When a Freudian slip resembles a self-inflicted banana skin

 a con, Coalition cuts, Jonathan Djanogly, Ken Clarke, Legal Aid, Lord Freud, welfare, Welfare State, www.soundoffforjustice.org  No Responses »
Jan 132012
 

Ekklesia describes the government’s performance in the Lords this week quite perfectly:

Lord Freud, for the government, is generally agreed to have put in a dismal performance – getting his sums confused, admitting lack of evidence on Work Capability Assessments (which have been plagued by misdiagnoses and appeals), and having no response to detailed case studies and well-researched criticisms levelled by opponents.

But this is not only happening in the context that is welfare and disability.  The admirable website Sound Off For Justice highlighted – also on Wednesday – the following absurdities in the Coalition’s foolish plans to cut Legal Aid:

Yesterday was is the launch my of my long-awaited report on the Government’s legal aid reforms which found that for every ￡1 cut from the legal aid budget less than 42 pence will actually be saved from the public purse.

The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) will achieve its savings by largely cost shifting to other cash-strapped departments. For example, for every ￡1 saved by removing clinical negligence from legal aid funding it will cost the NHS almost ￡3.

Thus it is that I am unable to decide whether I believe this government to be unbelievably Machiavellian as it proceeds with an unnecessary plan of cuts in order to impose a reign of merciless subjugation on a now hapless voting public or – perhaps worse for us all in such crisis-ridden times as these, where effective leadership is surely required – whether I see it to be simply and quite miserably incompetent in practically everything it does.

Evil or unprepared then?  That is the question.  What is clear is that Lord Freud’s slips were unhappy examples of self-inflicted banana skins; unnecessary but revealing actions of the frankly useless and totally unhelpful.

And what’s absolutely patent is that whilst Lord Freud will continue to enjoy a privileged standard of living, distanced from the violences of this socioeconomic disaster which he and his colleagues are visiting upon us, it will be the ordinary people who will suffer the consequences of this Coalition’s lack of preparation for the high offices it has aspired to.

As Ekklesia underlined (the bold is mine):

Lord Low hit out at the “draconian” nature of the ESA limits being proposed and called on Lib Dems peers (who had been given a non-whipped vote) to “search their consciences” when it came to voting.

On exempting cancer patients, Lord Patel pointed out that the issue was a reduction in savings, not extra funding. His amendment, he said,was not about adding to expenditure but refusing to take £1.3 billion from the most vulnerable.

He declared: “If you are going to rob the poor to pay the rich we have entered a different form of morality”, adding that cancer patients are not “not skivers, not benefit cheats”.

Absolutely spot-on.

And absolutely disgraceful.

And still I am not sure if it is true incompetence or utter evil.

On the subject of LASPO, my email to Stephen Mosley MP – and his waffle of a reply

 a con, Ken Clarke, Law Society, Legal Aid, Stephen Mosley, www.soundoffforjustice.org  No Responses »
Nov 072011
 

Wikipedia Commons

This was the email I recently sent to my local MP, Stephen Mosley, via Sound Off For Justice’s emailing tool:

Dear Mr Stephen Mosley MP  

Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill – preserve the right to justice

I would like to raise my concerns about the Government’s proposals to drastically restrict access to justice under the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill which is currently before Parliament.

The Bill will directly affect hundreds of your constituents each year by making legal advice and access to justice unaffordable.

If passed in its current form, the Bill will remove legal aid for almost two thirds of the civil law and family law cases that currently qualify. Hundreds of thousands of people every year will find they cannot afford to enforce the legal rights they have been given by Parliament. Legal advice services across the country will struggle to stay open. 

People who have suffered harm through no fault of their own will be denied legal aid to deal with problems related to medical negligence, employment, immigration and welfare benefits. Almost all child contact and child residence cases in family separations will no longer qualify for legal aid.

Legal action using ‘no win, no fee’ agreements, which were introduced to help middle income people who do not qualify for legal aid, will be made more expensive and much harder, if not impossible, to use.

Sound Off For Justice, the campaign for the positive reform of legal aid and civil law, (www.soundoffforjustice.org) has put forward alternative savings that would make a bigger contribution to reducing the deficit while safeguarding the right to legal support and access to justice.  View the alternative reforms.

I urge you to do everything you can to preserve the right to civil justice for all citizens by asking Ministers to reconsider their proposals, and by voting to amend the Bill.

I ask you to write to the Secretary of State for Justice Kenneth Clarke MP, to make him aware of my concerns.

Yours sincerely,

Mr Miljenko Williams

At the end of this post, you can see his reply.

