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Crime lawyers JR success
A judicial review brought by criminal legal aid practitioners against the government’s plans to tender for police station and magistrates’ court work has been successful. The challenge was brought by the London Criminal Courts Solicitors’ Association and the Criminal Law Solicitors’ Association, with financial backing from the Law Society (see September 2014 Legal Action 4). In R (London Criminal Courts Solicitors’ Association and Criminal Law Solicitors’ Association) v Lord Chancellor [2014] EWHC 3020 (Admin), 19 September 2014, the court found that the Lord Chancellor had failed to consult properly on two reports about the likely impact of the proposed contract round.
The court quashed the government’s plan to reduce the number of duty contracts by roughly two-thirds, from around 1,600 to 525 contracts. According to the judgment, the government needed to consult on the two reports by accounting firms KPMG and Otterburn Legal Consulting,
Joy Merriam, a criminal practitioner and chairperson of the Law Society Access to Justice Committee, described the judgment as a ‘triumph of the individual against the might of the state’, and told LAG she believes that ‘the current proposals on criminal legal aid will devastate the supplier basis and affect access to justice for those accused by the state’.
Subsequently, on 24 September, the Ministry of Justice (MoJ’s) opened ‘Transforming legal aid: crime duty contracts’, an online-survey consultation on the reports undertaken by the accounting firms (including the MoJ's response to the analysis), the findings/assumptions used in their analysis, as well as the number of duty provider contracts that should be tendered in the imminent procurement exercise.
Also on 19 September, Rights of Women (RoW) was successful at the permission stage in a judicial review challenging the rules on qualifying for legal aid in domestic violence cases. Emma Scott, director of RoW, told LAG that it was ‘an important step in holding the government to account on their promise that family law legal aid would remain available for victims of domestic violence’. She believed that the current regulations are ‘simply too restrictive’ and do not reflect ‘the government’s own definition of domestic violence’.