Two things

Hello! I'm on holiday, but just a note to say firstly,  I have many incredibly important opinions about sea otters to share with you in today's Observer ; and secondly that the first episode of the new series of Souvenir Programme will be on BBC Radio 4 at 6:30 this Tuesday. Hope you enjoy one, or the other, or even both.

Legal Aid Reforms - making 'One law for the rich' official government policy.

It's not about him.

Yesterday I was on both The Now Show and my high horse, talking about Legal Aid reforms. It will be repeated on BBC Radio 4 at 12.30 today, and after that it will be available on iplayer here for a week, and on the Friday Night Comedy podcast.




Here is a transcript of the piece, including a couple of extra bits that didn't make the edit.

JOHN

Look, I know the government have to make cuts. I wish they weren’t quite so relentlessly targeted at the poorest and most vulnerable members of society; and it would be nice if while enacting them certain ministers could try to look a little less obviously like they’re having the time of their lives, but I get they have to happen somewhere, and it’s naïve to object to them all.


So, when you hear this week that the government are making cuts to legal aid without going through parliament, and lawyers and judges are protesting them, there’s a bit of a temptation to go… do you know, I might sit this one out. I mean, it sounds really complicated, and quite boring, and, hey, at least they’re sticking it to the lawyers! We all hate lawyers, don’t we, for some reason. Bloody lawyers. With their wigs, and their… laws. Boo.

And sure enough, these reforms certainly do hurt lawyers, albeit mainly high street solicitors and legal aid firms, which even if you do go along with the ‘all lawyers are blood-sucking vampires’ line is like Van Helsing starting off by going after Count Duckula. But it turns out the other people the reforms really hurt are- well I never- the poorest and most vulnerable members of society. Wow, the government have really a bee in their bonnet about those guys, don’t they? It’s like they’re their nemesis or something…


HUGH
Ah, the poorest and most vulnerable members of society, we meet again. But this time… the advantage is mine! And indeed it was last time, and every time. Anyway, brace yourself, here comes a kicking!


JOHN
And the nature of this particular kicking is this:


First, Legal Aid will have an eligibility threshold of thirty seven and a half thousand pounds. To be fair, that doesn’t seem like the worst idea in the world. And I can be confident about that, because right there next to it, as if deliberately placed for purposes of comparison, are two of the worst ideas in the world. One. Defendants will no longer have the right to choose their own lawyer. Two. Legal Aid contracts will be awarded, on the basis of price competitive tender, ie who’s cheapest, to private companies. Like Tesco and Eddie Stobart. You know, the lorry guy. Though I’m sure he’s also an excellent lawyer.

So, instead of you picking a solicitor on the basis of how well you think they’ll represent you, the new plan is that the government will choose one for you, on the basis of how cheap they are. And they will be very cheap indeed – a minimum of 17.5% below current rates, but of course with competitive tendering, it’s all about how low can you go… the floor’s the limit! You might almost wonder whether this could affect the quality of the representation in any way at all. But the government assure us it will not, and of course they’re right. We all know from our own lives that the cheaper you go, the more the quality stays exactly the same. But just out of curiosity, how do they intend to ensure quality? Well, Chris Grayling, Minister for Justice and dispenser of none, has given a clear and simple answer- he doesn’t know. Not yet. That’s one of the things they’ll work out now they’ve had the consultation. But they’ve worked out what they want to do, and precisely how much money they know it’ll save, somehow – that’s the important thing, surely? They can fill in the boring ‘how the hell will it work’ stuff later.


