Features

Penny Cooper reports on plans to revise the Victims’ Code and enhance entitlements for the vulnerable.   

In February 2013, Frances Andrade committed suicide a few days after giving evidence in the Crown Court. Within days of the verdict, Helen Grant MP, the Minister for Victims and the Courts, held a roundtable meeting at the House of Lords. Those present included representatives of the CPS, the Ministry of Justice and HMCTS as well as the Chairman of the Bar and the author representing the Advocacy Training Council’s Vulnerable Witness Committee. Discussions focused on support for complainants in sexual abuse cases and improvements to the Victims’ Code. The coalition had previously made a commitment to reviewing the code and work was already under way. The revised Victims’ Code (“the 2013 draft”) became available on 29 March (https://consult.justice.gov.uk/digital-communications/code-victims-crime) with consultation running until 10 May. 

Barristers can now accept public access instructions from clients eligible for legal aid, following formal approval from the Legal Services Board on 28 March. Barristers under three years’ Call will also be directly accessible to clients, from later this year.  

A new training regime is due to be in place this autumn, at which point those who have already completed the existing training will have 24 months to undertake additional training or apply for a waiver. 

Gay refugees seeking asylum in the UK are having to resort to drastic measures to “prove” their sexual identity, as S. Chelvan reports  

There are 78 countries in the world which criminalise any form of same-sex conduct in private by consensual adults (2012 ILGA state sponsored homophobia report). Of  these countries, 42 specifically single out lesbians; five (Mauritania, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Iran) provide the death penalty. The Islamic states of Nigeria and parts of Somalia also enforce the death penalty. In Uganda, the Anti-Homosexuality Bill renders criminal prosecution of even straight landlords for not reporting the fact that they have a gay tenant. It is not a safe world to be gay. 

Youth Court Guide (5th edition) 
ISBN: 978 184766 982 7
October 2012
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Price: £70 

Youth Court hearings can be much more complicated than is often assumed. Leaving aside for a moment the fact that you are dealing with some of the most vulnerable people in society – children – and all the added complications that come with that, there are differences in procedure, court composition and sentencing to contend with. How convenient then to have these differences set out in one easy to read handbook. 

Data Protection Law and Practice (4th edition) 
Rosemary Jay
ISBN: 9780414024960
December 2012
Publisher: Sweet and Maxwell
£225 

Data protection is not a popular subject, even among lawyers. Most of us have been refused an answer to some innocuous question “because of data protection”. The Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA 1998 is badly drafted and obscure: for instance, it uses schedules to deal with matters of fundamental principle rather than supporting detail. 

Prospective jury members had better make their excuses good if they want to wriggle out of performing their time-honoured duty 

April 8, 2013: Jury: A group of 12 people, who, having lied to the judge about their health, hearing, and business engagements, have failed to fool him – Henry Louis Mencken  

Last week, the jury was selected in the sensational trial of Jason Grimble and Moses Lane for the alleged murder of the disliked Claude Allerick, formerly one of Her Majesty’s (Circuit) Judges and sometime member of Gutteridge Chambers. A last-minute reprieve had come when our previously assigned judge finally read at night in bed one page too many of the voluminous Criminal Procedure Rules and slipped a disc. Fate then gave us the lovely Jonathan Hay to try our case and the deceptively relaxed George White QC, of Treasury Counsel, to prosecute us. 

Hannah Kinch provides an insight into the work of the Young Barristers’ Committee.  

The Young Barristers’ Committee (YBC) has been around since 1954, and is one of the main representative committees of the Bar Council. Under the Bar Council’s standing orders, our purpose is to “represent and promote the interests of young barristers”; that is, those under seven years’ Call, both nationally and internationally. To that end, the YBC comprises elected Bar Council members, as well as those who have been co-opted to ensure that the committee properly reflects the fact that we represent both employed and self-employed barristers, across every circuit, in every practice area. I chair the committee, supported by my vice chairman (Max Hardy); the YBC is 30 strong. 

Job title: Silk and head of the criminal team at 36 Bedford Row 

36 Bedford Row is a leading set of chambers with members practicing in six specialist areas of serious and complex crime, family law, employment law, civil litigation, public law and consumer law.  

Many congratulations on attaining silk this year. What do you hope the future holds for a silk at the Criminal Bar?
Success. I wouldn’t have applied for silk if I did not think that I could make it pay. If you’re good, well organised and prepared to put yourself about then there is still work out there to be had. As he handed me my Letters Patent last Wednesday, I asked the Lord Chancellor whether there would still be any publicly funded work for me to do after my appointment. He said that there would be and I intend to take him at his word. Given the further cuts to fees proposed in the most recent consultation paper, I wonder whether I should have actually asked the Lord Chancellor whether there would be any financially viable publicly funded work available for me to do in silk? 

Does the statutory regime governing the disclosure of convictions, cautions and warnings to prospective employers breach an offender’s right to privacy? Shereener Browne reports  

The Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 saw an important principle enshrined in statute: that people who have committed certain offences some time ago should, generally speaking be allowed to keep those misdemeanours in their past. At the heart of this legislation was the recognition that an individual’s future should not be blighted by what may often have been an impulsive act made in the blush of youth. 

Desmond Browne QC reflects on the bravery of the lawyers and human rights workers in Zimbabwe in the light of the scandalous arrest of the country’s former Law Society president, Beatrice Mtetwa.  

Few can have missed the publicity accorded to the handshake between Robert Mugabe, the former Jesuit schoolboy and the new Pope Francis I. Meanwhile, back in Harare the votes were being counted in the constitutional referendum needed before a new election can take place, and Beatrice Mtetwa, a former president of the Law Society of Zimbabwe, was called to the assistance of a client whose home was being raided by the police. The date was Sunday 17 March 2013.