There’s a debate on criminal legal aid reforms and price competitive tendering taking place in Westminster Hall on 4 September 2013. The debate has been secured by Labour’s Karl Turner MP and will centre on the Ministry of Justice’s proposed changes to criminal legal aid contained in the consultation paper “Transforming Legal Aid: Delivering a More Credible and Efficient System”.
Ahead of the debate, Young Legal Aid Lawyers (YLAL), a 2,000-strong group of lawyers committed to practising in areas of law traditionally funded by legal aid, has very helpfully prepared a briefing note (PDF) ahead of this debate.
The briefing note is not very complementary about the MoJ’s experience with the outsourcing of interpreting services for courts and tribunals to ALS/Capita T&I (posts passim) and makes the following point about this ongoing fiasco.
Short term “savings” cannot justify the long term cost to the justice system, one which Mr Grayling is correct to describe as “a justice system of which we can be proud and which justly deserves its world-wide recognition for impartiality and fairness”. We should learn the lessons of outsourcing to the lowest bidder and how this leads to the state picking up the tab when providers fail to deliver, for example, the contracting of interpreting services for the court and tribunal system.
What’s the betting Justice Minister ‘Failing’ Grayling – the first non-lawyer to be appointed Lord Chancellor since 1673 – completely ignores all advice and pushes ahead regardless with his disastrous plans?
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