“In truth, the credit lies in love and kindness.”

Or in gullibility. This guy “lost” his passport c.25 years ago, and apparently took no action to recover or replace it. He has also presumably mislaid his immigration papers, if he ever had any of course.

“In April 2013 the guillotine comes down on Legal Aid. There will be no funding for Paulie to straighten out his immigration papers, for the State has passed seamlessly from the proposition that the application system should be efficient and humane to the conclusion that there is therefore no need for lawyers.”

And you conclude that the state should fund a lawyer for Paulie when (a) as you point out, you as his lawyer failed to spot the technicality that the judge noticed and you had little responsibility for the result of his case, and (b) Paulie seems to be largely responsible for his own misfortunes by imprudently not looking after his documentation.

@1:

In short, blame the victim.

“Wurl, ‘e must be dodgy, ‘e’s a forriner, innit?”

Dolt.

It’d be nice if there were more Paulies and fewer Tones in the world, wouldn’t it?

Nice heartwarming story, but for the chilling coda.

@ 1 TONE

Speaking for the crap-at-keeping-hold-of-paperwork demographic, I find it fully believable that someone could lose their immigration docs and (if they weren’t in the habit of going abroad) passport over a lifetime, and also forget to get them replaced. I still don’t have an National Insurance card since mine was stolen along with the rest of my wallet about 10 years ago.

Pretty much every argument being made by the bloggertarian right essentially boils down to;

(1) The victims are making it up,

or

(2) The victims are responsbile for their own suffering

Unless the victims concerned are white, male, middle aged and have been ‘victimised’ for:

(1) Speeding
(2) Saying racist things
(3) beating up their wives.

CG @ 4:

You may have lost your NI card – and I don’t know where mine is, btw – but I’m sure you know where to start looking for your NI number. So your NI card and Paulie’s passport and immigration documents are not really comparable in this respect. I know several immigrants who have settled here, and their most precious possession is their UK passport. Yet we are asked to believe that Paulie lost his passport c.25 years ago and did nothing about it, that he also lost all his immigration documents, that he has lived and worked here for c.25 years but he has no tax, medical or other records that can confirm this. Now, perhaps all this can be explained (eg major house fire, bureaucratic incompetence), mental health issues; but it is not unreasonable to be a little sceptical…

@2: What victim? I find it interesting that you regard this guy as one. Why? Either he’s a liar or very unfortunate; but he’s not a victim.

@2, 3 and 5: You seem to think that it morally reprehensible to be sceptical, which I find soft-headed and half-witted. Have you no critical faculties? Or they simply suspended when a matter concerns race or immigration?

I was going to make the same comments as Tone. There is something about this story that just isn’t right. If he had paid tax and NI contributions for all of the time claimed then he exists, no ifs or buts, end of story.

The country which issued the passport isn’t mentioned. The UK passport Agency has a record of every document issued since the very first. All it would take was a phone call and then the filling out of an application form. I have held and lost UK passports on many occasions since my first one in 1964 and all it ever took was to reapply, simples.

As for the Housing Benefit this story doesn’t wash either. O

I was cut off before I finished. The critical period of Housing Benefit is at the first application. That is when everything is checked and rechecked. From there on in it is simply a matter of the landlord reissuing a tenancy regularly, usually every six months if private.

I agree cuts to legal aid are making things difficult for everyone who can’t afford a solicitor and that is most of us. Like the NHS legal aid helped the poorest and was one of the cornerstones of the policies of the post war Labour government.

Sorry, this story is just full of holes and the big give away is the smear that white people didn’t want to do menial jobs. My family have performed them for generations and now well past retirement age I am still working as a builder so take your white guilt somewhere else.

A little information from the Gummint on lost passports.

It is vital that you report a lost or stolen passport as soon as possible. If your passport is stolen, you should report it to the police at once.

You can report your passport as lost or stolen and apply for a replacement passport at the same time if you’re:
•a British national
•in the UK at the time of applying

If you’re not in the UK or don’t want to replace your passport straight away, you should report it as lost or stolen. See ‘Report a lost or stolen passport’ for more information.

It’salso worth pointing out that, if your passport goes missing and you do nothing about it this can lead to armed police waking you up at 5.00am as they may well believe that YOU are the one who has committed a crime if your passport has fallen into the wrong hands as so many missing passports do.

