Lawyers paid PR firm to attack legal aid income

tim — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 16:20:25 +0000

At first sight, the recent media coverage about how new criminal justice reforms were allowing yobs to walk away from their crimes with a fine seemed only to be a reflection of public concerns.

The last Scottish Executive’s summary justice proposals, which came into force on March 10, were intended to speed up the system by keeping low-level criminals out of court and instead punishing them with either a fine or a warning.

In practice, “reform” was allowing people charged with assault to get away with a £150 fine, a sanction which was bizarrely applied to two women who attacked a nurse with a glass.

The result was a plethora of stories about “soft touch” Scotland and a barrage of criticism for the SNP government and prosecutors.

However, the Sunday Herald can reveal that much of the coverage was being driven by the Glasgow Bar Association (GBA) – a body representing the legal profession in the west of Scotland – which had hired a PR firm, McGarvie Morrison Media (MMM), to attack a key plank of the criminal justice system.

A consequence of the fiscal fines system, otherwise known as “diversion”, is that people charged with low-level crimes need not get bogged down in drawn-out court cases, thus depriving lawyers of legal aid.

Statistics from the Scottish Legal Aid Board show how lucrative state cash is for law firms. In 2006-2007, firms received £122 million for work done.

In other words, Glasgow’s legal establishment has been bankrolling a secret campaign to attack a set of reforms that will reduce the subsidies for wealthy law firms.

A leaked letter from last month between two solicitors makes clear MMM’s remit to mount a campaign against a set of reforms that had widespread cross-party support at the time.

“As you will probably know, they GBA have employed media consultants who have basically commenced a campaign through the Scottish Sun regarding diversion being used in serious cases rather than prosecuting somebody in court. The consultants are looking for any cases where it would appear that diversion has been used for something more serious than it should have.”

The letter continued: “Apparently the consultants are offering discretion and confidentiality and if any member has such a case they want to report to them they should send an email to john@mmm.pr.This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it “

The email address was for John Morrison, a founding director of MMM, which for the last two months has placed stories and trawled for negative diversion cases on behalf of their well-paid clients.

MMM, a Labour-supporting PR firm which donated £2000 to the party last year, lists a number of its clients on its website, but not the GBA.

But the blurb on its site states: “We deploy our experiences, skills and contacts to ensure that MMM campaigns make headlines and achieve results.”

The firm’s “discreet” strategy appears to have had one central plank: find bad examples of diversion and hand them to the media. It is a tactic that has certainly made headlines.

A raft of articles in broadsheet and tabloid newspapers have focused on individual cases of diversion, which were accompanied by either statistics or obliging quotes from a member of the GBA.

In one July report, published in The Sun, GBA past president Gerard Considine was quoted on the summary reforms: “I can’t see how this is about protecting the public from harm.”

In an earlier article in the same newspaper, Considine had another criticism of the system: “This is undermining the credibility of the justice system.”

Sara Matheson, the current president of the GBA, also hit out at the new regime. “This is a matter that should concern the general public,” she said.

Another piece, in The Sunday Times in June, reported how lawyers had “compiled a dossier” of cases in which serious crimes had been “downgraded” to free up court time.

This time, Edinburgh Bar Association president Kenneth Cloggie popped up with a quote: “It seems to be a bit of a lottery depending on the fiscal you get on the day.”

Cloggie’s email address was also listed in a fax obtained by the Sunday Herald as the contact for suitable examples of “direct measures”, such as fiscal fines, for use in a BBC programme on the matter.

Morrison said of MMM’s work: “Our company was recently appointed as short-term media advisers to the Glasgow Bar Association. There has been intense press and media interest in issues linked to summary justice reform and the use of fiscal fines. The GBA asked MMM to provide advice on how best to deal with inquiries from journalists and to help promote their point of view.”

He added: “The GBA have consistently argued that fiscal fines are not in the public interest, because some offenders who are guilty of violent and other serious offences are not being convicted through the courts and escape without a criminal record.”

Matheson defended the GBA hiring the PR firm. “The overwhelming motivation was to have some assistance with the press. They are helping us with all aspects of getting our message across,” she said. “Our members are gravely concerned about diversion and the effect it will have on the public.”

On whether the legal aid aspect of the summary justice reforms was part of the reason for hiring MMM, she said: “That’s certainly one aspect, but it’s not the only driving force.”

Justice secretary Kenny MacAskill MSP, who concedes that there are problems with the system, said: “I regret that the Glasgow Bar Association have paid lobbyists in order to trawl around for mistakes. It doesn’t serve them well.

“We want to reward lawyers for doing their job, not have people playing the system. Unfortunately, it does seem that a small minority of lawyers want to persist in milking the system.

“The two-month media blitz on the summary justice reforms, far from being a bottom-up process reflecting public anxiety, appears to have been a campaign manufactured by a PR company and paid for by a legal establishment that has a financial interest in resisting the new system.”

Self Defence

Ellie Keen — Sat, 24 May 2008 12:05:26 +0000

As students are denied legal aid for imprisonable offences

Reckon students are all bone-idle skiving filth who haven’t even got the wit to tie their shoelaces properly? Well then you’d be in disagreement with Judge Parsons (of Brighton magistrates). He’s just refused legal aid to seven students up in front of his bench for ‘aggravated tresspass’ (punishable by up to three months inside) on the grounds that “they are intelligent enough to represent themselves”.

The seven are accused of D-locking and supergluing to EDO MBM’s infamous factory of death in Brighton on the fifth anniversary of the Iraq War. Despite the fact that the student protesters are all in their first year and none are studying law, the judge is perhaps paying the defendants a compliment in considering them equal in legal know-how to a barrister (who study for around six years before they are considered ready to defend their clients). They are under stringent bail conditions to stay away from EDO MBMs factories.

Of course legal aid is gradually being whittled away for all of us (See SchNEWS 618). But the decision to cut off the supply this time is interesting in the light of how many cases against EDO protestors have ended in failure for the authorities (See SchNEWS 535). Campaign spokesman Andy Beckett told SchNEWS

By robbing these defendants of their rights to adequate legal representation, the authorities are launching an attack on our campaign as a whole. They’ve been forced to drop cases when it looked as if evidence of police collusion with the factory owners was about to emerge. But that evidence only emerged after careful examination by trained solicitors. The whole thing smacks of a desperate attempt to secure convictions against supporters of our successful campaign.

The National Union of Students is up in arms at this abuse of the student’s status to trick them out of their right to legal representation. In the words of the USSU education officer;

That students are being denied legal assistance simply because they are students is disgraceful. A fair and public trial is a human right. When students take on international arms dealers without legal representation it is laughable to claim that the proceedings could be fair or equal. At a time when civil liberties are under attack nationally, this court is specifically targeting students as an isolated and disempowered group.

To support the defendants, fight for civil liberties and take action against the arms trade join Smash EDO at the Carnival Against The Arms Trade…

legal aid | ukwatch.net

Lawyers paid PR firm to attack legal aid income

Self Defence

As students are denied legal aid for imprisonable offences