And hey, at least now you won't have to worry about choosing a solicitor, or be able to. No, even though everywhere else the government is obsessed with getting us to choose - choose our doctor, our school, our hospital - when it comes to poor people who’ve been arrested, suddenly Daddy knows best. Never mind if you don’t trust the solicitor you’ve been given, or if you have a mental illness your regular solicitor understands, or if you’re an ex serving soldier, hoping to use one of the firms which exist now – but won’t for much longer – that specialise in your circumstances. No, whatever your situation, you’ll be just be given some bloke from Eddie Stobart Lawyers the government thinks is best, and like it. And by ‘best’, I literally mean ‘cheapest’. Sir Anthony Hooper, a former court of appeal judge, put the ex-soldier example to Tory MP Bob Neill on the Today Programme. Mr Neill responded:


STEVE
"Well, that relates to a tiny minority of cases…"


JOHN
Oh, no Bob! No! That’s not the argument I want to hear you make. I want to hear how these plans won’t result in people being denied a fair trial, not how there won’t be all that many of them, so hey ho.  To be fair, Mr Neill eventually went say he thought such a case would be ‘picked up’. He didn’t explain how, or by whom. Roving bands of soldier detectors? The benevolent hand of God? Who knows. He just sort of thought it would probably all be alright. And anyway, he had more pressing concerns.  He went on to say:


STEVE
"I don’t actually think the public reckons it should be paying for repeat offenders going back to their regular solicitors."


JOHN
Yeah, well, he’s right. I only want to pay for solicitors for the innocent ones. Is there a way I can do that? An opt out box on my tax form or something?


That is what these changes absolutely reek of – the sense of, well, they’ve been arrested, and they’re too poor to pay a lawyer... they probably did it. Or if they didn’t do that, they probably did something. Wouldn’t be in court otherwise. Stands to reason, dunnit?


Particularly if you compound your mistake by wilfully being foreign. Another nasty little amendment is that legal aid will now only be available if you’re not only legally resident in Britain, but have lived here for at least twelve months. And if you haven’t, or you have but can’t prove it, because for instance you’ve fled from your abusive husband’s house, then no domestic abuse trial for you, my funny foreign friend. Should have thought of that before you decided to be not from round here.


So far, so depressing. But here’s the part that for me lifts it out from merely misguided and mean to absolutely ridiculous, and a bit evil.  The bargain basement Eddie Stobart legal aid lawyers will be paid a flat fee, regardless of results, and best of all, regardless of whether the client pleads Guilty, which is quick and cheap, or Not Guilty, which is not. Yes. Chris Grayling has actually created a system where privately run legal aid firms – legal aid firms – have a direct financial incentive to persuade their clients to plead guilty. Whilst simultaneously being under enormous pressure to slash costs to the bone in order to put in a tender low enough to keep the contract.


Meanwhile, the career crims who annoy Mr Neill so much tend to trust that 'regular solicitor' of theirs, and take their advice if they suggest they’d be better off pleading guilty. But they’re certainly not going to take that advice from Eddie McTesco in his My First Lawyer costume, so they’ll start pleading Not Guilty to everything.

So well done, Chris Grayling, you’ve pulled off the double. Innocent people encouraged to plead Guilty; guilty people to plead Not Guilty. What a merry madcap world of misrule you have created, Mr Grayling, you absolute tit.


This reform will surely lead to a certain number of innocent people going to prison because they’re scared and vulnerable, and their solicitor, with one eye on the meter, advises them they’ll get a shorter sentence that way. How large does that number have to be before it’s not worth the savings?


So, if you think this might, after all, not be the one to sit out, there is an e-petition on the Government’s website called Save UK Justice. It’s on 80,000 signatures; if it gets to 100,000 there is a chance that this radical and malignant change to the nature of the British justice system will actually get to be discussed in, of all places, parliament. Thank you.



LINKS


The Ministry of Justice's outline of their plans
Law Gazette interview with Chris Grayling 
Today Programme interview with Sir Anthony Hooper and Bob Neill MP 
Interesting blog on the subject 
The petition for this to be debated in the House of Commons 

Preaching to the choir.

This is a transcript of a piece I recorded for The Now Show on Thursday 7th July, the day it was announced the News of the World was closing. For the full show, go here. This transcript includes material which was recorded but not broadcast, for reasons of time.