Passports are valuable to criminals. I’m sorry, but I find it puzzling that someone just lost a passport in and didn’t do something about it – especially someone coming from a part of the world where British passports are highly prized.

Sorry, this story is just full of holes and the big give away is the smear that white people didn’t want to do menial jobs. My family have performed them for generations and now well past retirement age I am still working as a builder so take your white guilt somewhere else.

As have my family too. There were always plenty of people in this country prepared to do the shit jobs, we just wanted fair pay for doing them. The whole mass imigration thing had more to do with the price of sugar dropping because companies over here started to buy cheap Cuban sugar, thus pushing down the wages of people in Jamaica and other islands in the then British WI. It was simply an early example of what we now call neo-liberal economics. British subjects being fucked over by the wealthy. As a result, they – quite reasonably – came here for work, encouraged by a cynical government who knew that the days of empire where over and thought they’d better import an empire instead – regardless of how much it damaged wages and conditions for those at the bottom, both black and white.

The working classes of all races and colours have always been regarded as cheap, expendable labour by the middle and upper classes, regardless of the crap they spout. Look at the way the middle classes snidely refer to the white working classes as “racist chavs”. The joke is though, it was the white working class who shacked up with the immigrants to produce the mixed race people on our streets now. The middle classes, for all their anti-racist rhetoric weren’t going to have Tarquin or Jemima shacking up with “one of them”.

Also, what were all of his relations who obtained British citizenship doing while all this was going on? He had a whole series of ready made witnesses which he doesn’t seem to have wanted to call.

3. john b

It’d be nice if there were more Paulies and fewer Tones in the world, wouldn’t it?

Except the Tories pay for the Paulies. Britain would look like Nigeria. Well maybe that is too harsh. Guyana perhaps. But without their weather.

This is one of the stupidest stories I have heard in a while. It shows what an utter farce our immigration policy is. And how stupid local councils are at bending the rules and putting their ideological preferences ahead of the public interest.

We should also factor in the issue of identity theft.

Remember the film The Day of the Jackal – where the assassin applies for a passport in the name of someone he knows died as a child.

That was fiction, and may not be possible – but in the scenario painted here – how about this: Gangs in Jamaica keep a look-out for people moving back to Jamaica to stay after many years in the UK.

They then pass the details of that person to accomplices in the UK – who sell it on to someone here without a legal status, who needs an ID to assume.

Is there anything in the picture as painted here – than could rule out the identy-theft possibility?

It’s worth a lot of money ( a lifetime of rent and benefits) – so identity theft on some kind of basis must be attempted by some.

> Sadly, the Border Agency has lost most of its documentation prior to 1986, when they computerised.

That fact may be known to the identity gangs – and work in their favour: the passport photo of the real person is lost too !

SMFS, who’s paying for anyone? Dude worked in the UK all his life, paid his dues.

‘My family have performed them for generations and now well past retirement age I am still working as a builder so take your white guilt somewhere else.’

– you can’t use your own personal experience and pass it off as ‘all white people do menial jobs’.

I love how a story that’s based on someone who has been the victim of widespread systemic oppression and racism has disintegrated into ‘well he shouldn’t have been so careless!’ and ‘what about identity theft?’ This isn’t about Paulie, per se, this is about a wider context.

That’s not the point of the story – the point is that we live in a society that despite ‘foreigners’ paying the same tax as everybody else, they (as human beings) are subject to unfair laws that we aren’t just because ‘oh well, they’re not from this country anyway’.

@ 6 TONE

“Yet we are asked to believe that Paulie lost his passport c.25 years ago and did nothing about it, that he also lost all his immigration documents, that he has lived and worked here for c.25 years but he has no tax, medical or other records that can confirm this.”

Are we? The OP claims he’s paid his taxes, and I don’t see how that could be confirmed without tax records. I don’t think anyone’s saying he had *no* official documentation, just not the specific pieces he needed.

Regarding the immigrations papers and passport, some conjecture based on the OP: it’s claimed that the Border Agency don’t have full records dating back to when he moved here, so replacing immigration papers might not be possible… and I’m guessing a passport is hard to get without immigration papers or a British birth certificate.