Before you wade through its two pages, I am minded to draw your attention in particular to two key paragraphs buried amidst the content on page two – paragraphs which on cursory reading lead one to feel the government is doing everything it can for the most disadvantaged (the bold is mine):

Following careful consideration of the thousands of responses it received to its legal aid consultation, the Government has decided to retain routine availability of legal aid for cases where people’s life or liberty is at stake, where they are risk of serious physical harm, or immediate loss of their home, or where their children may be taken into care.  It is also strengthening specific provisions to ensure availability in private family cases for victims of domestic violence, for children at risk of abuse or abduction and for Special Educational Needs cases.

Prioritising critical areas inevitably means making clear choices about availability elsewhere.  Legal aid will no longer routinely be available for most private family law cases, clinical negligence, employment, immigration, some debt and housing issues, some education cases, and welfare benefits.  Instead, alternative, less adversarial means of resolving such disputes will be used.  Fundamental rights to access to justice will be protected through retention of certain areas of law and a new exceptional funding scheme for excluded cases.

So then.  People’s life and liberty are protected but immigration isn’t?  Serious physical harm is protected but clinical negligence isn’t?  Immediate loss of home is protected but employment, “some” debt and housing issues and welfare benefits aren’t?

How the hell can we expected to believe this contradictory and self-serving rubbish?

As connected an example of government in action as Theresa May’s current mess on UK border controls.  Bodes ill for the future, it really does.  So much so I’m beginning to conclude – in fact – that this is no conspiracy but, rather, rank incompetence all round.

Oh, and by the way, it doesn’t seem he will write to Ken Clarke on my behalf, now does it?

Should I complain?

Perhaps not.  For I do like a really good waffle.

The Coalition-sponsored guerilla war to rid Britain of all public sector services

 a con, David Cameron, Jonathan Djanogly, Ken Clarke, Legal Aid, NHS, NHS cuts, political guerilla warfare, welfare, Welfare State  No Responses »
Sep 292011
 

Here’s a government campaign (more background here) which hasn’t reached my attention until it’s almost too late:

Having access to high-quality public services is essential to our modern society. The better our public services, the more we help those most in need.

You will find fantastic examples of what great public services can offer individuals and communities all over the UK. Many of our public services are among the best in the world, with our public sector professionals leading in expertise and innovation.

However, the delivery of these services is not always consistent—with the most poor often being the most affected. Our old-fashioned, centralised approach means there’s too much “take what you’re given” and not enough focus on improvement and accountability. We want to change things so that everybody in the UK—no matter where they live, or what their circumstance—benefits from the best services available.

Open Public Services will encourage innovation and give people more choice and control over the services they use by putting power directly in the hands of millions of families and thousands of communities.

Tomorrow, in fact, its consultation period closes.  And I do wonder why it hasn’t received the publicity that other more discrete (though not discreet) government actions which aim to dismantle the NHS and Legal Aid have generated.  Especially since its ramifications are such that any result moderately in favour will lead to all public services being opened up to the private sector.

There is some good news, mind.  The White Paper itself is not only available in .pdf and Word format – but also in an OpenOffice.org .odt alternative.

Probably just about the only thing truly open about the whole damn exercise.  As an email which arrived in my inbox this morning points out (the bold is mine):

If you disagree with government plans to sell off all public services to the private sector, make your views known before it’s too late! Tell the government what you think at http://www.openpublicservices.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/

This Friday 30 September is the last chance for you to object to plans that could mean the full scale privatisation of all public services. If the government’s plans go ahead, hospitals, schools, libraries and social services will be open to be run by the private sector.

David Cameron has said that he wants to introduce ‘a presumption’ that private companies and charities can run all public services. This amounts to selling off all public services – the government wants to repeat the Health and Social Care Bill for all other departments.

Anyone who doesn’t want their public services to be auctioned off to the highest bidder needs to respond to this consultation before it’s too late. And please help spread the word and join the facebook group.

I’d be inclined to advise if you care about public services at all to follow the suggestions held in the email above.  In the light of this White Paper, it would seem that the Health and Social Care Bill on the one hand and the government attack on Legal Aid on the other are simply the first salvoes in a much wider piece of Coalition-sponsored guerilla warfare designed to break up and destroy – in one way or another – the much-treasured and beloved British Welfare State.

The Welfare State always was socialism by the back door – and the British people loved it precisely because of this.  The right could never get over the fact that socialism could flourish in what was supposedly a conservative nation.  And yet the value of a democratic socialism, focussed on the needs of all individuals, was never better demonstrated than by these now fragile pillars of the Welfare State.

The battle will only get cruder.  We have to be ready and prepared.

