This excellent piece perhaps demonstrataes that the Save UK Justice message is not slipping under the radar as the title suggests.
Peter references a couple of articles by Nick Cohen and Francis Fitzgibbon (I am not going to nitpick over some inaccuracy in the latter but for clarity).
Cohen is spot on mirroring our own “research”:
They say they are taking on rich lawyers who have grown fat at the public’s expense. They must know this is not true. The average earnings of a legal aid lawyer is £25,000, compared with a nurse’s £29,500, a teacher’s £34,000, and an MP’s £65,000 (before expenses). The last increase in magistrate court fees was in 1993. There has been nothing but cuts since then.
It is Peters own shrewd final observations which stand out:
The proposals feature three common themes that run through much government policy making.
1. They privilege anecdote over evidence and ignore research.
2. They provide opportunities for private corporations to be given a monopoly, enabling them to make risk-free money from government contracts rather than entrepreneurial activity. (Eddie Stobart, the road haulage firm, intends to bid!).
3. The losers are the poor.
And we are seeing a slow, incremental centralisation of power in the hands of ministers who are not overly keen on criticism of their brilliant new ideas.
