FRAUD: government proposal for plea negotiations amounts to a cheap 'political shortcut'


Government proposals to introduce plea bargaining for fraudsters will amount to little more than a cheap 'political shortcut' without extra funding, fraud solicitors warned this week.



Attorney General Baroness Scotland has launched a consultation on whether to allow what she terms 'plea negotiations' - where fraudsters can secure shorter sentences if they admit an offence pre-charge - as a means of avoiding lengthy and costly fraud trials.



However, one expert expressed alarm that the UK is 'hurtling down the American route of formalised plea bargaining'.



Monty Raphael, joint head of fraud and regulation at City firm Peters & Peters, said plea bargaining would have to differentiate between individuals and corporations. He said: 'Individuals... are often not funded by anyone and there is no legal aid, at present, for this. Legal aid is geared to post-charging, not pre-charging.



'If you are frontloading the system, you will have to invest in providing proper access to justice before people enter into the plea bargaining system. That is fundamental... and there is no cheap way of doing this. If the Treasury is not putting more money into the system, there is no point in going any further.'



Raphael also cautioned that plea bargaining - if not grounded in the provision of 'proper, independent legal advice' - was a 'political shortcut.'



Penny Darbyshire, jury trial expert at Kingston University Law School, said the proposals 'smack of desperation' and were 'very disappointing'. She said the government should look to the specialist fraud tribunals that exist abroad.



'The system is hurtling down the American route of formalised plea bargaining... It is spectacularly cheap but I question whether [it] is in the public interest,' she added.



Neill Blundell, business and regulatory investigation partner at national firm Russell Jones & Walker, queried whether plea bargaining would always ensure the right suspect came forward, noting that France only allowed a plea-bargain in non-custody cases.



A spokeswoman for the Attorney General's office said the consultation paper specified that it did not recommend adopting a US-style system, and that 'the government would not countenance' a system where innocent defendants were pressurised to plead guilty.



She added that, under the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill 2007, powers will be conferred which would grant pre-charge legal aid in 'appropriate circumstances.'



Anita Rice