CG @ 16:

If he’s been in this country for c.25 years and can prove it by reference to tax and medical records, his case for staying in the UK is very strong. The fact that his case is dragging on suggests he might well not have this evidence…

Btw, on a different tack, the OP “is very angry at the cuts to Legal Aid that harm vulnerable people”, yet he seems to have represented his client inadequately – by missing the technicality that the judge spotted – and attributes his client’s success at this stage to others. So why the necessity for legal aid – which is in part a job-creation scheme for lawyers – in his case at least?

There are definitely people who find themselves in Kafkaesque situations with immigration laws, such as the brother of a friend of mine. Their mother came from the Carribean when she was four years old. My friend was born here, in the mid-70s and was automatically a British citizen. Her brother was born after the rules changed in 1982, so wasn’t a British citizen. The mother died young, half way through the process of becoming British. The brother has never had a passport – in other words, he’s never left Britain, but he’s being told that he’ll have to go to the island his mother left aged four, a country he’s never visited, to get a passport there, to come back to the country of his birth and lifetime residence.

This is different to the case above, but I’m sure there are many people who came here when the rules weren’t so protectionist who are in similar positions, but I don’t see any reason to bandy charges of racist about. If you think British immigration bureaucrats are petty and vindictive, try the Jamaican ones!

Interesting that the author of this article hasn’t replied to give us more detail. I have tried to write on his pwn blog but comments are blocked or don’t get through. He seems to work at Hackney Law Centre so I will email him there.

@ 17 TONE

“If he’s been in this country for c.25 years and can prove it by reference to tax and medical records, his case for staying in the UK is very strong. The fact that his case is dragging on suggests he might well not have this evidence…”

Or the judge might have found in his favour *because* he had this evidence, or something like it.

“Btw, on a different tack, the OP “is very angry at the cuts to Legal Aid that harm vulnerable people”, yet he seems to have represented his client inadequately – by missing the technicality that the judge spotted – and attributes his client’s success at this stage to others. So why the necessity for legal aid – which is in part a job-creation scheme for lawyers – in his case at least?”

Lawyers aren’t perfect, and his attribution of the success to other people may at least in part be modesty. In any case, this is ad hominem.

Legal aid is needed so vulnerable people can at least try to get a fair deal under the law. I don’t see anything in the OP to contradict that.

@Tone #1:

And you conclude that the state should fund a lawyer for Paulie when (a) as you point out, you as his lawyer failed to spot the technicality that the judge noticed and you had little responsibility for the result of his case

Yes, he does, correctly; and you’ve missed the point. Benefits law combined with immigration law is an area of law so technical that even a highly experienced and competent lawyer (and Nat is very definitely both) can miss technicalities, particularly when under the pressure that working in an underfunded and overworked Law Centre (but I repeat myself) imposes; how exactly is it that an argument to leave the Paulies of this world struggling with it without any legal assistance? It is an argument for either (preferably) simplifying the law, or increasing the funding available for lawyers.

@TONE #17:

So why the necessity for legal aid – which is in part a job-creation scheme for lawyers – in his case at least?

Good throwaway saloon bar slur; but do you have any actual arguments or evidence for this claim?

CG @ 20:

“Or the judge might have found in his favour *because* he had this evidence, or something like it”

The OP gives no reason for thinking this is the case. And such evidence would not be a “technicality”, which is what the OP says determined the judge’s ruling.

“Legal aid is needed so vulnerable people can at least try to get a fair deal under the law.”

Up to a point, Lord Copper. My point is that legal aid was apparently unnecessary in this case.

RL @ 21:

“how exactly is it that an argument to leave the Paulies of this world struggling with it without any legal assistance?” Because legal representation was apparently not necessary in this case – Paulie would apparently have achieved the same result without his lawyer who seems to have been somewhat inexperienced in the areas under discussion by the court.

RL @ 22: Lawyers want Legal Aid increased because it provides them with work, passes the bill to the state and means they don’t have to lower unduly their often excessive charges. I’d call that “in part a job creation scheme”. I’m not opposed to legal aid in principle, nor to lawyers (my daughter, mother-in-law and son-in-law all belong to the profession); but I think Bernard Shaw’s (?) maxim about all professions being conspiracies against the public interest contains more than a grain of truth.

@TONE #23:

“how exactly is it that an argument to leave the Paulies of this world struggling with it without any legal assistance?” Because legal representation was apparently not necessary in this case – Paulie would apparently have achieved the same result without his lawyer who seems to have been somewhat inexperienced in the areas under discussion by the court.

