Issue 303  22nd July 2023

The Lord Chancellor has approved the appointment of Her Honour Deborah Taylor as the new Chair of the Criminal Legal Aid Advisory Board for 18 months from July 2023...

The CLAAB was established following Lord Bellamy’s Criminal Legal Aid Independent Review (CLAIR) recommendation that an independent Advisory Board be established to take a wider view and encourage a more joined-up approach to criminal legal aid within the criminal justice system. The CLAAB will ensure that criminal defence practitioners have ongoing input into the future development of the criminal legal aid system...

The CLAAB’s purpose is to provide independent advice to the Lord Chancellor on the operation and structure of the existing and future criminal legal aid schemes and to assess how these schemes should adapt to support a high-performing criminal justice system and the wider objectives of the legal profession. The CLAAB has met three times since it was first established - in October 2022, then in January and April 2023. The Board will meet again on 20 July 2023...

Justice secretary Alex Chalk has said he wants legal aid work to be seen as attractive and called for a ‘reset’ on how the sector is perceived. The lord chancellor told MPs on the justice select committee that he wanted publicly-funded work to be coveted by young people entering the legal profession, after years of it being derided in the media. He did not make any fresh funding commitments and did not suggest the government would cave in to the Law Society in its fight to have criminal legal aid fees increased by the minimum 15% as recommended by the Bellamy review...

Chalk, making his first appearance before the committee since taking office in April, was effusive in his praise for legal aid lawyers and the work they do, stressing that the pipeline of people in this group needed to increase. ‘We want to show not just that legal aid barristers are respected and admired and do phenomenal work but that it is possible to make a good and decent living as well,’ he said. ‘This is not just about pay but about conditions as well. I want the condition of our [court] estate to be so as to ensure pride in the profession so people know they are joining a profession and not something that will give [them] pause for thought.’... ‘I know what it was like to work until the middle of the night and then go down to Snaresbrook Crown Court to do a mention hearing in a really serious matter for £46.50 plus VAT and it was demeaning. I want to really have a total reset. Legal aid barristers and solicitors work phenomenally hard and do an incredibly important job.’

Police tactics used against terrorists are being used to catch the 100 worst predators targeting women in London. The Met said a system assessing 35,000 offenders reported each year for crimes against females was being used. The Cambridge Crime Harm Index is the first system to measure the seriousness of crime harm to victims, rather than just the number of recorded crimes. Previously used for only terrorism and organised crime, it is the first time it has been used for attacks on women. The system gathers data on tens of thousands of men recently convicted of domestic assault, rape, sex offences, stalking, and harassment to rank the 100 who pose the highest risk to the public...

Plans to overhaul the force, a £366m two-year scheme dubbed A New Met for London, are being launched with visits to every borough in the capital. Bosses say there will be an increased emphasis on neighbourhood policing in a bid to rebuild public trust. Some 240 officers out of the Met's total workforce of around 34,000 will be moved from central to local teams.There are also plans to recruit 500 more community support officers (PCSOs) and an extra 565 people to work with teams investigating domestic abuse, sexual offences and child sexual abuse and exploitation. Each borough will have at least one front counter open 24 hours a day under the proposals...

Controlling ex-partners who lash out at the end of their relationship will face longer than ever behind bars under new government plans to tackle domestic homicide.The change, announced by the Lord Chancellor, is part of a wide-ranging response to Clare Wade KC’s Domestic Homicide Sentencing Review published today (20 July 2023) which will overhaul the law to better protect vulnerable women. Building on measures already announced in the interim response in March, today’s reforms will create a new aggravating factor for murder at the end of a relationship while also introducing a mitigating factor in cases where the perpetrator has been subjected to a campaign of controlling behaviour before lashing out against their abuser...

The list of measures in the full government response to Clare Wade’s review into domestic homicide sentencing includes:

• Bringing greater recognition to the specific circumstances of domestic murders by creating statutory aggravating factors for murder for: Killing at the end of a relationship, Overkill and use of excessive violence, A history of coercive or controlling behaviour
• Creating a statutory mitigating factor for murder where the perpetrator has been subjected to coercive or controlling behaviour
• Continuing to improve the collection and recording of data on domestic homicides in England and Wales to identify patterns, trends, and risk factors via the Domestic Homicide Review Library
• Working with partners to implement and improve mandatory training for Crown Prosecution Service staff on understanding coercive control.
• Consulting on a 25-year starting point for coercive or controlling behaviour and sentencing for murders which take place with a weapon found at the scene
• Writing to the Sentencing Council to propose that they review their guidelines for manslaughter sentencing in light of Clare Wade’s recommendations and the government’s response.
• Asking the Law Commission to review the use of defences in domestic homicide cases

A woman who was jailed for terminating her pregnancy after the legal time limit during lockdown will be released from prison and reunited with her children, after winning a court of appeal effort to reduce her sentence. A court of appeal judge said Carla Foster, 45, needed “compassion, not punishment”, saying her 28-month sentence would be reduced to 14 months and suspended.

Sentencing her last month, Mr Justice Pepperall said Foster would serve half her term in prison and the rest on licence after her release, after she admitted illegally procuring her own abortion when she was between 32 and 34 weeks pregnant. At the court of appeal in London on Tuesday, three judges reduced her prison sentence. Dame Victoria Sharp, sitting with Lord Justice Holroyde and Mrs Justice Lambert, said: “This is a very sad case … It is a case that calls for compassion, not punishment.”

A scheme that allows adult witnesses in rape cases to pre-record evidence is being used in only a fraction of cases, a justice minister conceded to MPs last week. The revelation was part of the latest dose of uncomfortable statistics for the government around the prosecution of sexual offences. This week The Times reported on exclusive results to a freedom of information request that showed that multiple cases have been lingering in the court system for between four and seven years.

The scheme for pre-recording cross-examination evidence, which was launched across England and Wales last September after a regional pilot scheme, was used by witnesses in about 0.5 per cent of cases, Edward Argar, a justice minister, and his officials told the justice committee. They revealed that in the last quarter of 2022 only 94 witnesses in adult rape cases in the crown courts pre-recorded their evidence. Government figures showed that police recorded about 70,300 rape allegations in 2021-22...