Mike Schwarz, 48-year-old criminal law partner at London firm Bindmans, received the private practice solicitor of the year accolade last month at the Law Society’s fifth annual Excellence Awards. His citation for the award commended his ‘seminal’ work on issues including the operation of undercover police, the Crown’s obligations of disclosure, the fairness of the trial process, the legitimacy of civil disobedience and threats to criminal legal aid.

The nomination was ‘testament to his strategic insight into the marriage between the law, politics and the media’, it added. Schwarz has come to prominence over the past year for two cases in particular. He represented 20 climate change protesters who had their convictions for conspiracy to commit aggravated trespass at Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station quashed, after the Court of Appeal ruled that the police had unlawfully used an undercover officer to spy on the protesters.

In April 2009, police arrested 114 activists who had attended a meeting on the eve of a protest during which some of the environmental campaigners planned to occupy the power station. Their action was intended to prevent the alleged harm done by the power station in releasing thousands of tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere.

However, among their number was undercover police officer Mark Kennedy, who was part of a police programme designed to infiltrate extreme left-wing groups. Using the name Mark Stone, he had spent seven years deployed in that role pretending to be a freelance climber.

Friends of Kennedy had apparently become suspicious about his behaviour. These suspicions increased after he declined to use the same lawyer - Schwarz - as the other campaigners arrested.

Twenty of the protesters were convicted at Nottingham Crown Court in December 2010 of conspiracy to commit aggravated trespass. They were given either conditional discharges or community sentence orders after the judge accepted that they were ‘decent’ men and women motivated by concern for the environment.

Once the revelations about Kennedy came to light, the Court of Appeal, with the Lord Chief Justice Lord Judge sitting, quashed the convictions because of the ‘significant non-disclosure’ of material ‘which would have been supportive of the defence case’.

Tape recordings of Kennedy’s surveillance, which would have provided evidence supporting the defendants’ argument that their actions were intended to avert the harm caused by emissions from the power station, and a signed police statement from Kennedy in which he offered support for the defendants, had been withheld from the protesters’ lawyers.

The lord chief justice and two other senior judges ruled that Kennedy had unlawfully spied on environmentalists. In a damning judgment, they said that the prosecution’s failure to disclose evidence about Kennedy’s role ignored ‘elementary principles’ of the fair-trial process.

The judgment said: ‘Something went seriously wrong with this trial… The prosecution’s duties in relation to disclosure were not fulfilled. The result was that the appellants were convicted following a trial in which elementary principles which underpin the fairness of our trial procedures were ignored.’

It continued: ‘The jury were ignorant of evidence, helpful to the defence, which was in the possession of the prosecution but which was never revealed. As a result justice miscarried.’ The court also criticised Kennedy’s deployment, saying it could have been seen as entrapment.

The revelations also led to charges of conspiracy to take over the Nottinghamshire power station, faced by six other protesters, being dropped by the Crown Prosecution Service.

Schwarz says the undercover operation ‘raised serious questions’ about the civil liberties of peaceful protesters, describing the police’s actions as ‘an attack on a peaceful protest on [an issue] of public importance’.

‘It was an act of civil disobedience, which has had a long history in this country and should be protected,’ he adds. One of the country’s most senior police officers, Bernard Hogan-Howe, now commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, conducted an official inquiry into the case for Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary, but publication of that report was postponed following a further revelation about the police’s use of another undercover officer.

This, the second case which put Schwarz in the spotlight, concerned allegations that the police allowed an undercover officer, Jim Boyling, who had been embedded in environmental protest groups, to conceal his true identity and give misleading evidence in court, when he was prosecuted alongside other campaigners.

Boyling, who used the name Jim Sutton, had worked undercover from 1995 to 2000 in the Reclaim the Streets campaign, which organised non-violent demonstrations against the overuse of cars.

In 1996 he was arrested along with other protesters at a demonstration in London after occupying a government building and charged with public order offences. From the time of his arrest, Boyling gave a false name to protect his undercover status and maintained that identity throughout the prosecution, even when giving evidence under oath.

One of the activists, John Jordan, was convicted of assaulting a police officer at the 1997 trial, but the undercover officer was found not guilty of the charges he faced.

Boyling has been put on restricted duties and is also being investigated by the Metropolitan Police’s directorate of professional standards following allegations that he married one of the activists he had placed under surveillance. Schwarz represented Boyling, not knowing that he was an undercover police officer, and the other protesters who were charged, which meant that the undercover officer was present during what should have been confidential discussions between the protesters and their legal representatives.

This, says Schwarz, violated the fundamental right of the protesters to have confidential discussions with their lawyers, and showed that the police had ‘wildly overstepped all recognised boundaries’ in their use of an undercover officer. He says: ‘The case raises the most fundamental constitutional issues about the limits of acceptable policing, the sanctity of lawyer-client confidentiality and the integrity of the criminal justice system’. So far this year 12 inquiries have been set up to examine the conduct of the police and prosecutors in relation to their authorisation and use of undercover police to infiltrate protest groups, and the prosecution’s failure to properly disclose evidence of their behaviour.

