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Preamble |
Chapters
- Salaries and Taxation
- Pensions
- Benefits
- Health and Care
- Education
- Housing
- Employment
- Trades Unions and Labour Laws
- Trade and Industry
- Transport
- Energy
- Environment
- Agriculture, Fisheries, Food and Rural Life
- Crime
- Legal System
- Immigration and Asylum
- Local Government
- Devolution and Regional Government
- Parliament and Democracy
- Media
- Freedom of Information and Privacy
- Northern Ireland
- European Union
- Foreign Policy
- Defence and Disarmament
- Conclusions
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| Under the Tories, the major change to the legal system was that eligibility for Legal Aid fell from 79% to 48% of the population, so that only the poor or the very rich, who could afford the costs, were able to go to law. Attempts to restrict the right to trial by jury were opposed by Labour. Judges, etc. remained unrepresentative of the general population, and the legal system unaccountable to the House of Commons because it was led by the Lord Chancellor who sat in the Lords. |
| Labour policy was: |
| 1 | A Legal Aid system allowing everyone to afford representation | |
| 2 | To oppose the use of "No win, No fee" charging systems as a "gimmick" | |
| 3 | No further restrictions on the right to trial by jury | |
| 4 | To create a Department for Legal Administration under a minister in the Commons | |
| 5 | To have an independent judicial appointments commission to recommend all judges and QCs on objective and open criteria | |
| 6 | To review the funding of legal vocational training to help poorer people enter the legal profession | |
| 7 | To set up an independent review body to investigate suspected miscarriages of justice | |
| 8 | To incorporate the European Convention of Human Rights into British law | |
| In fact under New Labour: |
| 1 | Legal Aid has been removed for a wide range of civil cases, and is so underfunded that few solicitors are prepared to take cases |  |
| 2 | "No win, No fee" is now to become the norm for lawyers' charges and there has been an increase in US-style "ambulance chasing" | |
| 3 | The option of jury trial has been removed, e.g. for many serious crimes | |
| 4 | The Lord Chancellor is now a minister of constitutional affairs and no longer leads the judiciary, but is still in the Lords |  |
| 5 | This is to be achieved except that the system for judges is still not open and could leave the final choice to government |  |
| 6 | (Funding?) but alternative routes into the law are being considered | |
| 7 | This review body was set up | |
| 8 | This was done, then required an opt-out to allow the indefinite detention of terror suspects without charge or trial and is again threatened with changes | |
| In addition: |
 | New laws threaten the principle of a presumption of innocence, e.g. telling jurors of past convictions [law now?], needing proof that assets are not from crime | |
| US requests to extradite Britons now need offer no evidence | |
| Evidence obtained by torture abroad can now be used against terror suspects in the UK | |
| Proposals for a supreme court would separate the judiciary from the legislature | |
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