Criminal Law Solicitors’ Association Press Release IssuedFriday, 07 March 2014 Police Corruption and the destruction of Legal aid Why do Politicians and some sections of the media ignore the obvious mismatch between what they say about police abuses in the tragic Lawrence and Hillsborough cases and even the way the police treated a cabinet minister Mr Andrew Mitchell, with how the Government is presently engaged in systematic dismantling of the very mechanism stet up to protect the public from police abuse. Speaking in the House of Commons, Mrs May said: Policing stands damaged today. Trust and confidence in the Metropolitan Police and policing more generally is vital. Why then attack the legal aid lawyers who are ‘watchers on the wall’ as the first line of defence against police abuse? They are crippling their ability to hold the police and Crown to account under the safeguards set up by the Police and Criminal evidence act 1984 which enabled the public to have access to legal advice when in police custody where in the past innocent people had been induced to falsely confess as in the Birmingham six and Guildford four cases (and many other routine but shocking false confession criminal cases such as the Maxwell Confait case). The extraordinary power of the Government propaganda machine seems to have convinced many politicians and some media that this country spends more on legal aid than all other countries when this is blatantly untrue as this, according to the NAO, ignores the actual evidence that the expenditure in the UK was average in comparison other countries which spend more on Judges and civil servants investigating and developing the defence case and in any case due to the dramatic collapse in volume the spend is now falling. Solicitor legal aid firms have an average 5% profit margin so any cut in income more than 5% leads to ruin. The Government intends to cut 17.5% overall but for many police station areas the real cut is over 30%! In Swale, Kent for example the cut is an astonishing 42%. This will lead to bankruptcy. Today thousands of solicitor and Barristers are staying away from courts and demonstrating across the country. This they do with extreme reluctance but temporary inconvenience to clients and courts is nothing compared to the devastation and long term harm that Mr Grayling will cause to this nation by removing the people through economic vandalism who protect us all from the worst of police abuse. The hypocrisy of the Government in condemning police abuse whilst they dismantle the very legal aid safeguards against such abuse is simply appalling and frankly a rather nauseating response to tragic miscarriages of Justice cases.
Posted on: Fri, 07 Mar 2014 08:41:25 +0000
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