Issue 259  17th September 2022

On behalf of the judges and magistrates of the Courts of England and Wales and judges and members of the United Kingdom Tribunals we have conveyed to His Majesty our most sincere condolences on the very sad death of our Late Sovereign, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. The dedicated service given by Her Late Majesty as Sovereign to her people and country, to her Realms and to the Commonwealth has been an inspiration to judicial office holders as they fulfil their duties in the administration of justice.

At this time of great sadness, we trust that His Majesty will draw strength from the knowledge that Queen Elizabeth II was so greatly respected and admired by her subjects and by people throughout the world, so many of whose hearts she touched. The Judiciary will continue to serve His Majesty King Charles III with the same commitment and pride as they did Her Late Majesty.

Senior barristers have donned their court robes with ceremonial “weepers” and “mourning bands” to publicly pay tribute to the Queen’s “steadfast and true public service”. On Thursday, more than 50 King’s Counsel and junior barristers made a rare out-of-court appearance in their black gowns and wigs to pay their respects. White cuffs, known as weepers, are a ceremonial mark of sorrow and can be worn by KCs and judges. Mourning bands with dark lines around the neck are worn instead of the usual collars. Having assembled outside the Old Bailey in London, the lawyers walked a short distance in informal groups to Gray’s Inn Chapel to lay a wreath.

• The Rt Hon Brandon Lewis CBE MP as Lord Chancellor, and Secretary of State for Justice
• Rt Hon Michael Ellis QC MP as Attorney General. He will attend Cabinet
• Michael Tomlinson MP as Solicitor General

Crown court judge has blamed ’chronic underfunding’ of the criminal justice system for delays, as he refused to extend the custody time limit for a defendant whose barrister is on strike. The ruling could be repeated in the cases of thousands of defendants in custody, as the backlog of Crown court cases remains around 60,000 and indefinite, all-out strike action by criminal barristers began this week. Sitting at Bristol Crown Court, Peter Blair QC, the recorder of Bristol, refused a prosecution application to extend custody limits, which expire on 8 September, in a ’completely routine’ two-day case.

The director of the Legal Aid Agency has issued a grovelling apology after a catalogue of errors delayed a High Court case which could have major ramifications in the ongoing barristers strike. Thousands of Crown Court hearings around the country have been disrupted since barristers voted overwhelming to go on strike in their Legal Aid feud with the government.

Judges have now started to allow defendants awaiting their trial in prison to be set free on bail, as the justice system is paralysed by chronic delays. The Crown Prosecution Service is mounting a challenge to the decisions not to extend Custody Time Limits for defendants, and an urgent hearing had been scheduled for Thursday in the High Court. However the hearing could not take place as planned, because of delays in the granting of Legal Aid to lawyers involving the challenge.

The High Court battle is a key moment in the Legal Aid dispute, as government comes under increasing pressure to find a solution that will encourage barristers to return to work. That pressure is likely to increase significantly if the deadlock continues and large numbers of defendants are set free from prison while awaiting their trials.

The director of the Serious Fraud Office has called for reform of disclosure rules to ‘rebalance the system for victims and justice’ following a series of high-profile errors by the watchdog. Lisa Osofsky said disclosure is ‘one of the biggest challenges’ the agency faces, but added that ‘there is a lot of work happening within the SFO to support our disclosure officers and to make our processes, policies and procedures better’. Speaking at the Cambridge International Symposium on Economic Crime, she suggested that the current disclosure regime – which was ‘designed before the advent of mass digital data … when there was far less material for investigators and prosecutors to deal with’ – is out of date. The SFO deals with ‘many millions’ of documents, including ‘complex digital data across many different devices’, in any given case which ‘could fill up 22 London buses’ if they were printed out, Osofsky said yesterday. ‘Yet the regime still demands manual review and description of documents,’ she said. ‘This can take years, with victims waiting for a resolution, waiting for their day in court. ‘The system also runs a deep risk of human error. Despite requiring the manual review of each document, the defence can use a mistake – which is capable of correction – to mount tactical challenges to our cases.’

Her comments come after the SFO was heavily criticised by the Court of Appeal, which has now quashed the convictions of three of the four men who were jailed after the watchdog’s Unaoil bribery investigation over ‘serious’ disclosure failures.

An IT system is causing key information about court cases in England and Wales to change or disappear and is putting justice at risk, the BBC has been told. One legal adviser revealed how he entered a driving ban in the system, called Common Platform, only to later discover the result had changed. Staff say warnings about alleged faults, describing it as "fundamentally flawed", have been ignored. The government said there was no evidence justice is being compromised.

Common Platform was built to replace outdated software in the criminal courts with one system which allows judges, lawyers, the CPS and courts to access case information in one place. The new system, which started going live in 2020 and has a £300m budget, is being used in 136 courts in England and Wales - equivalent to 60% of the total - with the rest due to adopt it by early next year.