Over 200,000 children and young people left out in the cold by Ken Clarke’s Welfare State

 a con, in a hole, Ken Clarke, Law Society, Legal Aid, welfare, Welfare State, www.soundoffforjustice.org  No Responses »
Sep 132011
 

This is a story which really ought to make you furious.  Ken Clarke’s Welfare State plans to carry out cuts which unnecessarily leave out in the cold – and without cover of any kind whatsoever – over 200,000 children and young people.  Unnecessarily because counter-proposals by professionals in the sector would not only protect such access but would also save more money.  As the campaign Sound Off For Justice underlines:

  • 6,000 children under 18, and 69,000 Britons aged between 18-24 years of age, will no longer be able to access free legal advice and support for cases involving employment, homelessness and welfare under government plans
  • 140,000 children will be affected by legal aid support being removed for their parents

The full details here.

Again, it does beg the very serious question: why does the government reject the counter-proposals of the legal profession which aim to save £34 million more than the former are asking for whilst – at the same time – squaring the circle of positive reform by managing to protect the rights of access to the justice system of millions of people?

Unless, of course, the government doesn’t want millions of people to access the justice system …

Now why would that be?

    Is Ken Clarke really the right man to cut up our Magna Carta cake?

     a con, in a hole, Ken Clarke, Legal Aid, Magna Carta, www.soundoffforjustice.org  No Responses »
    Jun 292011
     

    © “Sound Off For Justice”

    I’ve just received the following press release and photos from this afternoon’s Sound Off For Justice event:

    ‘Ken Clarke’ cuts up Magna Carta

    Today the Sound Off For Justice campaign presented a Magna Carta cake to Ken Clarke to remind the Justice Secretary of his duties and obligations to protect the ancient document’s promises to the British people.

    Ken Clarke will today address the House of Commons for the second reading of the fast-tracked Bill that the Sound Off For Justice campaign believes will lead to a two-tiered justice system.

    The Sound Off For Justice ‘Let Them Eat Cake!’ tea party on College Green outside Parliament saw members of the public and MPs gather to cut up a Magna Carta cake to symbolise the cutting of access to justice for large swathes of the British population.

    The cake was also a gentle reminder to Ken Clarke ahead of his 71st birthday on Saturday 2nd July.

    Only last November Ken Clarke expressed, ”we should think very carefully before abandoning the principles that those people who signed the Magna Carta never knew they were inventing for ordinary people like you and me.”

    Seven months later Clarke is rushing a bill through parliament; normally reserved for terrorism and economic legislation, that is set to tear up the founding principles of our justice system.

    The Sound Off For Justice campaign is proposing alternative reforms that will protect key areas such as education, family, clinical negligence and housing civil legal aid cases from being taken out of scope for free civil legal advice, whilst saving more money for the British taxpayer. Legal Aid enables over 645,000 Britons every year access to justice, the fundamental right for all in a modern society, harking back to the key principles set out in the Magna Carta in 1215.

    Members of the Law Society, key campaign partners and supporters such as the Women’s Institute and AvMA, along with 14-year-old Andrew Green who suffers from cerebral palsy as a result of medical negligence at birth and was legal aid assisted in his fight for justice, attended the event.

    The Law Society’s president, Linda Lee said: “Back in 1215 when the Magna Carta was signed, it was set out that ‘to no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice’. The principles set out by Ken Clarke and this coalition government are set to go back on all that we have fought for in this country and creates a two-tiered justice system, that favours the rich and leaves the vulnerable and needy with nowhere to turn, when they need it the most. Cameron’s Big Society will be the big loser, if he does not believe that the law is for all.”

    You can also read my own take, posted early this morning, on what I’m pretty sure is a deliberate political strategy in relation to the Welfare State cuts being proposed.  More on this subject here.
    ____________________

    Footnote to this press release: Sound Off For Justice summarise the importance of Legal Aid in the following way:

    Legal Aid is a fundamental part of the British justice system and our society as a whole. It’s something that exists to protect the vulnerable in our society – those who cannot defend themselves and are susceptible to acts of injustice due to financial or social circumstance or special needs. We’re talking about the battered wife who will no longer be able to protect herself against her violent partner, the divorcing father who could lose all access to his kids, and the elderly lady who won’t be able to do anything about her botched leg operation.

    The government is proposing cuts that will take £350 million out of the Legal Aid budget, with key areas including medical negligence and family issues, such as divorce, coming out of scope entirely, meaning that even the most deserving cases will not have access to Legal Aid. The Law Society has launched its new campaign, Sound Off For Justice, to help place pressure on the government to consider alternative reforms that, whilst making the required savings, would protect Legal Aid funding for millions of Britons. Find out more at www.soundoffforjustice.org.

    © “Sound Off For Justice”