The police and CPS declined to comment because of ongoing investigations. But Schwarz suggests there should be a single far-reaching public inquiry into the actions of the police. Their behaviour, he alleges, amounts to ‘an attack on the legal profession’ and needs to be drastically reined in. ‘In the Boyling case, there are allegations that an undercover officer was allowed to infiltrate a group, have sexual relations with one of those he was surveilling, become a defendant in a criminal case under a false identity, gain access to privileged legal correspondence and mislead the court.

‘These practices amount to institutionalised police corruption of the legal process. There should be an independent, robust, publicly accountable inquiry to provide, at the very least, an explanation of what has gone on in the past and to determine the limits of what is acceptable in the future.’ At present, such operations are authorised by the police, which Schwarz says is ‘not acceptable’. He would like to see a judge responsible for authorising the deployment of undercover police, monitoring the investigation and assessing it at its conclusion.

‘There needs to be book-end accountability, with proper scrutiny before, during and after any operation,’ he says. ‘The public need to know what’s being done in their name - so far things are being done under the radar by the police.’ Aside from the impact of the police and prosecutions on the integrity of the criminal justice system, Schwarz has another grave concern.

‘The criminal legal aid reforms threaten to emasculate the criminal defence profession,’ he says.

The current payment regime for publicly funded Crown court work, he explains, means a solicitor gets a fixed fee for each case, and is only paid to represent a maximum of five clients, regardless of how many are actually represented. ‘So we were paid the same amount in the Nottingham Crown Court case for representing the 20 protesters as we would have received for representing five,’ he says. And if the Boyling/Sutton undercover police officer case ends up in a Crown court appeal, Schwarz says he will be paid £380 for the work.

‘It is simply not economically viable to do cases like the two that brought me my award, and when legal aid rates are lowered it will become even harder for firms to offer representation in these cases,’ he says. Schwarz stresses the importance in a democratic society of allowing people to protest, using tactics ranging from symbolic protest and civil disobedience, to demonstrations and direct action.

And he also highlights the necessity of retaining criminal legal aid lawyers to defend those cases where protesters are prosecuted and where they have ‘justification defences’ that can be run on their behalf. The law requires the state not simply to tolerate protests, but actively to facilitate them, notes Schwarz, though he fears that the police and politicians often deliberately flout the requirements of the law in this respect, curtailing lawful protest.

‘Protest is often conducted in the open on issues of public importance by those who have no other voice, resources, access to, or way of influencing, decision-makers,’ he says. ‘Contrast their position with that of powerful, wealthy individuals, organisations and businesses who have the resources, financial and otherwise, through party funding, lobbyists or the media, to get their message across, quietly, but effectively, in unaccountable, un-scrutinised ways.’

Where such protesters face criminal charges arising from their actions, Schwarz reiterates that it is vital that they have access to proper legal defence teams to match the well-resourced teams put up by the prosecution. Schwarz, who read law at Oxford University followed by a post-graduate diploma of advanced European legal studies at the College of Europe in Belgium, qualified as a solicitor in 1992.

During his career he has, as the above cases demonstrate, been on the side of the underdog. That commitment guided him to Bindmans, then called Bindman & Partners, where he completed his articles and where he has remained throughout his career, rising swiftly to become a salaried partner in 1995 and an equity partner in 2004. Throughout his career Schwarz has retained his commitment to fighting on behalf of the underdog, to civil liberties and legal aid, and to striving to provide the very highest standard of service to clients.

But he is anxious about the future. Apart from the legal aid cuts, he notes the spectre of best value tendering, which the government intends to introduce for the provision of criminal defence services. Under the new procurement regime firms will bid against each other to win contracts to provide services from the police station through to the end of a case. The model will favour large providers which can reduce their costs as much as possible and enable them to bid for the work at a lower rate.

Schwarz warns: ‘BVT will reduce every incentive for firms to do the best for clients and to challenge excesses by the police and prosecution.’ Instead, he says: ‘There will be every incentive for corners to be cut.’

The downward pressure on fees, says Schwarz, will require every firm to consider whether it is economic for it to continue doing criminal legal aid work. He notes that some major players are already leaving the market. ‘It will be very hard for everyone, but you simply cannot square the circle between excellent services and being profitable,’ he says. ‘Different firms will have different ideas about how to address the issues, but whatever model they adopt, the reality is that they will get less money for doing the same amount of work.’

This, he concludes, will mean those firms that remain in the market may end up being unable to provide an adequate service to clients, resulting in the weakening of a vital check on the power of the state and increased injustice.