Since earlier this year, the Government's quango, the Legal Services Commission, has been locked in a duel with The Law Society concerning the new contract it was seeking to impose upon solicitors who were still prepared to provide legal aid services to the public.  In essence, this new contract (the "unified contract") was a very flexible affair, in that the Legal Services Commission retained to itself a right to vary material terms of the contract during its currency.  Most reasonable minded people would query the fairness of such a one-sided bargain, but not the Government.  The dispute was heard by the Court of Appeal in mid October of this year.  The judgment of the Court was published this morning.

“The Court of Appeal has given judgment today in the appeals by both the Law Society and the Legal Services Commission against the earlier judgment on the LSC's Unified Contract and its terms relating to how the contract can be amended. We are, of course, giving the judgment careful consideration, but we welcome the clarification it provides. This now enables us to move forward with greater certainty”

says this morning’s Press Release from the Legal Services Commission.  The Law Society’s take on the judgement is slightly different (with my emphasis.)

“The Court of Appeal has this morning wholly upheld the Society's challenge to the LSC's unified contract, also rejecting the LSC's appeal. The commission has now lost the power unilaterally to amend the unified contract in the extreme way it proposed. The judgment, handed down by Lord Justice Lawrence Collins on behalf of the court, is a decision 100 per cent in favour of the Society, and the solicitors it represents. The LSC was refused permission to appeal to the House of Lords and ordered to pay Law Society’s costs.

 

Delivering their judgment, the court repeatedly emphasised that this case was extreme: 'The power to amend is better characterised as a power to rewrite the contract' [para 86 of the judgment]. The court comprised Lord Justice Wall, Lord Justice Lawrence Collins, and the Lord Chief Justice, (Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers.)”

There can be no doubt that the Government will plough on with its ill conceived “reform” of Legal Aid, regardless.  It knows that it is right and it just doesn’t care.  It would be wiser for the Government to take stock and listen to positive, informed criticism of its proposals rather than dismissing outright any opposition as being merely “vested interests”.  Of course, it will do no such thing.

It is a guiding principle in English Law that “Justice must not only be done, but must be seen to be done.”

R v. Sussex Justices, ex parte McCarthy [1924] 1 KB 256 at 259

Since 1997, the Government has honoured this general principle frequently only in the breach when arranging or overseeing an inquiry or review following some ministerial or departmental debacle, or alleged misconduct or lack of competence on the part of someone holding an appointed Office.  The investigation into the HM Revenue & Customs lost data fiasco is to be conducted by the Chairman of PriceWaterhouseCoopers, a company that undertakes sizeable projects on behalf of the Government.  Yesterday, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair survived a no confidence vote by the Metropolitan Police Authority, a body that “exists to make sure that London's police are accountable for the services they provide to people in the capital”.  As it happens, it is a body where Government appointees outnumber the elected members.

Such inquiries might well be conducted with the utmost integrity and vigour, nevertheless the public's perception is just as likely to be that there has been a “fix”.  Any positive outcome for the Government or its placeman convinces few but more significantly does nothing to clear the air or settle the issue.  It is a simple matter for the Government to avoid such misperceptions by appointing patently independent inquiries or regulatory bodies, but it can do this only if it is fearless of the truth being outed.

The Government lost no time in responding to criticism by no less than five former Chiefs of Defence Staff concerning its under-resourcing of our Armed Forces.

Defence Minister Derek Twigg is reported to have said that there had been “the longest period of growth in defence spending since the 1980s.” However, the charge as I understood it was that, to quote Admiral Lord Boyce,

“The money that defence was given for its budget is not sufficient to meet the level of activities that the armed forces are currently engaged in.”

The crucial problem for this discredited Labour Government is that when not funding one of its pet projects (when bucket loads of taxpayers’ money is made available) it always expects to receive first class services at cut-down prices.  That the Labour Government should adopt this attitude concerning our Armed Forces who are fighting two wars to which they were committed by the very same Government, as well as peace-keeping elsewhere, is an utter disgrace.

Words fail me completely.

Reports James Kirkup in The Daily Telegraph today,

“Peter Hain, the Work and Pensions Secretary, yesterday published plans to change the way people qualify for benefits on the grounds of being medically unable to work.  The Work Capability Assessment will be introduced in October 2008. It will assess what work new claimants are fit to do, replacing current tests that focus on what a claimant cannot do.  The Department of Work and Pensions said the new test would make it harder to qualify for incapacity benefit in the future.  Around 40,000 people apply each year for IB, which can be worth as much as £78 per week, and around half are expected the fail the new test when it is introduced…but the [Department of Work and Pensions] also admitted that the new test will only apply to new claimants, and will not affect the 2.7 million people currently claiming incapacity benefit.”

Oh dear, yet another example of Government mispresentation and misinformation.  When challenged by Chris Grayling, the Conservative Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, Mr Hain retorted that,

“the scale of the IB roll was a legacy of the last Conservative government [which] preferred to put people on incapacity benefit where they were off the unemployment total instead of trying to find them a job because there weren't any jobs then.”