Corrections: 

1) It's not News International itself that is seeking to own BSkyB, rather its parent company News Corporation.

2) The government has to decide whether the takeover threatens media plurality; Ofcom alone will judge whether News Corps are 'fit and proper persons'.

It seems more honest to put these corrections here rather than changing the text of the piece. I regret the errors, but don't believe either materially affect the argument I'm making. 

JOHN                       So. Does anyone remember the News of the World? No? It was a newspaper that was around when I was a kid, and also an adult. Tabloid, came out on a Sunday, a bit like the Sun on Sunday, but obviously totally different and separate and not the same at all. Anyway, I seem to remember it had to close in the end, after some scandal about hacking a murdered schoolgirl’s phone. And it was a News International paper, I think, so it’s a good job it’s not around this week, when the Government and Ofcom have to decide if News International are ‘fit and proper persons’ to own BSkyB! That would be awful for them!  But it’s not, it’s closed and over and done with and finished and shut and in the past and not relevant to anything any more. Which is lucky.

                                Now, I’m aware, as I start this piece, of something Tom Lehrer once said about protest song singers: that it takes a certain amount of courage to get up in a coffee house and come out in favour of the things everyone else is against, like peace and love and brotherhood and so on. I feel a bit like that now; here I am on Radio Four to register my controversial view that hacking and / or deleting messages from the phones of murder victims, terrorism survivors or dead soldiers is... a bit off. I mean, that is very much my opinion, but I fear I might be preaching to the choir. And what a choir it is! From Ed Miliband...

MILLIBAND           Immoral!

JOHN                     …David Cameron…

CAMERON             Disgusting!

JOHN                     ...Rebekah Brooks...

BROOKS               Disgraceful!

JOHN                     ...to Rupert Murdoch

MURDOCH              Deplorable!

JOHN                         ...it seemed this week as if no-one had a good word to say for the practice of eavesdropping on murder victims. Honestly, we’re all so united in hating it, it’s surprising really it ever happened. No-one seems in favour, not even Rebekah Brooks, whom I assume as editor of the paper that paid for it, must have…? No! No, apparently I’m wrong. She’s totally unconnected with it, and didn’t know, and didn’t see, and no-one told her, and she was on holiday, and anyway she had a different name then so it doesn’t count. In fact, she went to far as to say to her employees:

BROOKS                  I hope that you all realise it is inconceivable that I knew or worse, sanctioned these appalling allegations.’ 

JOHN                       So, there you go - it is inconceivable. It actually cannot be conceived. The imagination, faced with the challenge of inventing some kind of madcap fictional world in which Rebekah Brooks knew where a story in the paper she edited came from, just gives up. It’s like trying to imagine an undiscovered colour or five dimensional space. We can demonstrate this now, actually. Try, just as a thought experiment, try to conceive that Rebekah Brooks, as her former employee Paul McMullan maintains, knew full well that Glenn Mulcaire was illegally hacking phones. [PAUSE] Any luck? No, me neither. Interesting, by the way, that ‘I hope you realise it is inconceivable that I knew…’ is not quite the same, legally, as ‘I didn’t know’. And of course that’s not all - it’s also being alleged that News International have in the past paid the police for information. Presumably Rebekah Brooks thinks this is inconceivable as well. Certainly, when asked about it by Chris Bryant MP in 2003, she was less then candid. This is what she said:

BROOKS                  We have paid the police for information in the past. 

JOHN                      Oh, I’m sorry, I meant she was totally candid. She told the government select committee that that illegal act is what she did. Just to remind you, the government have to decide if News International are fit and proper persons to own BSkyB. Now, to be fair, Andy Coulson was also there, and he leapt in to clarify:

COULSON              We operate within the code and within the law. 

JOHN                       He said. Oh, within the law? Phew! That’s a relief! But Chris Bryant is a bit slow, and said:

BRYANT                  It’s illegal for police officers to receive payments.

