On coalitions, courts, and the future after Legal Aid
Here's a nasty bit of politics that some of you have heard about, and some have you have not: the 'reform' of legal aid.
I guess that most of you know that the NHS is gone - England now has a tax-funded single-payer system using competing private-sector providers who can now underbid and close down the existing directly-funded service trusts - but the existence of a 'National Justice Service' has mostly been hiding behind the phrase 'legal aid', with very few of us aware of how comprehensive and how *necessary* open access to the experts in the legal system used to be.
'Used to be': not 'is'. I know damn' well that I cannot afford to defend a legal case that would require an expert witness (forged signatures, contaminated DNA, doctored video), let alone a libel suit, and you would do well to consider your position, too. A wealthy individual or company can do any damn' thing it pleases to you, providing it's not so blatant that it becomes one of the tiny, tiny number of cases that are taken up 'pro bono'.
Here's a quote from the Guardian article I've linked to at the end of this post:
…The coalition has already ensured that redress is impossible in many areas of acute concern to the supposedly litigious lower orders. It has put the poor beyond the law by removing legal aid for employment, housing, family law, debt, social welfare and medical negligence.
The patient whose health is wrecked by the NHS, the disabled man falsely classified as fit for work and the tenant the council was prepared to leave in a flat unfit for habitation can no longer bother the authorities with legal actions.
The Law Society estimates that 650,000 cases a year won't qualify for legal aid in future.
Without money, most people will not go to court and those with power to harm or control them will be emboldened…
There are some dangerous omissions in that article
I've alluded to the one that affects most of us here, reading my Blog: the law is as expensive as surgery, and you are not as rich as you think. Libel litigation is like bone cancer and you'd need millions to pay for treating that; a minor case, just like a minor operation, runs at two to five grand - half that if it's under local anaesthetic - and the major difference is that you *sometimes* get the costs back if you win a court case.
I've had to pay out of pocket for health care, privately-insured or not; and legal insurance is way more restrictive than a private health plan.
You do all have insurance for this, right? Pro tip: join a union. I recommend that you join a union clandestinely if you work in a bank - let alone the Construction industry! - and check up on their data security before you do so, whatever industry you're in.
The next missing point is: what will happen to the professionals involved? They will go away and do something else. Some of them will end up as junior managers and clerks, some will end up tossing burgers, a lucky few will find remunerative commercial legal work. In five years' time, all of them will have lives and careers, and no relevant skills worth reviving.
All of them will soon have mortgages (or rent) and other commitments that they could not possibly support on what they're earning now. Even the ones who end up tossing burgers and cleaning the bogs in their more fortunate colleagues' swanky offices; legal aid work is *that* poorly paid.
In short: there is no going back. And don't ask what kind of people will be left in the deprofessionalised Big Providers after five years of firing people who fail their profitability target because they can't deceive or pressurise enough defendants into pleading guilty.
One of the most dangerous omissions is blaming 'The Coalition' - yes, it's the Conservatives' bill; but this policy and it's insidious propaganda effort is supported by the Labour Party. Like ATOS, the Browne review of higher education, private prisons, evicting disabled people from 'under-occupied' social housing, and subcontracting juvenile residential care to Group4 and Serco.
Voting in a Labour government will not reverse these 'reforms'.
Perhaps the authors of this article know exactly what they're saying when they use the phrase 'The Coalition'.
http://m.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/15/legal-aid-withdrawal-affront-justice
Meanwhile, think a little harder about what the loss of access to the courts might mean to people who do not read blogs, the Guardian, or numbers with a comma in them in a bank statement. Exploited people. If death is the poor man's doctor, who is their solicitor?
Let us offer up the pious hope that widespread and unpunished illegality against the poor does not make Mr. Molotov the poor man's barrister when justice and the courts are 'open to all' like the restaurant at the Savoy.