I’m still not getting it; but perhaps I labour under the disadvantage of knowing that not all tribunal chairs will both spot and raise highly technical points; particularly where the point doesn’t make a substantive difference in the long run. What the Paulies of this world need is a lawyer who will do so – they won’t be able to do so themselves, and can’t rely upon the tribunal chair.

We are both handicapped by not knowing what the technical point was – perhaps Nat can chime in and let us know – but missing such a point is an indicator neither of inexperience nor of incompetence.

Lawyers want Legal Aid increased because it provides them with work, passes the bill to the state and means they don’t have to lower unduly their often excessive charges.

To even start being accurate, that sentence should start “Lawyers don’t want Legal Aid further reduced…”. In general, Legal Aid payment rates have fallen over the last 15 years, during which period coverage has also been reduced.

Strange as it may sound to your ears, many lawyers do Legal Aid work because they feel a responsibility to help those who need help. A firm capable of making a profit on 100% Legal Aid work would be able to make a profit on virtually anything; and a larger profit to boot.

I really don’t know what you mean by “don’t have to lower unduly their…charges” (removing the pejorative to concentrate on the substantive). Given the pittance paid out of the public purse for Legal Aid work, taking on Legal Aid work means that to receive the same income overall the firm has to increase, not reduce, its charging rates to non-Legal Aid clients.

Even successfully conducted Legally-Aided civil litigation only pays at the market rate; so there is no subsidy there.

Bernard Shaw wasn’t entirely wrong – but he is more right the closer to the City you go.

14. John b

who’s paying for anyone? Dude worked in the UK all his life, paid his dues.

He says he has. But not all his life. He is on the dole. He was three years ago too. Now perhaps he has. But I bet he has lost those documents too. The OP offers no proof whatsoever.

But either way it is irrelevant. We have a progressive tax system. Sort of. Someone in the lower half of the income distribution will be taking money one way or another from all the people in the upper half every day. It is the nature of the system. You cannot have a society made up of hospital porters. Any more than you can with only brain surgeons. But if you had to choose all of one or all of the other, you are much better off choosing the brain surgeons.

21. Robin Levett

It is an argument for either (preferably) simplifying the law, or increasing the funding available for lawyers.

We are ruled by lawyers. These laws were drawn up by lawyers. They are administered by lawyers. They are litigated by lawyers. They are judged by former lawyers. Naturally they are complex, as you say. Which means that they provide lots and lots of work for lawyers. They will never be simplified. If any lawyers wanted simpler laws, we would have simpler laws. And then their friends and pupils still in practice would be poorer. Much better to open the wallets of ordinary British people by forcing them to pay for endless expensive litigation.

Robin Levett

What the Paulies of this world need is a lawyer who will do so – they won’t be able to do so themselves, and can’t rely upon the tribunal chair.

Perhaps. But what we need is a simple and quick system that sends more people home sooner. Or better yet discourages them from coming.

Strange as it may sound to your ears, many lawyers do Legal Aid work because they feel a responsibility to help those who need help. A firm capable of making a profit on 100% Legal Aid work would be able to make a profit on virtually anything; and a larger profit to boot.

And some are earning £800,000 a year from it. I am sure some lawyers do Legal Aid work because they feel a responsibility. Just as they would do pro bono work without legal aid because they feel a responsibility. Whether the rest of us benefit from that depends on what sort of pro bono work they do. You make an interesting claim – why do you think the skills needed for Legal Aid work, by far and away I would guess focused on immigration, welfare and other clients of the welfare state, would transfer to the real world of, say, corporate law? In fact I would guess you know that the sort of bleeding hearts who focus on hard luck immigration stories have few if any skills that could transfer to other areas of the law. Which is why Legal Aid practice is so poorly respected.

Given the pittance paid out of the public purse for Legal Aid work, taking on Legal Aid work means that to receive the same income overall the firm has to increase, not reduce, its charging rates to non-Legal Aid clients.

