From the chairman of the Criminal Bar Association (source: https://criminalbar/latest-updates/news/q/date/2013/06/10/monday-message-10-06-13/): Friday 7th June 2013 Dear Member of Parliament, Re: Current PCT [Price-competitive tendering] proposals I write to you as Chairman of the Criminal Bar of England and Wales. I do so as the Minister for Justice, Mr Grayling has refused to see or even speak with me and in consequence is not the recipient of my ideas for reform. Mr Grayling claims that the UK legal aid bill is “far more than in any other comparable or developed nation”. This is simple not the case as statistics produced by the National Audit Office proved last year. Please see graph [https://criminalbar/files/download.php?m=documents&f=130607115220-Internationalcomparisonsgraph.pdf]. He has claimed in the press that a spending cut of £220 million pounds in the Legal Aid budget is required to shore up the National Health Service budget. As you all must be aware that sum of money would not support the National Health Service for more than a few hours. The tragedy of these proposals, which will damage the English legal system and undermine our independent judiciary, is that they are fiscally entirely unnecessary. Currently, the waste within the system caused by delay costs the tax payer in the region of £100 million. The CPS [Crown Prosecution Service] currently cost the country £100 million more than when they had no employed advocates. Cutting out the waste in the system will provide you with the savings required. However, the story is worse still. Three simple measures would produce the entirety of an annual legal budget and more. · A compulsory insurance scheme for the banking industry to defray the cost of fraud prosecutions. · Use of restrained assets as a set off against legal aid. · Returning the administration of the Magistrates courts to the Magistrates Association and the magistrates themselves as was the position before 2005 These three measures alone would produce savings of over £2 billion annually There are smaller, yet significant measures which could reduce costs still further: · Closing the Criminal Defence Service. · Returning the responsibility of prosecuting shop lifting cases to the retail trade. · Placing the cost and responsibility of prosecuting copyright infringements on the industry as opposed to the Trading and Standards Office. The final measure which would save many £millions, possibly £billions more, would be to re-examine the procurement methods of the MOJ [Ministry of Justice] altogether. The history of negotiating contracts with the private sector is astonishing. I probably do not have to rehearse the Capita disaster. However the contracts for electronic tagging translate to a cost per tag of £1000 unit. 10 times more than in the USA. The cost of delivering a prisoner to court translates to £800 per delivery. Both these costs are to be compared with the daily cost of solicitor, which is £500. Even more troubling is why such disadvantageous contracts were negotiated in the first place. David Griffith’s who recently was responsible for MOJ procurement in respect of probation services, has left the department and within 6 months is working as head of probation services for G4S [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G4S]. The public can not have confidence in such a procurement exercise, nor should they. In short there are huge savings which can be made elsewhere and within the MoJ itself. These the Ministry chooses to overlook, preferring to protect its vested interests at the expense of frontline services, something not entirely unknown in Whitehall. I have a real interest in designing a system which saves money and yet delivers a proper service. If we were given the opportunity to explain these ideas you would find yourselves in a far stronger position to deliver the savings you seek and a good deal more. Yours sincerely Michael Turner QC Chairman of the Criminal Bar Association
Posted on: Mon, 10 Jun 2013 12:45:38 +0000
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