This is a copy of my post here, on Dreamwidth, which has
comments. OpenID will allow you to comment there from your LiveJournal session: contact me if you have problems.
I guess that most of you know that the NHS is gone - England now has a tax-funded single-payer system using competing private-sector providers who can now underbid and close down the existing directly-funded service trusts - but the existence of a 'National Justice Service' has mostly been hiding behind the phrase 'legal aid', with very few of us aware of how comprehensive and how *necessary* open access to the experts in the legal system used to be.
'Used to be': not 'is'. I know damn' well that I cannot afford to defend a legal case that would require an expert witness (forged signatures, contaminated DNA, doctored video), let alone a libel suit, and you would do well to consider your position, too. A wealthy individual or company can do any damn' thing it pleases to you, providing it's not so blatant that it becomes one of the tiny, tiny number of cases that are taken up 'pro bono'.
Here's a quote from the Guardian article I've linked to at the end of this post:
…The coalition has already ensured that redress is impossible in many areas of acute concern to the supposedly litigious lower orders. It has put the poor beyond the law by removing legal aid for employment, housing, family law, debt, social welfare and medical negligence.
The patient whose health is wrecked by the NHS, the disabled man falsely classified as fit for work and the tenant the council was prepared to leave in a flat unfit for habitation can no longer bother the authorities with legal actions.
The Law Society estimates that 650,000 cases a year won't qualify for legal aid in future.
Without money, most people will not go to court and those with power to harm or control them will be emboldened…
There are some dangerous omissions in that article
I've alluded to the one that affects most of us here, reading my Blog: the law is as expensive as surgery, and you are not as rich as you think. Libel litigation is like bone cancer and you'd need millions to pay for treating that; a minor case, just like a minor operation, runs at two to five grand - half that if it's under local anaesthetic - and the major difference is that you *sometimes* get the costs back if you win a court case.
I've had to pay out of pocket for health care, privately-insured or not; and legal insurance is way more restrictive than a private health plan.
You do all have insurance for this, right? Pro tip: join a union. I recommend that you join a union clandestinely if you work in a bank - let alone the Construction industry! - and check up on their data security before you do so, whatever industry you're in.
The next missing point is: what will happen to the professionals involved? They will go away and do something else. Some of them will end up as junior managers and clerks, some will end up tossing burgers, a lucky few will find remunerative commercial legal work. In five years' time, all of them will have lives and careers, and no relevant skills worth reviving.
All of them will soon have mortgages (or rent) and other commitments that they could not possibly support on what they're earning now. Even the ones who end up tossing burgers and cleaning the bogs in their more fortunate colleagues' swanky offices; legal aid work is *that* poorly paid.
In short: there is no going back. And don't ask what kind of people will be left in the deprofessionalised Big Providers after five years of firing people who fail their profitability target because they can't deceive or pressurise enough defendants into pleading guilty.
One of the most dangerous omissions is blaming 'The Coalition' - yes, it's the Conservatives' bill; but this policy and it's insidious propaganda effort is supported by the Labour Party. Like ATOS, the Browne review of higher education, private prisons, evicting disabled people from 'under-occupied' social housing, and subcontracting juvenile residential care to Group4 and Serco.
Voting in a Labour government will not reverse these 'reforms'.
Perhaps the authors of this article know exactly what they're saying when they use the phrase 'The Coalition'.
http://m.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/15/legal-aid-withdrawal-affront-justice
Meanwhile, think a little harder about what the loss of access to the courts might mean to people who do not read blogs, the Guardian, or numbers with a comma in them in a bank statement. Exploited people. If death is the poor man's doctor, who is their solicitor?
Let us offer up the pious hope that widespread and unpunished illegality against the poor does not make Mr. Molotov the poor man's barrister when justice and the courts are 'open to all' like the restaurant at the Savoy.
This is a copy of my post here, on Dreamwidth, which has
comments. OpenID will allow you to comment there from your LiveJournal session: contact me if you have problems.