How MPs are making an illegal U-turn on protection for innocent motorists

Motoring lawyer Jeanette Miller is the senior partner of Geoffrey Miller Solicitors, one of the UK’s only firms specialising solely in defending drivers facing prosecution for motoring offences. She says the government is making an illegal U-turn on protection for innocent motorists

I currently have a client on trial for the serious criminal offence of failing to provide a specimen of breath without reasonable excuse.

This chap was the designated driver on a night out with friends when he was caught up in the middle of a fight between one of his mates and a group of bouncers. He was later stopped by police while driving to hospital for treatment on a suspected broken nose and broken ribs – and his injuries were so severe, he was unable to blow into the breathalyser.

Despite his offer to provide a blood or urine sample, he was charged nonetheless.

The man – let’s call him Mr Lucky – was advised to get legal help to defend his case, so he approached a local non-specialist law firm for representation under the legal aid scheme, as he couldn’t afford a privately paying motoring law firm such as mine.

When it came to his trial date in June, Mr Lucky’s lawyers sent a trainee to court who said her firm were in difficulty representing him due to problems in preparing the case. We are not sure what those problems are because when we eventually received their file, no work at all had been done. So, again, thankfully, the court gave Mr Lucky an adjournment and said, “Get yourself a specialist motoring offence solicitor, and come back for your trial in August.”

So Mr Lucky called me. He told me his story and I explained how much we would charge (almost four times what a £60-an-hour legal aid lawyer costs, but around the same level a personal injury lawyer can recover for their time).

He cannot afford to lose his licence or get a criminal record and so he has spent his life savings and borrowed money from relatives to pay his legal fees and we are now preparing his case for trial. I am confident that he will be found not guilty.

Despite the misfortune, I have referred to my client as Mr Lucky because when we do secure his acquittal, he will be entitled to recover the majority of his legal costs from the court. However if Mr Lucky was in this situation in 2012, even if he is found not guilty, he would only be able to recover a very small proportion of his legal fees.

This is because the government plans to introduce new rules to limit cost recovery in this situation to legal aid rates (£60 per hour) regardless of the actual charges incurred in proving your innocence.

As this case shows, capping cost recovery would be hugely unfair.

What is even more upsetting is that when the Labour government suggested this in 2009, today’s Tory ministers openly supported our campaign to block these proposals. Now the coalition appears to have done a U-turn, and are using some misleading spin to justify their changes.

Ministers say this cap is needed to stop celebrities “coining it in” when they use loophole lawyers to get off speeding charges on technicalities.

This is not who it will truly affect though: it is clients like Mr Lucky. It will be innocent people who are not criminals who suffer; people who are faced with crazy prosecutions because of sometimes over-zealous police officers, and a Crown Prosecution Service with many solicitors who have poor judgement and lack commercial and common sense.

A petition we set up in 2009 to block Labour’s similar proposals was signed by 22,000 people. We were supported by senior Tories. Now they are going back on their word.

The coalition has snuck these proposals into a parliamentary bill dealing with a host of other proposed changes to also reduce legal aid budgets. They probably assumed that this issue would be lost in the detail, but they were wrong.

This U-turn will eradicate access to justice for those who need it most: innocent defendants who cannot afford to pay their legal fees, but who would get virtually nothing back when they are eventually vindicated.

Comments

[Mr M Roff]

I am a bit concerned about the potential misinterpretation of events, and/or Miss Miller's generalisation of the above incident.

Under the road traffic act 1988 the breath test process carried out by police at the police station would have given the gent referred to an opportunity to state any medical reason as to why he could not provide a breath sample. If there is a legitimate reason why someone cannot provide said samples, then the option of blood or urine will be given (though the police will decide which, usually blood, unless the subject makes acceptable representations as to why it can't be blood).

I find it so very frustrating when the full circumstances are omitted, and the result is to give a poor representation of the police service.

Contrary to the belief of Miss Miller, the police do not just go charging people willy-nilly. There has to be EVIDENCE of an offence.

[Dave]

I was involved in a RTA recently and attended hospital. A constable arrived and told me that I had to blow into the breathalyser - "because it's a requirement".
As I was the innocent party and don't drink, there was no problem ("zero" reading).
But there was no evidence of an offence, I'd been slammed into by a bus whilst I was stationary.
So who is right - Miss Miller or Mr Roff?

[Jeanette Miller]

Mr Roff is right in theory....reality is often sadly very different to what the rulebooks say should happen..the phone hacking scandal and what has been uncovered about police corruption is EVIDENCE of how all sorts of things that shouldn't happen, do happen. This rule change will make it even harder for the truly innocent to fight back.

[ib]

the police sometimes think they are the law, instead of upholding the law.

i know of officers who sell client details to solicitors and accident management firms.

they are just as corrupt as any 3rd world police force, they just know how to hide it well.

[av]

i totally agree with ib, my daughters see a lot of police beating up citizens, try 4 coppers on 1 19year old, he answered a copper back, copper pushes him, then 4 of them pin him to the ground, the lad was beaten, bruises on face and ribs, the copper who did this got away with nothing, the lad had to pay all the costs.
Why should we have faith in the system, just face it the coppers like a good fight and just cos they are in uniform they get away with everything, even those who have drug dealers in the family, because they are good at lying. Its the innocent people that end up worse off.

[Steven Balmer]

The whole system is corrupt and a radical reveiw is long overdue. This article has tried to skew the real reasons the law firm do not want the limits capped, and that is self interest from beginning to end. Why cant their firm work for a reasonable £70 per hour, its more than most peopel earn. simple answer - greed. And the UK public is to cover the costs of these firms greed for very little work. Our legal system is not perfect and corruption exists within the law and the UK personal injuries/insurance scams are a blatant abuse of a failed safety net.

[Tat Chuen Kong]

The problem in this country is not a corrupt system, but imperfect (and SOMETIMES corrupt) individual humans. Of course, the problem of imperfect humans is a global one. And where you have imperfect humans (which is, inevitably, everywhere), some are less honest than others, some are less competent than others, and some are simply less dillegent than others.

In the UK (and, indeed, most of the developed world), there is a system of checks and balances to ensure that those individuals with the authority and power to hold the populace to account do so competently, impartially and fairly, and with due dilligence. The problem, of course, is that for this system of checks and balances to work effectively, it has to be necessarily complicated. The law, in trying cover all possible scenarios and eventualities, has to be very detailed to do so. And because it deals with human nature, can never ultimately cover all possible scenarios and eventualities. (Which is why the law is continuously being updated - through precedents, judicial interpretations and political debate and parliamentary amendments.) Is any legal system perfect? Of course not. Because the Law is made by imperfect people, to govern imperfect people, and is enforced by imperfect people. In the UK (and most of the developed world) at least, where important deficiencies in the system are highlighted, there is free and open debate about the fairest and most effective way to resolve the problem.

[True Religion Outlet]

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