JOHN                       To which Coulson replied:

COULSON               No no no, we don’t- As I said, within the law. 

JOHN                         Yes, he said it was within the law! Weren’t you listening, Chris Bryant? It can’t be illegal if it was done within the law, by definition. You’re thinking of those illegal police bribes everyone else does, this was a police bribe within the law. They’re fine! Out of interest, though, I wonder which law it was done within? Because obviously it wasn’t done within the hundred year old law against making or accepting a payment to a police officer for information collected in the course of duty. It must be within some other law, maybe that one about abating a smoky chimney. 

                                      Anyway, something, the whole of the choir agree, was deeply wrong at the News of the World - you remember, the ancient and historical paper which used to exist once, but doesn’t now, so that’s fine -  under the editorship of Rebekah Wade. And who better to investigate it than the chief executive of News International, Rebekah Brooks? No-one. No-one knows Rebekah Wade better than Rebekah Brooks. They go way back. In the words of comedy henchman Simon Greenberg, when Jon Snow asked how she could investigate herself:

GREENBERG        When we’ve got the facts, we’ll investigate how that can be possible. 

JOHN                       It’s as simple as that. She’ll investigate, get the facts, and when she’s got the facts, she can investigate how it’s possible for her to have investigated them. I mean, it certainly saves on manpower. I just worry she’s working too hard, poor girl. Because she’s going to have to ask herself some tough questions, really rake herself over the coals. Naturally, at first she’ll try to evade herself, but she knows all her tricks, and once she sees she means business, she’ll crack, and before long she’ll tell her everything she knows about what she did, and she’ll listen very carefully, and write it all down in a little book. 

                                  The only problem is, there surely can’t be anything to discover, because after all News International looked into it two years ago when the first Guardian reports came out, and they told the PCC quite clearly that these were the actions of one rogue reporter, and there was no evidence anyone else at the News of the World was involved in phone hacking. (By the way, the government have to decide if News International are fit and proper persons to run BSkyB.) And if there’s no evidence, there’s no evidence. I mean, where else could they look? Well, comedy henchman Greenberg had an answer to that too, this time on the Today Programme, where he was at pains to stress that News International was:

GREENBERG       ‘in a fully co-operative mode with the police, as we have been since January.’

JOHN                        Is it me, or doesn’t that slightly raises the question of what sort of mode they were in before January? Although, to be fair, it is beginning to sound like their relationship with the police has for some time been very co-operative… almost to a fault. Anyway, Mr Greenberg has had a bright idea where to look for this evidence which News International were adamant in 2009 did not exist. He said:

GREENBERG       ‘The Milly Dowler information, that’s something we weren’t aware of, we obviously want to see what information we might have in our archives’

JOHN                        Oh, the archives! Of course! The place where we put the records of stuff that happened in the past! Now you mention it, that’s the very place to look! The dusty old News International archives, [ANCIENT ARCHIVIST VOICE] wherein we repose the huge leather-bound volumes of sent emails, which can in no way [VOICE OUT] be searched electronically for the word ‘Dowler’ or ‘hack into the murdered girl’s phone’, but must instead [VOICE BACK IN] be searched very very slowly by the senior archivist with his trusty magnifying glass.

                                  And they’d better do a good job, because if they don’t, they will face the wrath of the mighty Press Complaints Commission, which has already done so much to prevent this situation, and which is now prepared to savage them as only a voluntary self-regulating body with no legal powers or sanctions can. Their chairman, Lady Buscombe, has been all over the place this week, defending the PCC from charges that they have basically the same powers and influence as Father Ted and Dougal outside that cinema. 

TED                          Down with this sort of thing!

DOUGAL                 Careful now!

