government can indicate today their intention to bring forward amendments on Report in these or similar terms.

Once again, I put to the Minister a question that—inadvertently, I am sure—he failed to answer on an earlier amendment but which is relevant now. Do the Government intend to move on Report the contents of the Private Member’s Bill that my right honourable friend Jack Straw moved in another place?

Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Debate between Lord Bach and Lord Carlile of Berriew

Tuesday 24th January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Carlile of Berriew]

I hesitate to interrupt my noble friend, but we are curtailing the debate and what he has said is very helpful. Can he assure the Committee that, in preparing an amendment, the Government have in mind the importance of the duty solicitor scheme and of there being a process of integrity in the police station, so that suspects do not choose to refuse to answer questions in interview because they are not properly represented? Can he also assure us that the Government will bear in mind the risks of evidence obtained in police stations being rejected by courts because of a failed and unfair procedure in those police stations? Those of us who started practice at the Bar would say to my noble friend that there were long periods in our early practice when we cross-examined police officers about what used to be called “verballing”. I am sure that my noble friend understands the expression. I hope that whatever amendment is introduced will ensure that we do not have to return to the bad old days before the enactment of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984.

[Lord Bach]

The Committee will be relived to hear that I will not be making the speech that I intended to make. I absolutely agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, has just said. I, too, started practising in those days. What happened, in effect, was that guilty men got off—that is the truth of the matter—because, after a while and some notorious cases, juries were not inclined to believe on the basis of confessions alone. The Conservative Government of the time deserve enormous credit for passing one of the greatest Acts of Parliament in criminal justice, the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, which has worked pretty well, as the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald, was about to say before he was so rudely interrupted by the Minister.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Carlile of Berriew]

My Lords, I shall start by making a few comments about my professional experience and then look at the broader picture. In recent years, the bulk of the publicly funded work I have done at the Bar has been in very high-cost cases, as they are called—very large fraud cases. I have seen a procession of those cases in which substantial funds have been restrained and not used for the costs of the case. Confiscation proceedings have followed in those cases where there have been convictions. In some cases, they have been long drawn-out. The funds have rarely been confiscated in full.

In one case I can think of, the confiscation proceedings lasted two or three years and, in the end, the defendant was returned £30 million, I believe, because the wrong procedures had been used by the prosecution. In another case from my experience in recent years, a defendant who was later sentenced to nine and a half years’ imprisonment and made the subject of a confiscation order in excess of £130 million remained, throughout the period leading up to and during the trial and for a considerable time after—as far as his family was concerned—living in one of the finest apartments in central London, worth many millions of pounds. Nobody was able to lay a hand on any of it. By the time the confiscation proceedings were over, such a miasma of transactions existed that that substantial property was immune from any confiscation. There are current cases, about which colleagues have told me—and without referring to any of my own current cases—in which a similar picture may emerge. This is an issue on which the Bar Council, of which I am an elected member, as I said in an earlier sitting, has given a great deal of attention. I should say that on this subject at least it might be worth listening to the Bar Council. Senior members of the Bar act for the prosecution and defence in every one of these cases, bar a very few.

The intention of the Bar Council in proposing amendments, believe it or not, was to save legal aid funding and to create a situation in which people’s own money, subject, of course, to proper controls, was used to pay for their own defences. It would create a situation in which a defendant, who at present may be able to relax while public money is expended on abuse of process hearings, dismissal hearings, disclosure hearings, and all kinds of satellite proceedings, costing him nothing, may have to control the spending on his defence. It seems a very sound principle that the defendant who has resources should have some control over the spending on his or her defence.

Furthermore, restraint orders are on the increase, as the General Council of the Bar has pointed out to the Government. In 2009-10 the CPS made 1,549 restraint orders. That had increased to 1,641 by 2010-11. The estimated value of assets under restraint in 2010-11 was as much as £744 million, every penny of it being money available to be spent on criminal defence but not so spent. Any legal advice and representation in those cases is charged to the legal aid fund. These are cases which, on the latest available figures—from 2005—caused the expenditure of more than 50 per cent of Crown Court legal aid, although the cases amounted to only 1 per cent of the cases. The average cost per case for those cases in 2003-04 was £2.6 million, with the average trial lasting 67 working days. These are very big cases, which are being unnecessarily funded from public funds.

