About
A free weekly collection of criminal law links - for practitioners, law students, and anyone with an interest in the criminal justice system of England and Wales.
Curated by Sam Willis, a barrister at 5 King's Bench Walk.
News
'Magistrates could give longer sentences under new proposals'
Magistrates in England and Wales could be given powers to hand down longer custodial sentences under proposals to help reduce the backlog in crown courts and prisons. The move could allow magistrates to try more serious crimes, and double the maximum punishments handed out for an offence from six to 12 months, helping a system the government said is on the “point of collapse”...
Chairwoman of the Criminal Bar Association, Mary Prior KC, said if approved, the changes would "make things worse" by increasing the pressure on prisons which are already near capacity. "This is a knee-jerk reaction, done without consulting - once again - the criminal barristers or solicitors who deal every day with these cases," she said, adding a "collaborative and sensible approach" is needed. The proposal has already been tried before, she said, but was "removed very quickly", when the then Justice Secretary Dominic Raab doubled the jail sentences magistrates could give in 2022. The scheme was dropped after a year...
'New measures set out to combat violence against women and girls'
Victims of domestic abuse will be better protected from vile perpetrators under new plans to strengthen the police’s fight against violence towards women and girls, announced by the Home Secretary today (Friday, 20 September). Marking the first step in the government’s pledge to halve violence against women and girls in the next decade, a key element of the wider mission to take back our streets, domestic abuse specialists will be embedded in 999 control rooms...
The government will fund this pilot in targeted police forces from early 2025. Specialists with expertise in domestic abuse will be embedded in 999 control rooms to advise on risk assessments and work with officers on the ground, to ensure that victims get a fast response when needed and are referred to support services as quickly as possible. These specialists will be backed up by dedicated teams to improve how the police respond to these kinds of calls, including using new technology to respond more quickly such as rapid video response...
In a further step to keep women and girls safe, from November more domestic abusers will be ordered to stay away from their victims and face tougher sanctions if they fail to do so through the launch of the new domestic abuse protection order pilot. The pilot will build on powers police already have to legally order abusers to not make contact with or go within a certain distance of the victim – but domestic abuse victims are currently only protected for up to 28 days.
The new orders will go further, with measures such as making it a legal requirement for perpetrators to inform the police of any change in name or address, imposing electronic tagging, and ordering assessments for behaviour change programmes. There will also be no maximum duration for these orders. The orders will cover all forms of domestic abuse, including violence, stalking and controlling behaviour, and more agencies will be able to apply for them – not just the police and criminal courts but also family and civil courts, and third parties such as local authorities, charities and social services, with victims also able to apply directly for the order themselves. Breaching one of these new orders will be a criminal offence, punishable by up to 5 years in prison...
'Bar Council urges government to remove cap on court sitting days and widen legal aid eligibility'
The Bar Council has urged the government to remove the cap on court sitting days, restore legal aid for early legal advice and match-fund 100 criminal pupillages a year to help the justice system. In submissions to the spending review, the Bar Council set out its five priority areas it said the Treasury should consider to ensure improvements to access to justice and tackle the court backlogs.
The five proposals include ‘restoring adequate resources to the justice system to promote growth and protect the public’ with funding in line with demand, and removal of the cap on sitting days in the Crown court as well as sufficient sitting days in all jurisdictions, ‘especially family’. The bar also asks that the government match-fund the cost of 100 additional criminal pupillages a year ‘to provide for the long-term sustainability of the criminal bar’ and an ‘immediate uplift’ of 15% to criminal prosecution and defence fees...
Widening access to legal support to tackle violence against women and girls also formed part of the five proposals. The Bar Council suggested the government remove means testing for legal aid for alleged victims and survivors of domestic abuse and increase fees for rape and serious sexual offence (RASSO) cases in the Crown court. Increasing fees for RASSO cases would ‘equalise prosecution and defence fees to retain and recruit the specialist barristers needed’...
'Post Office Scandal: Calls for faster compensation scheme without lawyers as victims face delays'
The adversarial nature of the compensation scheme for victims of the Post Office scandal is preventing them securing timely redress. That is the view of the Horizon Compensation Advisory Board set up to oversee the process for compensating the thousands of people whose lives were affected by the scandal. In a discussion paper prepared earlier this year, the board advocates for a ‘principled and more effective way’ for delivering redress in cases funded by the government. Creating a standing compensation authority could mean that victims’ needs are identified quicker and crucially would prevent money being spent on lawyers involved in the process...
