All Government & politics articles – Page 217
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Law Report
Statutory powers
Defendant secretary of state appointing Trust Special Administrator to NHS Trust – TSA making recommendations concerning hospital in neighbouring Trust area
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Law Report
HS2: challenge
Claimants challenging decisions and procedures – Judge dismissing majority of grounds of challenge
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News
TSol set for major recruitment push
Whitehall’s central legal services provider the Treasury Solicitors Department (TSol) is to recruit 40 lawyers after spending nearly £4.6m on temporary staff through outsourcer Capita, the Gazette can reveal. The recruitment campaign is for advisory, commercial, employment and litigation lawyers at civil service grade 7, with salaries between £47,086 and ...
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Opinion
Open justice? Open court listings would be a start
A century ago, in Scott v Scott (1913), the House of Lords affirmed the common law rule that courts must administer justice in public. Just last week, Lord Justice Kay cited the ruling when rejecting a request by a Saudi prince for litigation to be heard in private. He ruled: ...
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News
I have seen the future and it didn't work
In autumn 2005, on a visit to the Home Office’s shiny new headquarters near Millbank, I enjoyed a demonstration of an all-singing, all-dancing joined-up criminal justice IT system. The ‘walk through’ was to show off a £2bn programme to join up police forces, prosecutors, the courts and prison and probation ...
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News
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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News
‘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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News
High Court throws out JR on ‘easyCouncil’
A London council is to proceed with the outsourcing of regulatory services such as building control and land charges after fighting off a High Court challenge. The court today dismissed an application for a judicial review against the London borough of Barnet’s programme to outsource a wide range of services ...
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News
Taxpayer to foot bill for interpreter pay rise
A 22% hike in payments to courtroom interpreters is set to knock a large hole in savings forecast by the government under its ill-starred initiative to contract out the service.
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News
Press royal charter looks like a winner for lawyers
When one door closes, another opens. So, if your legal aid or PI business looks a little shaky at the moment, have you considered opportunities in media law? The Recognition Panel whose royal charter was approved today in the latest tortuous step of the Leveson process opens up plenty of ...
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News
Power of attorney applications lead MoJ’s digital dash
Applications for lasting power of attorney will be available on the web from next April as one of a batch of digital services, the Ministry of Justice revealed today. The service is one of four picked by the department to meet central government’s call for ‘digital by default’ public services ...
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News
ALS interpreters contract facing renewed scrutiny
The deal between the Ministry of Justice and the private company contracted to provide court interpreters is to face scrutiny from parliamentary watchdogs, as cases continue to be disrupted by poor performance and non-attendance of interpreters.
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News
MoJ interpreting hub a ‘false economy’
Concern is mounting that the Ministry of Justice's central contract for interpreting work could prove a false economy, incurring knock-on costs for criminal justice agencies.
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News
MoJ in line of fire over interpreters contract
The Ministry of Justice could face a legal challenge to its new cost-cutting arrangements for the provision of interpretation and translation services across the justice sector.
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News
People’s peers
Anyone for ping-pong? Yes, the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders bill is back in the Lords this week, for the upper house to pick over its wounded amendments following their savaging last week in the Commons. In the end, of course, the Commons will get its way. As ...
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News
TSol set for major recruitment push
Whitehall’s central legal services provider the Treasury Solicitors Department (TSol) is to recruit 40 lawyers after spending nearly £4.6m on temporary staff through outsourcer Capita, the Gazette can reveal. The recruitment campaign is for advisory, commercial, employment and litigation lawyers at civil service grade 7, with salaries between £47,086 and ...
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News
Maggie Maggie Maggie! In in in!
The last time I was in the same room as Margaret Thatcher, several hundred Japanese businessmen were there, too. It was Tokyo, September 1989, the high noon of Japan's economic power. World leaders were passing through every week to pay homage to the yen, but prime minister Thatcher was different. ...
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News
Fear and loathing in libel reform
To put it mildly, this is not a good time for politicians to be seen doing favours for media proprietors. Yet this is inevitably how the upcoming debate on libel reform - expected to be kicked off with a bill in the Queen’s speech in May - is going to ...
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News
Cry freedom of information
The eyes of the news media have been elsewhere, but the House of Commons justice committee has just restated an important constitutional principle: freedom of information is a good thing. A long-awaited post-legislative review of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 concludes: ‘We do not believe that there has been ...
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News
A swift and sure way to computer disaster
Here we go again. Just two years after a new government promised to break with Labour’s record of IT-based policy fiascoes, along comes a high-profile public policy reform which looks set to go down the same dismal road. The success of the revolution set out in the Swift and Sure ...