There is still no end in sight to the battle between the Government and the legal profession over the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders (LASPO) Bill. The fight has been mainly carried on as a rearguard action in the Lords, only to have the numerous amendments carried there overturned upon its return to the Commons.
Last week a ‘triumvirate’ of legal organisations issued a joint set of proposals that, they hope, will act as a compromise between the Bill as it stands and the aspirations of many lawyers to keep hold of at least some form of legal aid system in this country.
When it was proposed – and in the way it was proposed – the LASPO Bill struck a chord with many people. The idea was supposedly to cut back on the waste to the public purse of unnecessary litigation and rein back on the fat fees charged by lawyers and expert witnesses (general cheers from the public gallery!). What has really happened is that the aim of cutting legal aid for criminals seeking to portray themselves as victims has led to the withdrawing of access to justice for ordinary people looking for compensation for genuine wrongs. A number of them are people suffering from mesothelioma – an incurable cancer of the lung caused by exposure to asbestos fibres many years ago.
These things can backfire – Cleggie has this week faced the fury of his own party, who have finally clocked on to the fact that they (and all the disaffected Labour voters who actually put them in power) did not sign up for the wholesale dismantling of the NHS. It’s the same principal: they SAY they’re in favour of the doctors and nurses making the decisions, then take the spending power away from those very same doctors and nurses – the ones who work in the hospitals, the specialists – and hand it to the practice managers to give to the private sector. It’s no use pretending the actual GPs are going to have time for all the economics. You only have to take a look at the increasing number of doctors offering expert witness services, despite the cut in fees, as evidenced by the Expert Witness Directory on this site, to realise things are not well.
It’s all smoke and mirrors – it makes your eyes water and everything looks the wrong way round!
Talking of doctors and lawyers, there are only 2,500 dual-qualified doctor/lawyers in the whole of the US. That’s a very small number, considering every other American is either a lawyer or a doctor, to judge by modern TV output. All the more reason, then, to check very carefully when you have one on your books. They never do, though, which is how Susan Friery managed to continue falsely claiming she had a medical degree from Columbia University as well as her law degree. Or it could be because of her stunning good looks. Either way, get away with it she did, for nearly 19 years. It turns out she was a mortuary technician. Close enough, the way the NHS is going.
The same cannot be said of our own Caroline Kerr, who is the genuine article: a dual-qualified doctor/lawyer. She is also now qualified under the Law Society’s Personal Injury Accreditation Scheme. Her employers, Hart Brown, are quite rightly extolling her talents.
CHRIS STOKES