The government says that as of 30 August, £87m had been paid under the scheme including interim payments. But critics have suggested the Post Office is spending large amounts on lawyers to fight compensation claims, while many claimants are also represented by firms who will be paid for their work advising on the existing schemes. The Horizon advisory board, chaired by Professor Christopher Hodges, acknowledges that claimants may be concerned about being short-changed if they are not represented. But its paper suggests that other countries have been able to establish compensation schemes managed by independent bodies which reduce this risk and remove legal costs. It adds there has been a ‘quiet revolution’ in the UK in terms of ombudsman schemes bringing through new dispute resolution procedures and institutions...
Cases
R v Huw Edwards Sentencing Remarks
Mr Edwards , you face sentence in respect of 3 offences , you pleaded guilty on 31st July 2024 , the first opportunity to do so, in due course and in accordance with the Sentencing Councils guideline you will receive full credit by way of reduction in your sentence. You are 63 now, the offences span a period when you were 59 – 60 years of age. Perhaps it does not need saying but you are of previous good character, I accept positive exemplary character, having enjoyed a very successful career in the media, it is obvious that until now you were very highly regarded by the public for your dedication and professionalism, you were perhaps the most recognised news reader / journalist in the UK. It is not an overstatement to say your long-earned reputation is in “tatters”...
I am of the firm view that the combination of being forced to confront your wrong- doing in a very public way, your seeking of professional help and the supportive blanket which that and the input of probation will provide, within a suspended prison sentence with requirements, will rehabilitate you and thus strike the balance between public protection and rehabilitation...
There will be a custodial term of 6 months which will be suspended 2 years. If in that period you commit any offence then you will be brought back to court and the sentence may be brought into operation. In addition, the suspended sentence order is subject to the above requirements...
Connor Palmer & Ors v National Crime Agency [2024] EWCA Civ 1095
This is our judgment after an oral hearing of applications for permission to appeal from a decision of the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (‘the IPT’) in 11 linked proposed appeals. The National Crime Agency (‘the NCA’) is the respondent to the proposed appeals. The decision of the IPT concerned the application of the regime in the Investigatory Powers Act 2016 (‘the IPA’) to Operation Venetic. Operation Venetic was the NCA’s response to EncroChat devices, which were telephone handsets which could be used to get access to EncroChat, an encrypted service which was either wholly, or very nearly wholly, used by criminals for criminal purposes. Users were given a randomly generated user name which did not identify them so that particular devices could not be attributed to a specific user. The NCA was not, therefore, able to attribute all EncroChat usernames to specific criminal targets, although it could identify some. It was estimated that there were about 9000 users in the United Kingdom...
The IPT heard evidence from three current or former officers of the NCA: Wayne Jones, Luke Shrimpton and Emma Sweeting. It summarised their evidence about communications between the French authorities and the NCA in paragraphs 27-64. It carefully analysed that evidence, testing it by reference to the claimants’ submissions that the NCA had not been candid with the Judicial Commissioner about their ignorance of the method of interception and that had the NCA been candid with the Judicial Commissioner, it would have been obvious that a bulk interception warrant was necessary. The IPT acknowledged that the NCA had a preference for the material to be admissible in criminal proceedings but that they had not closed their minds before a critical Europol meeting. The IPT accepted the ‘core’ of Ms Sweeting’s account. She did not ask for formal confirmation because she knew she would not get it. That was not because she feared that the NCA would get an answer it did not want, but because she genuinely thought that the French authorities were reluctant to tell the NCA about the methods they intended to use to intercept the EncroChat messages...
For all those reasons, we refuse permission to appeal on grounds 1-6.
Other
'Why is it so difficult to correct miscarriages of justice?'
The justice system of England and Wales imposes criminal liability with far more ease than it ever removes it. This is not unusual, and the same observation can be made of many criminal justice systems in other countries. But such tardiness undermines any claim for a system to be just when there has been a miscarriage of justice. The admonition outside the Old Bailey, London’s central criminal court, says “Punish the Wrongdoer”, not punish the innocent...