Where the main three parties stand on key legal issues:


Labour


The Labour manifesto declares that, if elected, the party will push on with reform of legal aid and regulation of the profession.


‘Legal aid will be reformed to better help the vulnerable,’ it says. ‘We will ensure independent regulation of the legal profession, and great competition in the legal services market to ensure people get value for money. We will tackle the compensation culture – resisting invalid claims, but upholding people’s rights.’


The pledge comes under the heading ‘Backing the victim’, in which the government also promises to expand specialist courts to deal with domestic violence, and specialist advocates to support the victims of crime and of other serious crimes including murder and rape.


The party would extend the use of restorative justice schemes and community justice centres, and build a network of witness and victim support units.


Plans to tackle anti-social behaviour and a commitment to overhaul the youth justice system are also unveiled, as is a pledge to ‘support magistrates effectively in fighting crime and improve the enforcement of court decisions – including the payment of fines’.


Where a defendant fails to appear at court without good excuse, the presumption should be that the trial and sentencing should proceed anyway, Labour says, adding that it would reform fraud trials, without commenting on the future of juries.


Outlining the party’s plan for a points system for immigration, the manifesto says it would continue to improve the quality and speed of immigration and asylum decisions, including removing appeal rights for non-family immigration cases.


In family law, Labour emphasises the need for greater and early use of mediation, and also for court orders of access to be enforced according to the best interests of children.


A variety of commitments on employment rights are also made: to increase paid maternity leave to nine months from 2007 with the goal of achieving a year’s paid leave by the end of the Parliament, while simplifying the system for employers; to investigate sharing paid leave between parents; to consider extending the right to request flexible working to carers of sick and disabled adults as a priority, and also look at extending it to parents of older children; to prevent companies from forcing people to retire before the age of 65, except where justified, and to give all employees older than 65 the right to ask their employers that they be allowed to carry on working.



Conservatives


The main opposition party has produced a manifesto about one-third the size of Labour’s 112-page effort, so its commitments are less detailed.


There are no specific references to legal aid or the regulation of lawyers, although Shadow Attorney-General Dominic Grieve said at the Gazette’s pre-election debate that his party would not accept various aspects of the Clementi review, such as non-lawyers owning law firms and moves away from self-regulation.


In addition, spending plans revealed by Shadow Chancellor Oliver Letwin in January included saving £126 million from the legal aid budget, primarily by cracking down on alleged overbilling by solicitors (see [2005] Gazette, 20 January, 4). The proposed supreme court would be scrapped. Mr Grieve strongly opposed tendering for criminal legal aid work.

The manifesto refers briefly to plans to review the Human Rights Act 1998.


A key policy is to ‘introduce honesty in sentencing so that criminals serve the full sentence handed down by the court. They will be told, in open court, the minimum time that they will serve behind bars’. Tackling anti-social behaviour is also high on the agenda, along with breaking the link between drugs and crime by ‘massively expanding treatment programmes’ and reversing Labour’s reclassification of cannabis.


As has been well publicised, Michael Howard wants to set an annual limit on the numbers of immigrants and also introduce a points system. He would withdraw from the 1951 Geneva Convention and ‘ensure national control of asylum policy’.


For families, the Tories propose allowing women to spread maternity pay over nine months, or receive a higher amount over six. The manifesto also dips into the effect of the compensation culture on school life: ‘Children need to be taught how to deal with risks in life. We will encourage learning outside the classroom and provide protection for teachers worried about school trips.’


The Conservatives pledged to negotiate restoration of the UK’s opt-out from the EU social chapter so as ‘to give way to more flexible working’.




Liberal Democrats


There is less detail in the Lib Dems’ manifesto on major legal issues, although at the Gazette debate, David Heath, Shadow Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs, also expressed strong opposition to non-lawyers owning law firms. He was critical of criminal legal aid costs eating into the civil budget and opposed tendering.


Among the commitments on law and order is a pledge to make more non-violent criminals, such as fine defaulters, shoplifters and petty vandals, do ‘tough community work as an alternative to jail’. Acceptable behaviour contracts would be introduced as a half-way house towards anti-social behaviour orders.


The Lib Dems would repeal the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005 and extend the criminal law to enable terrorist suspects to be prosecuted in the mainstream courts, using evidence from communications intercepts.


With the aim of giving equal protection of law, a Single Equality Act would outlaw all unfair discrimination on the grounds of race, gender, religion or belief, sexual orientation, disability, age and gender identity. It would also stop same-sex couples in civil partnerships being treated unfairly compared with married couples in pension arrangements.


On maternity leave, the party proposes increasing pay for working families having their first child to the rate of the minimum wage – £170 a week instead of £102.80 as at present.