Ummm, no. You assume that the amount of legal work is fixed somehow. A firm can simply do more work. Half arsed of course, but there you go. As long as they are not grossly incompetent, and really who is going to care when it comes to Legal Aid work if they are? They can simply take more clients. You also seem to ignore the fact that legal work expands to fill all funding available for it. If we did not pay lawyers to litigate, a lot of litigation would not take place. The more litigation we pay for, the more work there is for lawyers, the more students are trained and so on. If we stopped funding Legal Aid some firms would go out of business. So we are funding a small industry that would otherwise not exist.

Even successfully conducted Legally-Aided civil litigation only pays at the market rate; so there is no subsidy there.

That is like saying we pay violin players in the Opera the market rate and so there is no subsidy to the English National Opera. That is plainly false.

RL @ 24:

“Bernard Shaw wasn’t entirely wrong – but he is more right the closer to the City you go.”

I think you’ve overlooked the medical profession, many of whom will be striking this coming week in order to preserve their average £60K pa pensions funded by the public purse. As for the City, banking etc are not professions in the strong sense of the word – ie they are not self-regulating, nor do they have internal disciplinary procedures.

@SMFS #21:

<blockquote.That is like saying we pay violin players in the Opera the market rate and so there is no subsidy to the English National Opera. That is plainly false.

Since the reference was, in context, to cross-subsidy within a legal practice, it is plainly true. Legal Aid work, as a whole, is paid far below the market rate for legal work. Since the areas of Legal Aid work that aren’t paid at the Legal Aid pittance are paid at no more than market rates, overall there can be no financial advantage to a firm to take on Legal Aid work instead of private work.

And if it is really the case that (i) lawyers are in control of everything and (ii) the Legal Aid scheme’s sole reason for existence is to provide work for lawyers, don;t you think that they might have paid it a little better?

You assume that the amount of legal work is fixed somehow. A firm can simply do more work.

…employing more staff in more office space with more IT costs, rent, heating etc etc etc. Legal Aid work doesn;t do itself. If doing some work makes a loss, then doing more makes a bigger loss. Have you ever run a business of any kind?

If we stopped funding Legal Aid some firms would go out of business. So we are funding a small industry that would otherwise not exist.

That is true – and getting smaller by the cut. When however the poor in society are entirely cut off from access to legal assistance, society as a whole will be the poorer for it.

This bit was good:

What the Paulies of this world need is a lawyer who will do so – they won’t be able to do so themselves, and can’t rely upon the tribunal chair.

Perhaps. But what we need is a simple and quick system that sends more people home sooner. Or better yet discourages them from coming.

Did you miss that Paulie is a Brish citizen – that home is therefore here in the UK?

They will never be simplified. If any lawyers wanted simpler laws, we would have simpler laws.

There is paranoid cynicism, and there is SMFS.

If, just as an example, people would only just follow the laws as written and intended, and not try to find loopholes, laws could be simpler.

Robin Levett

>> They will never be simplified. If any lawyers wanted simpler laws, we would have simpler laws.
> There is paranoid cynicism, and there is SMFS.

No Robin, you can’t rule out a perspective that looks at the incentives of the players, as paranoia!
It’s a valid perspective to look at any human institution from.

Down at my GPs surgery, that have had a bunch of their high-wattage outside lights on 24/7 for some months.
What incentive do the staff there have to get the lights fixed so they only come on in the dark ?
The fact the GP practise does not pay the electricity bill – means that there is no financial incentive for them to fix the lights. (the local PCT pays).

In the case of lawyers – they charge their clients an hourly rate.
If Lawyers collectively worked on simplifying laws, then cases would be finished with fewer billable hours for lawyers.

Why would Turkeys (lawyers) vote for Christmas (reduce ther own income) !

So their IS an incentive built into the system, that means that overall, lawyers collectively will not lobby for simplification.

If you want a very clear specific of that – just an ancedotal – I had experience of an Employment Tribunal recently with some glaring proofs that the system is by design not focused on Justice – that solicitors are quite happy to be part of a system that glaringly fails to deliver justice.

ET panels include a solicitor chairperson as one of the 3. And there will also likely be solicitors representing one or both of the parties.

If the Solicitor Chairpersons got together to simply the system – eg changed the way the so called ‘Pre Hearing Review’ worked to turn it into a proper Triage based review, that really checked first the facts on the table at the start of the case: that would save time in cases, and save the legal costs of the parties.
Some cases would be thrown out at PHR – bring quicker justice to all, and saving legals costs for both parties.