Lest anyone overlooks the fact, the last Conservative Government expired almost eleven years ago. Thus if the “last Conservative Government preferred to put people on incapacity benefit…” then successive Labour administrations did nothing to reverse the situation but in fact added hundreds of thousands more people to that particular benefits bill.  Those of a cynical disposition might conclude that Labour was more than very happy to retain the status quo for the same reason imputed to the Conservatives.  The more awkward point for Labour to explain is why the number of such claimants increased significantly during their watch.

This Government has been caught out being less than frank or not saying what it really meant on too many occasions now.  Even past instances when its word was accepted, are being revisited and different conclusions drawn.  The public no longer accepts uncritically what it is told by Labour.  The public’s irritation at being fed with endless misinformation is turning gradually to anger.  Fortuitously for the Opposition, most senior Labour politicians don’t seem to be able to change habits of a political lifetime.

Bejesus.  Forget Identity Cards. These are the guys who want our DNA data to be stored on a national data base.

UK's families put on fraud alert

Data on 25m benefits claimants lost in post

Personal details of every child in UK lost by Revenue & Customs

“The job of the security services is to propose to government what they think will make Britain as safe as the grave. The job of politicians is to put such proposals to the test of proportionality, value for money and civil liberty. It is now moot whether Britain’s politicians are up to that job.”

Simon Jenkins

“Meanwhile, terrorists continue to rely not on the bang but on the fear of the bang. Terrorists desperately want politics and the media to notice them. By showing we are so rattled that we will give up our cherished liberties, we are giving those with murderous jihadi dreams a gift. By pandering to the toxic fantasies of suburban wannabe warriors, by dignifying their delusions of global struggle with horrified headlines and constitutional change, we are debasing what we stand for.”

Rachel North

Says Jeff Randall in today’s The Daily Telegraph,

“The Rock’s “rescue”, presented initially as a cocktail of commercially priced loans from the Bank and some warm words from the Treasury, is morphing seamlessly into open-ended state aid with diminishing prospects for recompense. The sum involved has surpassed five per cent of the Chancellor's annual budget - and the drain continues. In effect, [Alistair] Darling failed to distinguish between protecting depositors' funds (the right thing to do) and bailing out shareholders and staff (a big mistake).  [Gordon] Brown is trying desperately to steer clear of the crime scene, while maintaining the fiction that taxpayers' interests are protected. He told the Commons on Wednesday that official loans are secured against the Rock's assets.”

However, it would appear that by 2010 the Northern Rock might still owe the Bank of England £6 billion.

The Northern Rock was a Labour sympathetic Bank based in a Labour heartland.  The Labour Government has broadcast a powerful message to all those who enjoy its largess.  A potential loss to the taxpayer of £6 billion? – for Labour, cheap at twice the cost.

The answer to the West Lothian Question is, you’ve guessed it, regional assemblies for England.

According to Professor Robert Hazell, Professor of Government and the Constitution at University College, London, “English votes for English laws” at Westminster seemed logical and fair, but there could be "huge technical difficulties in identifying what counted as an English law".  According to the Professor, another solution would involve handing powers to elected regional assemblies, which though overwhelmingly rejected by voters in the North-East, “should not be written-off forever.”

The BBC reports that whilst Professor Hazell agrees that the “closest to a complete answer” would be a separate English Parliament, he notes that there are not any mainstream politicians in favour of such an idea and considers there is no significant public support for it.

I shall leave aside any argument about whether there are any really insurmountable difficulties in practice about the implementation of the Conservatives’ preferred option of “English votes for English laws”¹.  I am able to predict with absolute certainty that if there is any fudge of this issue, for instance by way of a continuance of the denial that there is any real democratic deficit as between England and those parts of the United Kingdom that enjoy devolved government (the view of the Labour Government) or the imposition of regional assemblies (the current preference of the Labour Government) there will arise an irresistible, overwhelming support for an English Parliament.

Scotland 'still has too many MPs'

_______________________________

1 I cannot see any great difficulties and would be pleased to hear of examples as to what they might be.

“[Sir Ian] Blair clings to office because he has the support of both Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, and that walkin’, talkin’ “systemic failure” Ken Livingstone, the London mayor. And this is because he is the most politicised copper this country has ever seen; he owes his survival to his willingness to follow every politically correct obsession dreamt up by the Labour party: show him a “hate crime” and he’ll be there with his truncheon. Show him a burglary, however, and he’ll explain to you why it didn’t happen, or wasn't important, or is a vanishingly rare occurrence. He has also adopted new Labour’s technique of spewing out disinformation to the media.”

Rod Liddle

Sir Ian Blair receives the support of the Prime Minister

Sir Ian Blair is cleared

“We are a talkative and opinionated society and not always good at listening.  The discourse of politics, media and academe is essentially adversarial.  While this is undoubtedly important in a democracy, it can mean that people are not really receptive to an opposing viewpoint.  It is often apparent during a parliamentary debate or a panel discussion on television that while their opponents are speaking, participants are simply thinking up the next clever thing that they are going to say.”

Karen Armstrong, The Bible - The Biography