Let’s face it: we had to tackle this highly controversial subject at some time or other! At a time when the UK’s economy has seen far better days and when local authorities and public bodies are forced to make dramatic cuts to their budgets, it cannot be helpful that some of the largest companies trading in this country are steering away from paying vast sums of tax to our government.
Throughout last year we have focused on several specific areas of Civil Litigation procedure. For the final article on this subject we are going to take a look at what is just over the horizon for litigators.
The most important change happening in litigation relates to its biggest problem, namely that it is very expensive. In December 2009 we reviewed the 10-year anniversary of the Civil Procedural Rule (CPR). We noted that over a 20-year period, the legal cost of bringing a road traffic claim has risen by 840%. This kind of increase cannot be justified when other areas of legal practice, such as conveyancing, have become substantially less expensive.
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The debate over the legalisation of drugs has continued during the last month and has actually stepped up a notch, following former Home Office Minister Bob Ainsworth’s recommendation to legalise. Mr Ainsworth fervently believes that the UK is losing the so-called war on drugs. He feels that legalising even class A drugs such as heroin and cocaine will, in turn, take the control away from the criminal gangs and move us towards conquering this problem.
Ever since legal aid was first introduced in England and Wales back in 1949, many people believe that this fund, which is paid for by the tax-payer, has increasingly continued to move away from the fundamental principles by which it was first established to serve. Indeed, the Justice Secretary, Kenneth Clarke, has established a consultation period for extensive changes to the legal aid system and has stated that one of the most worrying reasons for this is down to the fact that legal aid is accessible in cases where court intervention may not have been the best way forward. It has been recognised that other dispute resolution services may have produced far better results and at a fraction of the cost to the legal aid fund.
Since I obtained my Associate Membership of this Institute, I have been working in litigation. It has equipped me with necessary skills pertaining to the court litigation process after the Philippine Supreme Court’s Approval on the Small Claims Court and the amendments of Civil Procedure in Philippine Courts, as promulgated by Philippine Supreme Court.
The amendments of the 1997 Philippine Civil Procedure gave the chance for the Small Claims Court to be created in 2008. Now it has been implemented across the lower courts in my country. It gives a “taste of swift justice” to the underprivileged citizens of our country for them to obtain justice, or if they are the defendants of a particular case, swift vindication can be obtained.
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At the Institute of Legal Secretaries and PAs, we have used our journal to report back on the effects of employment law on economic recovery in the past. We discussed the possibility that some businesses were struggling to cope with the financial burden that such legal regulations impose upon them, and how this may have led to a sharp increase in the number of employment tribunals that were being pursued.
If you have never studied criminal law, you may well be under the impression that provocation could be used as a defence to mitigate a number of different charges. For example, if someone is charged with an assault, surely they may have been provoked into committing that offence? However, with the defence of provocation, this could not be further from the truth. This is because this specific defence is only available for a person who has been charged with murder; it is not possible to rely on this defence in the case of manslaughter.
Following an unusually high number of serious dog attacks in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the government at the time felt compelled to pass the Dangerous Dogs Act in 1991. This statute aimed to control some of the breeds of dogs that seemed to be featured in the news most prominently at the time, with the Pit Bull Terrier being particularly targeted.
The sense of moral outrage provoked by the Pay As You Earn (PAYE) debacle probably has some way to play; this is hardly surprising, given the jumbled mix of apathy and blundering displayed by those at the top of HM Revenue & Customs. To start, its failings were dressed up as the taxpayer’s responsibility; but since the initial announcements, they have been forced to issue a flurry of back-pedalling clarifications that have probably only served to muddy the waters for the harassed taxpayer.
But, putting aside justifiable indignation, what redress does the aggrieved UK taxpayer have, once the dreaded brown envelope has hit the doormat?
Self-assessment by stealth
Another opportunity to deal with the legal hot potato of murder law reform in England and Wales has arisen recently, courtesy of the incumbent Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer, supporting the reform of homicide law. But Keir Starmer’s kicking over of the ashes of the previous government’s half-hearted reform proposals have landed the coalition with quite a tricky task; no politician wants to get their fingers burned by an issue as heated as murder and life sentences. Nonetheless, a debate on the categorisation of murder, by degree, certainly appears to be back on the cards.