Posts Tagged ‘immigration acts’

Save Legal Aid – 2013

Sunday, July 30th, 2023

Save Legal Aid – 2013: On Tuesday 30th July 2013, ten years ago today, the Save Legal Aid Campaign held a rally outside the Old Bailey in protest against proposed cuts in legal aid which they say would severely damage the UK justice system, removing legal aid completely for many and providing a poor quality cut-price service for others.

Save Legal Aid - 2013
Labour shadow minister Sadiq Khan in fighting mood

The proposals would bring in compulsory tendering on price, with legal aid services being provided by the lowest bidder and remove any choice by defendants of who should represent them. They say this would replace all the current specialist solicitors by groups such as Tesco and Eddie Stobart employing less qualified and experienced people and providing an inferior service for those unable to pay – and so choose – their solicitors.

Save Legal Aid - 2013

The rally also celebrated the successes of the UK’s legal aid system, which speakers said had been the envy of the world since it was brought in on 30th July 1949, exactly 64 years earlier, an event celebrated with the singing of ‘Happy Birthday’ and the cutting of a cake by MP Diane Abbott.

Save Legal Aid - 2013

For many of us those celebrations rang hollow. The legal aid system by 2013 was but a pale shadow of that brought in by the Legal Aid and Assistance Act on 30th July 1949. It was a skeleton that was being celebrated, although one that as several speakers who had benefited from it showed still had some effect. In the unlikely event we ever get a reforming Labour government it could perhaps still be revived, but more likely any future government will destroy it still more as New Labour did.

Legal cases in the UK are incredibly expensive in part because of the nature of our legal system which is an adversarial one, but also because of some traditional practices which render it less efficient and protect the interests of some of those who are a part of the system.

Save Legal Aid - 2013

Probably the only sound legal advice is to stay away from the law unless you are very rich. Although its often said that the same law governs both rich and poor, in practice that is not really the case, and in particular those in the middle of society get screwed.

Legal Aid was first introduced in the UK in 1949 when the welfare state was attempting to make justice fair for all. It could be claimed for almost all criminal or civil matters except libel and defamation and around 80% of the UK population were eligible for some support, with those more able to pay receiving support on a sliding scale depending on their income.

It wasn’t then a great cost to the economy as then only a small fraction of the population gad access the the legal advice that might have led them to take action in the courts. If you were poor you seldom came to court except when arrested – and most cases were dealt with by magistrates with legal aid seldom being involved.

In the 1970s Law Centres were set up in many of the poorer areas of the country, giving free advice and explaining and aiding their clients to take matters of social welfare, housing and criminality to the courts. And in 1973 a ‘Green Form Scheme’ was set up to allow those of low incomes to get legal advice from solicitors. Both led to increases in cases and a corresponding increase in the overall cost of legal aid.

The Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962, the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1968, the The Immigration Act 1971 and the the British Nationality Act 1981 each led to a predictable and dramatic increase in the number of cases requiring legal aid to resolve disputes.

Various actions were taken to reduce the cost to the country of legal aid, with eligibility being drastically reduced both by income limits and by reducing the areas of work for which it was available.

Shami Chakrabarti of Liberty

New Labour reformed the system when they came to power, but their reforms proved a disaster and they piled a second disaster on top by privatising the system. By the time the coalition government came to power there wasn’t really a great deal left, but their Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (LASPO) saw off most of what remained.

Since then, to get legal aid you have to have a disposable income of less than £733 a month and less than £8000 of disposable capital. Those receiving universal credit and some other benefits also qualify. There are different income and asset qualification levels for criminal proceedings in Crown Court cases.

As well as these tests legal aid is only available if your case passes a “merits” test as defined by The Civil Legal Aid (Merits Criteria) Regulations 2013. It has to be assessed by the Director as being in the public interest and having at least a 50% chance of success.

