Issue 383  1st February 2025

New counter terror-style powers to identify, disrupt and smash people smuggling gangs will be introduced as part of landmark legislation to protect our borders. The measures will for the first time allow counter-terror style tactics to be used against smuggling gangs through unprecedented tools to stop smugglers before they act. This includes stronger powers to seize and search mobile phones to investigate organised immigration crime and introducing new offences against gangs conspiring to plan crossings, selling or handling small boat parts for use in the Channel, supplying forged ID documents, for migrants attempting to come here illegally...

The new laws are being welcomed by law enforcement agencies like the National Crime Agency, Immigration Enforcement and police, and include:

• allowing immigration officers and police to seize phones, laptops and other electronic devices at an earlier stage before arrests are made, if they are suspected of containing information about organised immigration crime
• allowing law enforcement to arrest those involved in facilitating organised immigration crime at a much earlier stage than is currently possible, meaning they can intervene quicker, more effectively and before smuggling takes place
• making it illegal to supply or handle items suspected of being for use by organised crime groups, for example the selling and handling of small boats parts, with those caught facing a prison sentence of up to 14 years
• creating a new offence for collecting information to be used by organised immigration criminals to prepare for boat crossings. This includes arranging departure points, dates and times, with clear links back to the gangs facilitating the dangerous crossings
• criminalising the making, adapting, importing and possession of specific articles that could be used in serious crime, carrying a prison sentence of up to 5 years. This includes templates for 3D printed firearms, pill presses and vehicle concealments
• putting the role of the Border Security Commander, Martin Hewitt, on a legal footing, meaning he will have the authority to convene partners across law enforcement and set strategic priorities for achieving the Home Secretary’s goals. These will be shared with partners like the National Crime Agency as part of their ongoing work upstream to target people smuggling networks
• to prevent more people being crammed into unsafe, flimsy boats and lives being put at risk by these gangs, we will make it an offence to endanger another life during perilous sea crossing to the UK.  Anyone involved in physical aggression, intimidation or coercive behaviour, including preventing offers of rescue, while at sea will face prosecution and an increased sentence of up to five years in prison

UK retailers are warning that crime in their stores is “spiralling out of control” with 55,000 thefts a day and violent and abusive incidents rising by 50% last year. More than 70 incidents a day involved a weapon, according to the annual crime survey from the British Retail Consortium (BRC). Verbal and physical attacks, violent threats, and sexual and racial abuse in shops soared to more than 2,000 incidents a day in the year to the end of last August, up from 1,300 the previous year and more than three times the 2020 level...

The rise in shoplifting has partly been seen as the result of a squeeze on household finances amid high inflation in recent years, but retailers said the uptick was down to organised gangs stealing to order. They said retail had been seen as a soft target since the 2014 law change in England and Wales which has meant those stealing goods worth less than £200 are usually spared any jail time...

The Solicitors Regulation Authority is ready to begin prosecutions arising from the Post Office scandal as soon as the public inquiry report is published, the regulator’s chair confirmed today. More than 20 firms and solicitors are being investigated by the SRA in relation to their involvement in one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in British history. It is understood that the investigation includes solicitors involved at all stages of the scandal, from the initial prosecutions to the response as the issue came to light and ultimately became the subject of litigation. SRA chair Anna Bradley said that the regulator’s board discussed the ongoing cases at its meeting earlier this month, hearing that the scale of the issues and documents being dealt with is unprecedented...

His Majesty The King has approved the award of nine new Honorary King’s Counsel (KC Honoris Causa)... The Lord Chancellor will preside over the award ceremony at Westminster Hall in March 2025, where she will formally award the Honorary KC to the successful nominees. 

Solicitors have rejected an accusation submitted by the criminal bar to the Leveson criminal courts review that solicitors encourage late guilty pleas to earn more. Sir Brian Leveson’s call for evidence to inform recommendations to the lord chancellor on how to cut the Crown court backlog closes today. The Criminal Bar Association’s submission, published this week, says there is anecdotal evidence of increasing examples of ‘unscrupulous legal professionals’ encouraging defendants to delay entering guilty pleas until after the trial has commenced. ‘Advocates are then inviting significant credit given the delay in a case coming to trial and the lack of need to call many witnesses. Solicitors involved in this practice will benefit from high fees under LGFS [litigators’ graduated fee scheme] because the trial has been deemed “effective”,’ the CBA's submission says. To ‘destroy this perverse incentive’, the CBA suggests raising the cracked trial fee and lowering the trial fee...

Criminal Law Solicitors' Association vice-chair Katy Hanson said that while there may be an argument to equalise fees for trials and cracked trials, ‘we do not accept that solicitors are misrepresenting clients by advising them to plead in a manner contrary to their best interests’...

Explaining its submission, the CBA told the Gazette that the reference to ‘legal professionals’ may include 'a few' solicitors but also a wide variety of participants including paralegals. The CBA said that the submission ‘refers to a concern that a very small proportion of practitioners may manipulate the system for financial gain. The vast majority of practitioners disapprove of that behaviour. To suggest that there is not room for improvement would be a failure on our part to act without fear or favour in helping with the recovery of a broken criminal justice system’.

Three of the nine courtrooms at Nottingham Crown Court are now closed “due to leaks” while video links are only available in four of them. The news, sent to Nottinghamshire Live this morning, Thursday, January 30, by more than one source, will put added pressure on a system where the backlog of trials and other hearings is already at an all-time high. Over the past three weeks, we have highlighted a number of issues at the Canal Street building, including holding cells that were too cold to take remand prisoners and a roof that often leaks when there is heavy rain...

Now the latest announcement, sent “to all court users" from Her Honour Judge Nirmal Shant, Honorary Recorder of Nottingham, this morning, will further add to the frustrations of judges, barristers, solicitors, jurors, defendants, victims, families and staff.The memo, emailed this morning, reads: “To all court users. We have had several issues with our heating and with leaks in the court building. Presently we are unable to use courts 4, 5 and 9 due to leaks in those courtrooms. CVP (Cloud Video Platform, which allows people to link remotely to a courtroom) is only working in courts 1, 2, 6 and 7. Despite repeated attempts to get these matters resolved we have no date for resolution of these issues which have now been going on for months, nonetheless we hope that this will be sooner rather than later. In addition to the above, courts 1, 2 and 7 are being used for lengthy trials which had been scheduled to take place in January some time ago and it has not been possible to change this. In short, staff, particularly the listing officer, are working very hard and under very challenging circumstances. There are a number of difficulties affecting what is listed and where. Changes are having to be made at short notice. I would greatly appreciate your patience with the staff until these issues are resolved."