All articles by Michael Cross – Page 113
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Judicial oversight promised for white-collar prosecution deals
US-style deals to defer prosecutions for offences such as corporate bribery will be transparent and supervised by a judge under a code of practice for prosecutors published today. Deferred prosecutions, under which a prosecution for corporate crime is suspended in return for a promise of ...
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Watchdog: reform ‘unnecessarily complicated’ election law
Moves to rationalise the 25 separate pieces of legislation that govern national elections received the support of the electoral watchdog today. A report ‘Reflections on a new structure for the United Kingdom’s electoral law’, published by the Electoral Commission, argues that the ‘voluminous, complex and ...
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LETR: law students not prepared for work, Society says
Potential entrants to the legal profession must be given more and better information before embarking on costly programmes of study, the Law Society said in response to the report of the Legal Education and Training Review. Chief executive Desmond Hudson (pictured) said there is an ...
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LETR: legal executives welcome ‘mainstream recognition’
The Chartered Institute of Legal Executives (CILEx) welcomed today’s report of the Legal Education and Training Review – but said it had already embraced many of the report’s recommendations. In an initial response, Nick Hanning, CILEx president, said: ‘This is a valuable piece of work. ...
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Consumer panel promises ‘long game’ on will regulation
The Legal Services Consumer Panel has claimed credit for changing the climate of opinion on the regulation of will-writing – despite the government’s outright rejection of the idea last month. The quango’s annual report, published today, lists will-writing as one area where it had an ...
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Close down CMCs tomorrow - Desmond Hudson
The chief executive of the Law Society has publicly called for claims management companies (CMCs) to be outlawed. Giving evidence to the House of Commons transport committee, which is investigating the cost impact on motor insurance from whiplash claims, Desmond Hudson said that the government ...
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A car crash of a hearing
When insurers, lawyers and claims management companies are quizzed about who is to blame for the apparent epidemic in whiplash accident claims, it is obvious who will emerge as the culprit.
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Consumer rights boost welcomed by Society
The Law Society has welcomed a long-awaited move to consolidate consumer rights legislation and bring it into the digital age. A draft Consumer Rights Bill published last week by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills will give consumers new rights over faulty goods and ...
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Hunt begins for new SRA chief
Recruitment advertisements for a new chief executive of the Solicitors Regulation Authority appeared in yesterday’s Sunday newspapers. The successful candidate will replace Antony Townsend, who last month announced his intention to leave the regulator later this year. According to an ...
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Data protection: one cheer for Grayling
Chris Grayling is right. Not, of course, over his plan to remove choice of representative from legal aid clients, which flies in the face of his government’s whole strategy for public services, let alone our sense of justice. Where the secretary of state is on the button is his offensive ...
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Backing for single PII scheme
A single professional indemnity insurance scheme and compensation scheme could cover the entire legal services sector, if a consumer watchdog proposal becomes reality. In a report published today on legal regulators’ financial protection schemes, the Legal Services Consumer Panel says that a single scheme would allow ...
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Conspicuous consultation
I don’t expect outpourings of sympathy, but spare a thought today for the Ministry of Justice officials charged with reading responses to the department’s consultation ‘Transforming Legal Aid: delivering a more credible and efficient system’. (Yes, that’s the title of Chris Grayling’s proposals to chop £220m by introducing price-competitive tendering ...
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European data plan labelled ‘demented’
European Commission data protection plans are the biggest threat currently facing the UK economy, a senior Downing Street figure said this week. Rohan Silva, the senior policy adviser behind the government’s Tech City initiative, described the draft European data protection plan as ‘a completely demented ...
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HMRC proposes crackdown on LLP ‘disguised employment’
Some members of limited liability partnership (LLP) firms could face higher tax and national insurance deductions under government proposals for tackling ‘disguised employment’ published this week. The consultation follows an announcement in the budget that the government would examine removing the presumption of self employment ...
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‘Christmas tree’ bills
According to the official summary (slightly paraphrased) the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act exists to make provision about the Green Investment Bank; employment law; to establish the Competition and Markets Authority and to abolish the Competition Commission and the Office of Fair Trading; to amend the Competition Act 1998 and ...
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Legal education move by embattled Co-op
The Co-operative Group’s legal services arm is to set up a ‘learning academy’ later this year to give legal training to aspiring lawyers who cannot afford university.
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Foreign case influx at commercial court
Foreign litigants are increasingly dominating the Commercial Court of England and Wales, research on cases over the past five years has found. The study Who uses the Commercial Court?, by the Portland communications firm, reviewed all 705 judgments from the court between March 2008 and ...
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Airports: four decades of cancellations is enough
Last year I made two longish-haul journeys for the Gazette to fast-growing economies of interest to UK law firms. Neither of my destinations – Bogota and Erbil – had a direct flight from London. The trips involved spending time (and money) in Amsterdam, Madrid and Vienna. Even more graphically than ...
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Pre-emption rebuke from Lords
Peers have warned the government to stop relying on a 1945 memorandum to give legal justification for acting in ways that pre-empt parliament. In a report critical of the current government’s behaviour, the House of Lords Constitution Committee says the so-called ‘Ram doctrine’ is ‘misleading ...
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Immigration, rehabilitation and deregulation reforms in Queen’s speech
As widely trailed, immigration and crime form key planks of the government’s legislative programme outlined in the Queen’s speech today.