Speakers at the protest included Raphael Rowe, wrongly imprisoned as one of the M25 three, Anne Hall the mother of Daniel Roque Hall, a man suffering from a rare condition who would have died in prison without legal aid which got him released to receive care, and Sally, the mother of a rape victim who police failed, as well as Sadiq Khan MP Labour’s Shadow Justice Secretary, Ian Lawrence of NAPO, activist, poet, co-founder and co-chair of BARAC Zita Holbourne, Shauneen Lambe of Just for Kids Law and criminal defence solicitor and Justice Alliance member Matt Foot, but the loudest applause was for a rousing speech by Shami Chakrabarti of Liberty. You can see pictures of all of them and more about the protest on My London at Save Legal Aid.


Strangers Into Citizens 2007

Friday, May 7th, 2021

One of the great failures of British politicians in my lifetime has been over immigration. Since Enoch Powell’s infamous ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech in Birmingham in April 1968, both major parties have engaged in a desperate contest to show they are tougher on immigration than the other.

Immigration as we moved from Empire to Commonwealth wasn’t just a moral issue of living up to the promises the country had long made to its overseas subjects – but had failed to live up to. It was also a matter of economic and social need, for workers, nurses, bus conductors, doctors and more to keep the United Kingdom running. By the 1960s, a third of junior doctors were from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka and in 1963 Enoch Powell, then minister of health launched a campaign which recruited a further 18,000 doctors from India and Pakistan.

Immigration controls had of course begun earlier, but the 1962 Conservative Commonwealth Immigrants Act began a new series of anti-immigration measures. Labour followed this with their 1968 Act, a panic measure to restrict the arrival here of Kenyan Asians. The 1971 Immigration Act and further legislation restricted even restricted the numbers of foreign nurses – who the NHS was and is still very reliant on.

On and on the politicians have gone, increasing the restrictions and playing the numbers game promoted by racists rather than adopting a positive approach and stressing the great advantages that immigrants have brought to this country. While in the Tory party attitudes have largely been driven by straight-forward racism and the residues of imperialism, Labour’s policies seem more cynical and solely based on middle-class electoral assumptions about working-class racism.

Of course there are working-class racists. But there is also working class solidarity that crosses any lines of race, and which could have been fostered by the Labour Party and the trade unions. Instead they have left the field largely open to the likes of the EDL and the lies of the right-wing press. In this and other ways Labour has not lost the working class, but abandoned it.

The vicious and racist policies imposed in recent years by Theresa May against migrants, particularly those here without official permission but also those with every right to be here but without a huge archive of paperwork by which to prove this – the Windrush generation have met with opposition from some mainly on the left in Labour, but they built on the policies of the New Labour government before here.

Labour have abstained rather than voted against so much discriminatory legislation, and their opposition to Priti Patel’s draconian bill which aims to criminalise Roma, Gypsy and Traveller lifestyles and increase the surveillance powers of immigration officers as well as introducing new ‘diversionary cautions’ against migrants to allow police to force them to leave the country has at best been half-hearted.

Of course there are exceptions. Honourable men and women in both parties who have argued against racist policies, and MPs who have voted with their consciences rather than follow the party line – and sometimes lost the party whip. And of course those in some of the smaller parties and outside parliament, particularly various religious leaders, some of whom took a leading role in the Strangers into Citizens March and Rally on May 7th 2007 which called for all those who have worked (and paid their taxes) here for more than four years to be given a two year work permit, after which if they get suitable work and character references they would be given indefinite leave to remain.

Although this still would not change our terrible mistreatment of those who arrive seeking asylum, it did seem a pragmatic solution to a major problem which governments have found intractable. But as the organisers of the event and many of the speakers insisted, it needed to be part of a wider package of fair treatment for those applying for asylum or immigration. But the political parties were not listening and seem only able to think of more and more restrictive, racist and authoritarian policies which drive us further into becoming a police state.

http://mylondondiary.co.uk/2007/05/may.htm


All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.