JOHN                       When Andrew Neill asked her to name ‘one useful thing’ she’d done since the scandal broke, she replied that she had ‘demanded to see all the proprietors’. Which ought to do the trick nicely, if, as I assume, the proprietors all share a debilitating phobia of seeing Lady Buscombe. Though of course if they do… they can just refuse to see her. Whereas Ofcom, the statuary regulator that controls broadcast media, can impose heavy fines, or even refuse to grant a licence to a broadcaster if it feels they are not fit and proper persons to have one. Something that’s being decided right now, as it happens, about News International, as I may have said. 

                                  But anyway, isn’t it all academic now? The News of the World has gone! We won! They made the supreme sacrifice and killed it off. Yeah, they have. In other, unrelated news, here’s what Rebekah Brooks said on the 28th June this year, announcing the appointment of Richard Caseby in the new role of managing editor of the Sun and the News of the World. 

BROOKS                  We will take a comprehensive look at where there is common ground across our titles. Where there is common ground we will find ways of implementing efficiencies and, where appropriate, we will find ways of introducing seven day working. 

JOHN                        ‘Seven day working’. Now, a cynic might read that as evidence News International were already planning to merge the papers at least a fortnight before this happened, and this announcement is just disguising a pre-made decision as sack-cloth and ashes, whilst clearing the way for the launch of a Sun on Sunday with no baggage, in which all the advertisers they’ve lost this week can cheerfully re-advertise with clean hands. Not to say that this isn’t a huge deal, with the loss of hundreds of jobs - though of course largely the jobs of people who had nothing to do with phone-hacking, rather than the job of, say, to pick an example at random, Rebekah Brooks; who also had nothing to do with it, as we’ve established, but perhaps in a slightly more pointed way than some. What it certainly doesn’t prove is that News International are very very sorry. What it proves is that they really, really want BSkyB. 

JOHN                       So, there we are, I’ve stood in front of a Radio Four audience and told them hacking into the phones of murdered children isn’t very nice, and nor is Rebekah Brooks, which are two things you all thought already. What was the point of that? Well, actually, this time, I think there is a point. I often complain about how politicians endlessly go on about ‘listening to the people’, as if the people always speak with one voice, and as if the politicians hadn’t already made up their minds what they were going to hear.

                                  But this time is different, and unusual, and important. The stark, undeniable wrongness of the Milly Dowler case has unified our voice, and this time they really are listening to us. Most of the people concerned, broadly speaking, didn’t and don’t want to do anything about this. Milliband didn’t want to make an enemy of Murdoch; Cameron didn’t want to have an inquiry; James Murdoch didn’t want to end the News of the World just yet, though he would have done soon. But they all changed their minds this week, because we shouted louder than they expected. And now, they’re waiting to see if that’s enough. Are we going to take the nice neat ending to the story that’s been offered to us,  and go on to the next shiny thing nest week, or do they actually have to do something significant? 

                                   So this is a moment in time where I think there is actually a point to being like Tom Lehrer’s protest singer, and loudly making a fuss about what we already know we all believe, because people who didn’t think we actually cared that much are listening. So, let’s keep it up. Let’s not get distracted. Let’s not fall for the ‘The paper you hated… has gone! Behold the totally fresh and uncontaminated Sun on Sunday!’ trick. Let’s keep signing petitions, keep pestering advertisers. Let’s remember no-one has denied Milly Dowler’s messages were listened to and deleted by a man paid by News International, let’s not forget the chief exec of that company has told the House of Commons she paid the police for information; let’s chip in with our helpful opinions about whether she and it are therefore fit and proper persons to own the largest commercial broadcaster in the country. Let’s keep the pressure up, keep the chorus of disapproval going, because right now we have a rare and genuine opportunity to tell the people who influence our lives, elected or not, what sort of media ethics we’re prepared to tolerate, right now we can make a difference, right now - if we don’t lose our focus- the choir get to preach back. 

I also at one point used the phrase 'Slight Disimprovement'.

