'Just stop passing laws'

Tuesday, 1 September 2009 5:33 PM

By Alex Stevenson

The government's addiction to lawmaking is driving the legal world "mad", the new head of the Criminal Bar Association (CBA) has told politics.co.uk.

Paul Mendelle QC claimed lawyers have been overwhelmed by the volume of legislation passed by the New Labour government.

Accusing ministers of "legislative hyperactivity", he said: "We have been deluged with criminal justice legislation at a rate several times that of the previous decade.

"Law should be accessible to the people who are affected by it. Barristers and judges find it increasingly hard to work out exactly what the law says.

"The quality, the quantity and the complexity and the obscurity of the legislation which is passed is driving us mad."

Mr Mendelle compared the current government with those of Harold Wilson, the Labour prime minister of the 1960s and early 1970s, who was criticised for being too active.

"That's what I feel like saying to the government. Another year - don't pass another Act," he pleaded.

The CBA represents independent, self-employed barristers whose views are reflected by Mr Mendelle's.

He pledged to serve the interests of the bar in his one-year term as chairman and insisted his views were widely held.

He is especially angry with the government's plans for legal aid defence fees, which - under the terms of an unexpected Ministry of Justice (MoJ) consultation announced last month - are to be cut.

"The mood at the bar is one of anger, and upset," he added.

"There's a feeling among the barristers I speak to that you cannot trust the government to stick to its word."

The CBA, alongside the Law Society and the Bar Council, were previously concerned about plans to introduce best value tendering for certain legal aid services before the MoJ's latest consultation.

Now there is a wider worry the growing disparity between fees available for lawyers providing legal aid services and those operating privately will widen.

Mr Mendelle insisted the popular distinction between reverence for doctors, teachers and other public sector workers and scorn for well-off lawyers is not entirely justified.

"We're not asking people to shed tears over our income. It's not about us," he pressed.

"The system will start to get worse."

Mr Mendelle compared legal aid, which celebrates its 60th anniversary this year, to the public-private distinction in British health services.

He said the NHS needed good staff to operate it and pointed out when they leave because they get paid more elsewhere, the whole NHS suffers.

The CBA is concerned that paying legal aid lawyers less will deter lawyers further from providing the work, which will undermine the criminal justice system.

"The criminal justice system depends on having people of ability and integrity in the system for prosecution and defence," he argued.

"If you don't pay them the sort of money - not the same, but comparable - to what they'll get elsewhere, they will leave."

Mr Mendelle has worked at the bar since 1981 and took silk in 2006. He specialises in defence crime for the most serious offences, including murder, armed robbery and multiple rape.

The CBA is the largest specialist bar association in England and Wales, representing over 3,600 criminal barristers.

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