A defendant accused of serious fraud may, for example, have £1 million on deposit in a bank account, frozen under a restraint order. An order may be made for the funds to be unfrozen to pay his children’s private school fees. I was involved in a case recently in which exactly that happened. The defendant was unable to fund his own defence but he was able to fund his son’s school fees at one of the best public schools. My noble friend Lord Thomas of Gresford has contrasted the criminal situation with the civil courts. He described the reaction of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, to what he had told her and she certainly represented the civil court position correctly.

The Government’s response to the Bar Council’s proposal, and that of some of your Lordships, has been to argue, at least so far, that the sums restrained need to be preserved in the hope that, at some point further down the line, a confiscation order may be obtained on conviction. In November 2011 several national newspapers ran stories on revelations that at the end of March 2011, the sum of money outstanding in purported confiscation orders was £1.26—wait for it—billion. That made the front page of the Sun. I suggest to my noble friend that the hope that some money might be recovered is no substitute for meeting the up-front costs of the defence via the legal aid bill.

When confiscation orders are made, they are not used to fund legal aid but are channelled to other government departments; they go into the general Exchequer pot. This does not reflect the strain placed on the legal aid budget by high-cost fraud cases. Therefore, this seems to be—if I may be forgiven a vernacular phrase—a complete no-brainer. It is a way of saving the legal aid fund—to use another such phrase—shedloads of money. I say to my noble friend: let us wake up and do it.

[Lord Bach]

My Lords, I must say, having heard those two speeches, that I would not want to be the Minister tonight. Having heard what was said and having read about this from the Bar Council and the Law Society, which both put in effective papers, I will say at once that I regret that in my time as Minister we did not spot this, because there is no question that we should have acted on it. The noble Lord can make as much fun of me as he likes, but it is no answer to the points that have been made. There are times during the passage of Bills when a Government behave totally irrationally. I speak from experience. There are all kinds of examples—not that many in my case, but some. I know that the noble Lord, Lord McNally—

[Lord Carlile of Berriew]

Perhaps I could ask the noble Lord not to be so modest.

[Lord Bach]

I will do my best.

Terrorist Asset-Freezing etc. Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Bach and Lord Carlile of Berriew

Monday 25th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Carlile of Berriew]

My Lords, I join in asking my noble friend to consider very carefully the proposal put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick. I agree entirely with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, that there is no logic to saying that different principles will apply to asset-freezing cases from those that apply to control order cases.

[Lord Bach]

My Lords, I was very well assisted by the report that the committee brought out, and by the paragraphs referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Lester. The Government of whom I was a member set up the special advocate system in order to deal with what was and remains a very difficult issue around terrorism. However, we recognise that there are difficulties with it that any Government will have to deal with in due course. On balance, we do not think that the Bill is the appropriate vehicle to make sweeping changes of principle on the issue of the special advocate system.

I have a couple of questions that I should like to ask. This may be a short debate, but the issue may be one of the most important that we debate this afternoon. As my noble friend Lord Davies of Oldham said in an earlier debate, this matter calls into question the balance between civil liberties and security—it is right at the heart of that argument. Any Government of whatever complexion will have to deal with this, day by day and month by month. I take the point made by the three noble Lords who have spoken already that it is difficult to understand why the Government argued in Committee that the regime for control orders is not the same as that for asset freezing, particularly as it relates to the special advocate system. In the end, it seems that the same rules will have to apply, whatever they are. I hope that the Minister will deal with that point when he sums up the debate. What are the differences between the two regimes, especially in relation to the special advocate system?

I am aware that there is to be a Green Paper on this vexed issue in 2011. Will the Minister confirm that that will not be December 2011, as presently planned, but more like the middle of the year? I also understand that there is likely to be a case, perhaps on point, that the Supreme Court will be asked to decide, and which will be heard very early next year, with the judgment expected in good time for the Green Paper.

Those are my questions. Despite what I have said, I hope that the noble Lord will not press the amendment. It needs some careful consideration. However, the points that have been made are powerful and must be dealt with at some stage.