That was dispiriting. I was just called up by ICM, the pollsters. And it wasn't a boring one about how many holidays I take or how much yoghurt I buy, it was a proper one about general elections and the expenses row. Great! Like everyone else, I've always secretly felt it was a shame that these polls consist entirely of people who aren't me, and that they therefore do not reflect My Important Opinions. Now all that would change! Now My Important Opinions would at last be heard. Bring it on. 

Turns out I don't know anything. 

What they asked: 

'On a scale of one to ten, how likely are you to vote in the next general election.'

What I replied:

'Ten'

What I thought before I replied:'

'Oh yeah. I'm Mr Responsible Politically Active Citizen. You're talking to the right guy here, my friend.'

What they asked:

'Do you think the MPs' expenses saga is: a major scandal; serious; regrettable but not serious; irrelevant?' 

What I replied:

'Regrettable but not serious.'

What I thought before I replied:

'Great! I already have an opinion on this! And, by lucky chance, my opinion is totally correct. If only people asked me what I reckon about stuff more often. I'm basically a policy wonk. If I was in the West Wing, I wonder whether Josh or Sam would want to be my friend most?'

What they asked:

'Which party leader do you think has been least affected by the MPs' expenses saga?'

What I said:

'Nick Clegg'

What I thought before I replied: 

'Er... hang on... er... I don't know... none of them, really. I mean all of them. Well, technically I suppose Nick Clegg, in that he's least affected by everything, because we still don't really know who he is. I'll say Nick Clegg.'

What they asked:

'How would the following measures affect the political system: large improvement; slight improvement; no effect, slightly worse, a lot worse. Allowing MPs to vote remotely, via the internet or video link-up?'

What I replied:

'No effect.'

What I thought before I replied:

'Oh God, I've no idea, I've never heard of that suggestion before, I thought you were going to ask me whether I thought constituents should be able to sack their MPs, I know exactly what I think about that, they shouldn't, ironically this is based on my general feeling that constituents are easily-lead opinionated idiots who don't know what they think until someone tells them, a theory I am amply demonstrating right now, well come on, think about it, I suppose it would allow MPs to spend more time in their constituencies, less need for second homes, so I suppose it's a good thing, but there must be all sorts of arguments against it, I just don't know what they are, but I bet if I heard someone explain them I'd agree, also going through the division lobbies is an ancient tradition, and my knee-jerk response is always in favour of keeping traditions, oh I don't know, if this was just a news story I was supposed to be coming up with jokes about for the Now Show it would be easy:  'MPs, videolinks, the internet, not a very wise combination, Jackie Smith's husband, haw haw haw', is hopefully the sort of train of thought I'd reject in favour of something better; but actually deciding, on the hoof, whether it's a good idea or not is just too much for me, I'd better say 'no effect' but that's ridiculous, it's a massive change to the system, the one thing it's definitely not going to have is 'no effect'; but still, this pause has already become embarrassing; it's about to tip over into unsettling, I've got to say something, at least that's sort of neutral.'

I'm an idiot. Take away my vote. 

Things I would have done differently if I had been at Obama's inauguration.

• If I were the crowd: Not clap a prayer. 
• If I were the BBC's commentator: Not fade down the first three or four minutes of a new composition byJohn Williams played by Yo Yo Ma, Itzhac Perlman and two others I haven't heard of but should have, in order to bring us the urgent breaking news that William Henry Harrison died a month after his inaugural speech. In 1841. And then realise this choice of anecdote is a bit on the ominous side, and bumble on that: '...that won't happen here. But what will happen is that the crowd will look to the 44th president for lyrical words... like music... music as beautiful as we're listening to now.' We're not listening to it, though. We're listening to you. 
• If I were John Williams: Not use the above-mentioned collection of talent to play variations on 'I Am The Lord of the Dance Said He'. Was he under the impression Obama was being inaugurated into the Brownies? Or did he just run out of time?
• If I were Barack Obama: I might have had a bit of a crafty practice of the presidential oath. 
• If I were Aretha Franklin: Bigger bow for my hat. Much bigger.

Good speech, though, wasn't it?