Post by nickd on Mar 23, 2012 9:31:17 GMT 1
The Ministry of Justice (MOJ) does not have to make cuts in social welfare legal aid - there are alternative ways of finding the money and recouping losses in the MOJ budget elsewhere.
The Ministry of Justice is currently telling us all that £350 million pounds worth of cuts have to be made from the civil/criminal legal aid budget. In total around £2.1 billion is spent on legal aid, in excess of 50% goes on criminal cases; - this will remain almost untouched.
The biggest casualty will be the advice sector which faces by far the biggest impact if these cuts are made; our slice of the budget is around £100 million pounds. This predominantly funds CAB and law centres to provide advice essential 'social welfare' legal aid on complicated enquiries involving welfare benefits, debt and housing. The House of Lords recently voted against some of these cuts by making some welcome amendments to the Legal aid, sentencing & punishment of offender's bill (LASPO) but the risk is the government will try and overturn these in the House of Commons on the grounds of 'financial privilege'. The Government believes it has the right to say these cuts to the legal aid budget are essential in order to reduce the Nations's deficit.
There are other ways in which government could make financial savings and thus avoid having to make any cuts from our already low £100 million budget. This would help save many advice centres and CAB from closure; - many agencies have already had to stop providing services, some areas of social welfare advice are being cut by 100%. If government gets its way you will not be able to get any legal aid funded help if you have a welfare benefit problem. In the recent treasury budget, the government has offered us a sticking plaster in the form of a '£20 million sweetener' - it is no where near enough to provide the service which we currently provide. Our current budget is on a shoestring, yet it funds thousands of cases at a fixed fee of as little as £150 per case. To cut it by 80% does not make any sense in times likes these when we are being inundated with enquiries.
The Ministry of Justice is not looking at better managing its finances...
(1) The Ministry of Justice could do more to collect the £2 Billion pounds which the Public Accounts Committee says is owed in "crime assets and fines unpaid" which remain unpaid.
"Almost £2 billion is owed in unpaid court fines and confiscation orders, figures have shown." [/i]
Margaret Hodge(Public Accounts Committee)
"Officials chasing criminal assets and other confiscated items worth £1.3 billion expect at least £750 million of this never to be paid because they are either abroad or too well-hidden, a report by the Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) said.
Some £600 million is also owed in unpaid fines, despite a further £50 million being written off in 2010-11 as officials deemed there was little prospect of it ever being paid. Margaret Hodge, the committee's chairwoman, warned that the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) was not making enough progress in getting the money it is owed.
She said: "It has increased the amount of money collected through fines but this is being outpaced by the growth in fines outstanding. And the ministry acknowledges that 60% of the money outstanding under confiscation orders may never be recovered."
The PAC report on the department's finances said the value of outstanding confiscation orders has more than doubled from just over £500 million in 2006-07 to £1.25 billion in 2010-11 and £1.3 billion by the middle of 2011-12.
The report added: "Amounts owed under confiscation orders have risen dramatically. No one body has overall responsibility for overseeing collection of confiscation orders but all the sums are accounted for in the ministry's financial statements."
"The ministry, through the new cross-Government board, should take steps to set responsibilities for raising, collecting and accounting for confiscation orders to incentivise collection agencies to maximise sums collected."
It added that while the amount of fines collected has increased over the last five years, "the amount outstanding has increased even more".
"HM Courts and Tribunals Service needs to improve its collection rates and should focus in particular on the timeliness of collection given that it is easier to collect fines nearer the time of imposition," the report said.
It also criticised the MoJ for being "unable to deliver timely and accurate financial accounts".
money.uk.msn.com/%C2%A32bn-crime-assets-and-fines-unpaid
(2) The professional Bar Council has said government is wrong and have asked them to consider alternative ways of meeting the costs associated with criminal defence work by using using 'restrained assets'. - This would free up more cash for legal aid.
Here is the Bar Council's technical argument which they want the government to consider in the House of Commons.
Bar Council make recommendations to meet criminal defence costs out of restrained assets
"Clause 20: unfreezing restrained assets"
" A key recommended saving proposal within the Bar Council’s response to the legal aid consultation was for the Government to permit the use of restrained assets, subject to judicial control and with appropriate capping, as a source of funding for the defence of criminal proceedings.
At present, criminal defendants are unable to access these funds, so legal aid has to fund their defence to the criminal charges. An order may, however, be made for the funds to be unfrozen to pay their children’s private school fees. In our view, it is nothing short of scandalous that wealthy defendants continue to receive legal aid,
often for lengthy, complex and costly cases, at a time when the justice budget is under such strain.
To date, the Government’s main response to this proposal has been to argue that the sums restrained need to be preserved in the hope that, at some point further down the line, a confiscation order may be obtained upon conviction. This argument was undermined seriously by a report by the House of Commons’ Public Accounts Committee, published on 20 March, which revealed that the Government is currently owed £1.25bn in unpaid confiscation orders and that the Ministry of Justice predicts that as much as 60 per cent of that sum will never be paid.
live.barcouncil.netxtra.net/media/131011/bar_council_briefing_for_peers_for_the_third_reading_of_laspo.pdf
(3) The Ministry of Justice is allowing wealthy convicted fraudsters the discretion to play a 'get out of jail' card by agreeing to hand over their assets. In one case, two wealthy criminals were convicted in 2007 of serious fraud. They were at the time ordered to pay £92 million pounds each - a total of £184 million pounds or face a longer in jail. They elected to spend more time in jail, meaning we won't see any of the cash which these fraudsters should have handed over.
In 2010 these two wealthy fraudsters elected to spend longer in prison rather than hand over their £184 million pounds worth of assets.
"Two crime lords face having to sell two luxury Dubai tower blocks after being hit with a record court order to pay the taxman more than £92 million." (2007)
Syed Ahmed and Shakeel Ahmad were part of a 21-strong gang that stole more than £37 million in a complex VAT scam but now face a bill of more than double that.
The pair, who are currently serving seven-year jail terms, have been given two months to meet the confiscation order or face having an extra ten years put on their sentence. The massive bill, a record for HM Revenue and Customs, is based on a series of assets bought and owned by the gang, including luxury houses in London, high performance cars, and the construction of the two blocks of flats in Dubai which are now worth £80 million.
Assets also include a luxury flat in Knightsbridge worth £4.5 million, a £2m house in Harrow, a £1.5m house in Buckinghamshire and a riverside flat in Battersea worth £500,000
There are also high performance cars including a Ferrari 360 Modena convertible and a Mercedes 500CL.
Announcing a confiscation order of £92.3 million at Leicester Crown Court yesterday, His Honour Lord Justice Richard Flaux told the pair: "You are both complete liars and devious. You are adept at using others in an attempt to make your activities legitimate, creating a smokescreen to hide the value of your assets and conceal this from HMRC."
Ahmed, of Buckinghamshire and Ahmad, of Middlesex, were part of a "missing trader" fraud that first began being investigated in April 2002.
It involved the dishonest manipulation of the VAT system through the import and export of computer processing units (CPUs).
There's no doubt that these two wealthy criminals have the cash to pay what they owe. Rather than hand over their £184 million in assets, it looks like we will all be meeting the cost of locking them up for a longer spell in jail and going without much needed cash.
More deserving individuals needing essential social welfare legal aid will go without help.
At the end of their sentences (it would be good to know when they are due to be released) these two fraudsters will be able to go back to their plush multi-million pound hotels in Dubai.
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/7873501/Crime-lords-hit-for-record-confiscation-order.html