
Sallie Bennett-Jenkins’ work/life juggling act makes my life as MD of Kysen and mum of three (including twins) look like a leisurely stroll around Covent Garden piazza. This lady balances a career as one of our top criminal QCs with a home life focussed on triplets of 16, twins of 13 plus a singleton of 11. No, you haven’t made a mistake with your arithmetic; that’s six children altogether!
I first
met 2 Hare Court’s Sallie a month ago when she kindly stepped in to do a Sky News interview for us
that a client was unable to fulfil (about typical sentences and time served on
the day Huhne and Pryce were released from custody). We met in Temple at the crack of dawn to
prepare for an 8.30 interview outside the Royal Courts of Justice and even at
this unreasonable hour of the morning she looked polished and utterly
immaculate. In the words of former
Evening Standard journalist, author and screenwriter Allison Pearson, “I don’t know how she does it”!
I spoke
to Sallie again this week, keen to hear her take on the current Legal Aid row and
how lawyers’ worries about threats to
access to justice are so often misrepresented by certain parts of the
media. As one of our top-earning
criminal QCs, her name was mentioned in a classic example this week: a Daily
Mail piece naming the lawyers on the so-called “legal aid gravy train”.
“The article published this
week is an example of the way the Government seeks to ignore the critical work
we do in relation to the liberty of the individual. Let’s
leave aside the fact that the figures
the Mail suggested I personally was paid per annum were nothing of the sort: they were sums
earned over two or three years, not one; they included VAT at 20% and made no allowance for income tax and practise expenses I have to pay, nor for
travel. None of this was explained. They do not reflect the fact
that barristers have to make arrangements for their own pensions, they have no
provision for payment if taken ill, and do not receive any paid maternity leave. The impression
deliberately created was highly misleading.
The far
more harmful problem however, is that the real issues in this debate are being distorted
beyond recognition, which really doesn’t help a sensible public
discussion. The press often use the term that we as lawyers practising
in criminal law are "defending criminals". We are not, we are
representing those accused of crime by the state and who are innocent until proved guilty. We have to remember some 45% of all people
charged turn out to be innocent. A robust defence of those accused of crime
lies at the very heart of a civilised system.
The example of Asil Nadir is often used to illustrate these sorts of pieces [indeed his photo
dominates the Mail’s spread on the topic this
week], as he famously rented a 23,000 pounds-a-month London
residence for the duration of his 1m pound legal-aid-funded
trial. But this simply isn’t representative.
It goes without saying, surely, that innocent people dragged through the criminal justice system need the protection and assurance that they will have access to the best legal representation possible. The availability of a robust defence is essential to protect the integrity of our justice system; and it is critical to ensure that those who are innocent are acquitted and that convictions against the guilty are secure, and can’t be unpicked on the basis that a defendant was denied access to a proper defence. After all, a rise in appeals resulting from an increase in unsafe convictions and miscarriages of justice will only mean a further drain on the public purse, so aside from the justice and human rights issues, skimping in this area is a false economy anyway.”
It goes without saying, surely, that innocent people dragged through the criminal justice system need the protection and assurance that they will have access to the best legal representation possible. The availability of a robust defence is essential to protect the integrity of our justice system; and it is critical to ensure that those who are innocent are acquitted and that convictions against the guilty are secure, and can’t be unpicked on the basis that a defendant was denied access to a proper defence. After all, a rise in appeals resulting from an increase in unsafe convictions and miscarriages of justice will only mean a further drain on the public purse, so aside from the justice and human rights issues, skimping in this area is a false economy anyway.”
The Daily
Mail piece quotes retired Court of Appeal judge Sir Anthony Hooper’s concerns that the withdrawal of defendants’ rights to choose their own legal representatives
particularly hits those needing specialist expertise. Sallie feels particularly strongly on this point: "In the last week, I have represented an 18 year old
boy of good character accused of murder. He had much against him: preconceptions about his particular community in London; about the behaviour of
young men men his age and his ethnicity; even his own timidity and inability to
put himself across worked against him.
The conduct of his case demanded specialist skills in
communicating with young people, those who are perhaps less able to express
themselves, in order to draw out particular features that related to his defence. Over the course of trial, we worked tirelessly, using all the
skills garnered over nearly 30 years in practise, to test the evidence and to
expose flaws in the prosecution case that lead to no evidence being offered
against him.
He left court able to return to his normal life rather than
facing a sentence of life imprisonment with a minimum term to be served that
would be expected to be in excess of 25 years. His family wrote to me, expressing their deep gratitude for
the way in which the case had been handled and explaining what an impact our
work had had on their lives. These are the sorts of stories that should be making the
headlines in the debate about Legal Aid and the work lawyers do in this
area. But of course they never do.”
Justice Secretary
Chris Grayling is
quoted in the Mail piece saying that it is simply “not sustainable for tax payers to keep funding a legal aid
system that has become one of the most expensive in the world”. But tell me, what happened to the Government’s pride in our world-leading legal system? When it comes to
our commercial courts, the Government is only too happy to promote the fact we
have one of the most enviable legal systems in the world, attracting cases from
all over the world because judgments from the UK are so respected (and therefore
more enforceable elsewhere). We all know
the statistics by now, that litigation involving former Russian oligarchs and other Eastern European parties accounted for an incredible 60% of
all commercial cases in London last year. It draws a very nice income stream in to the
UK legal system. But of course our domestic criminal justice system can’t offer financial returns on investment in this way. And in the absence of this, the Government
appears to see these points about world-leading quality as a waste of
tax-payers’ money. This thinking simply isn't just.
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