That doesn’t happen, because the Solicitor Chairpersons would be reducing the revenue streams for themselves (when they spend time as mere solicitors representing the parties).

The other glaring proofs that the system cares not about Justice for the parties in the dispute:

i) after my case was heard, the court decided that nothing would happen for 4 weeks! Nothing at all.
Not until the same panel of 3 had their next scheduled 1-hour slot together: when they would dig out their notes, and try to remember the case: and would make their decision! Why on earth don’t they schedule the decision to happen the same day ! Justice is delayed by 1 month for that stupidity.

ii) Even after the panel meet and decide, they told me it would be up to 4 weeks before I’d receive a letter from the court ! It did indeed take 4 weeks !
Again Justice delayed. And again, if the system is run ultimately (cynically !) by solicitors for solicitors – then there will be now and again be periods when parties have to wait 4 weeks just for a letter to be typed.
Whereas if the system was run with justice in mind, then that would never happen (‘justice delayed is justice denied’), the parties would see that it is unacceptable and fix it (temp typists? or etc?)

Sorry about the long post Robin, – but your willingness to make unjust accusations of paranoia in this instance were just uncalled for.

It is legitimate to argue that lawyers who make their living doing Legal Aid, have financial and career incentives in the system that will colour how they overall as a group want the system to change, or not change.

Robin Levett:

SMFS and JV have more than answered your points.

Can I simply add that Nathaniel is arguing for more legal aid by using an example of a case that (as reported) did not require legal representation because the lawyer (as reported) did not achieve any noticeable difference in the result?

Hardly convincing, is it?

CG, above @ 20, claims my argument is the ‘argumentum ad hominem’. It isn’t: that fallacy involves belittling an opponent rather than tackling his arguments or using an allegedly negative characteristic of the opponent to distract from his argument….

However, it is not an argumentum ad hominem to point out that someone (like Nathaniel) is engaged in special pleading – as a law centre lawyer he has an obvious interest in promoting legal aid (yet he does not declare his interest publicly!) and that he, the legal aid lawyer, did not help to achieve the client’s positive result…

And just one counter-example casts some doubt on the claim that ‘Legal aid funding should not be reduced’…An

@JV #29:

There’s quite a lot here to deal with.

First, there is the premise that lawyers “write [unnecessarily] complex laws” (as well as the conclusory allegation that they do so to feather their own nests).

Lawyers do not write unnecessarily complex laws. They seek to write simple laws, using well-understood concepts. When the laws are applied to cases not obviously expressly dealt with in the legislation, then other principles and concepts are brought to bear. It is in that application of those laws to people and situations, often non-obvious when the law was written, that complexity arises.

If those charged with writing law were to take the opposite course, and write the laws so as to cover every conceivable case, there would be some substance to the charge.

The last century and a half have seen massive simplification of the law and legal practice – mostly unnoticed by those not directly involved. To take one example, the Land Law reforms of 1922-26 hacked out huge swathes of complex medieval law and learning.

In the case of lawyers – they charge their clients an hourly rate.
If Lawyers collectively worked on simplifying laws, then cases would be finished with fewer billable hours for lawyers.

Why would Turkeys (lawyers) vote for Christmas (reduce ther own income) !

You are here doing precisely what I was accused of doing upthread; assuming that there is a set amount of legal work to be done – that there is no unmet legal need. That is simply untrue. If cases are finished with fewer billable hours for lawyers, then those lawyers will have billable time available to take on other cases. Because the work is now being done more cheaply, the market for the work expands; so income levels are maintained. Job-satisfaction increases as well – so it’s a win-win.

Turning to your anecdote:

If the Solicitor Chairpersons got together to simply the system – eg changed the way the so called ‘Pre Hearing Review’ worked to turn it into a proper Triage based review, that really checked first the facts on the table at the start of the case: that would save time in cases, and save the legal costs of the parties.

Your first problem is in assuming that the legally qualified Employment Judge (who can be either a solicitor or a barrister) actually has any power within the bureaucracy. Most EJs are part-time, turning up when requested. The few that are full-time and therefore may have some power, simply by being there (they have no formal power to change procedures, still less the procedural law by which the ET operates), by definition aren’t also practising as employment lawyers.

