Evening Standard comment: Stop giving legal aid to the Mr Bigs

It is obviously wrong that when the legal aid budget is being cut by £220 million someone with substantial wealth should receive taxpayers’ money to fund his case
5 March 2014
WEST END FINAL

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Some of the bizarre ways in which the legal aid system can function are illustrated by the case of Terence Shepherd, ringleader of a group of fraudsters who sold people tickets for events and then left them ticketless. His best-known victims were the parents of Olympic swimmer Rebecca Adlington, whose tickets for her first gold-winning event at Beijing never materialised. He has been ordered to return his criminal profits yet he obtained legal aid to enable him to fight attempts to extend his prison sentence to force him to do so.

It is obviously wrong that when the legal aid budget is being cut by £220 million — which will chiefly affect poor defendants — someone with substantial wealth should receive taxpayers’ money to fund his case. It is particularly so in the case of Mr Shepherd, who has refused to pay a single penny of the confiscation order imposed on him — indeed, the issue at stake in the latest hearing was simply to explain why he had not done so. In other words, public money is being spent to help obstruct efforts to make him hand back money that he should already have paid.

There is a case for trimming the legal aid budget, which has ballooned over the past decade. But even lawyers who are campaigning against the cuts will agree it is wrong that wealthy defendants are still being given legal aid — despite assurances by the Justice Secretary, Chris Grayling, that this should not happen. This case usefully reminds us why reform of the system is overdue.

Help with rents

Much of the Government’s support for new housing has focused on homebuyers but the private rental sector, where rents have risen drastically in the past five years, also needs support. Today the second tranche of the Government’s £1 billion Build to Rent scheme — which provides loans to developers to build homes for rent — has been announced. Of 36 new developments it funds, 25 will be in London. That should translate into 6,500 new homes, including 1,000 in Newham and 800 in Tower Hamlets. Obviously this is not sufficient to meet demand but it is a step to rebalancing the property market.

Support for the rental sector needs to go much further. In some European cities, notably in Germany, it is far easier than in London to obtain affordable secure housing for rent. The result is that there is not the same unhealthy obsession with house prices as here. One reason is that big institutions here such as insurance firms do not yet invest in the sector as much as they might. Ministers should be discussing with these institutions ways of making investment in the rental property market easier and more attractive. A healthy housing market should balance private and social ownership with council and private rental provision. This new initiative will help — but there’s much more to be done.

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