Your second problem is assuming that the way the ET was set up like this was for the benefit of the lawyers. Nothing could be further from the truth. The ITs (forerunners of today’s ETs) were set up with the deliberate intention of making lawyers unnecessary. The fact that there is in general no costs-transfer within the procedure is testament to that; the idea was that if costs were transferred as a matter of course, then (i) employers would be encouraged to use lawyers and (ii) employees would be discouraged from bringing legitimate claims. The procedures were intended to be non-technical, so that lawyers would be unnecessary.

It is that very intended lack of procedural technicality in procedure that leads to the reluctance of ETs to strike out claims at PHR stage unless it is crystal clear that there is no claim there; leeway is given to the parties to get it right on the day, in the broader interests of justice.

i) after my case was heard, the court decided that nothing would happen for 4 weeks! Nothing at all.
Not until the same panel of 3 had their next scheduled 1-hour slot together: when they would dig out their notes, and try to remember the case: and would make their decision! Why on earth don’t they schedule the decision to happen the same day ! Justice is delayed by 1 month for that stupidity.

I’m not here to defend the procedure of the ETs. Support for the idea however that this was in some way was to the benefit of the EJ is unclear. EJs sit for a minimum of 30 days per year; lay members for 15. It is not surprising that they will not sit together for long periods; but it is the lay members whose absenc eis most likely to be the cause of delay. As for why they didn’t schedule consideration time for the same day; I don’t know enough about the facts of your case. I don’t know whether your case went short, or whether indeed your case overlapped into another case in the afternoon (or even what part of the day your case took up).

ii) Even after the panel meet and decide, they told me it would be up to 4 weeks before I’d receive a letter from the court ! It did indeed take 4 weeks !
Again Justice delayed. And again, if the system is run ultimately (cynically !) by solicitors for solicitors – then there will be now and again be periods when parties have to wait 4 weeks just for a letter to be typed.

Whereas if the system was run with justice in mind, then that would never happen (‘justice delayed is justice denied’), the parties would see that it is unacceptable and fix it (temp typists? or etc?)

Again, I don’t know the facts of your case – BUT: if we are talking about a substantive hearing, with a meeting subsequently to consider the decision, I can see reasons – of justice – for there being a subsequent delay. Specifically, it is only once the decision is reached that it is possible for the Employment Judge to draft the reasons for that decision, and thereafter to circulate that draft to the lay members for agreement and comment. For the EJ to turn up at the consideration meeting witha decision already written based upon his own view of the case, without input from the lay members, is an obvious no-no.

It is legitimate to argue that lawyers who make their living doing Legal Aid, have financial and career incentives in the system that will colour how they overall as a group want the system to change, or not change.

Indeed, but that is hardly relevant. Successive Governments have made clear that the views of those on the coalface of Legal Aid are at best an irritant and at all times are to be ignored. If it were the case that the provision of civil Legal Aid had been increasing over the last few decades, that Legal Aid pay rates had been increasing, and that lawyers had been increasingly taking on Legal Aid work as a result, then there might have been a threshold of credibility to the claim that SMFS made. Since here in the real world the scope of work within Legal Aid has been steadily reduced, pay rates have been driven downards, and firms are giving up Legal Aid as a result, that threshold has clearly not been met.

My comment, by the way, on SMFS’s comment related to the claim that lawyers deliberately make law complex so as to stay in business. That remains as obviously paranoid now as it did before your comment.

@TONE #30:

Can I simply add that Nathaniel is arguing for more legal aid by using an example of a case that (as reported) did not require legal representation because the lawyer (as reported) did not achieve any noticeable difference in the result?

No; he is arguing for legal aid not to be withdrawn by using an example of a case which required better legal representation – whether, as you believe because of incompetence or, as I believe, because lawyers pick up more technical points if they have the time to consider cases – to ensure a difference in the result. That the tribunal chair on this occasion noticed the technicality is nothing to the point.

This bit I don’t understand:

However, it is not an argumentum ad hominem to point out that someone (like Nathaniel) is engaged in special pleading – as a law centre lawyer he has an obvious interest in promoting legal aid (yet he does not declare his interest publicly!)

If he has an “obvious interest” from being a law centre lawyer – then his declaration of being a law centre lawyer is an obvious declaration of his interest. Nat makes clear that the work he was doing was this time funded by legal aid, but that this time next year it will not be. Where is the lack of declaration of interest?