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“Court staff are the foot-soldiers of judicial independence, and even a fool could grasp the imperative to protect their impartiality.”
“Why sell and fragment a service that has met or exceeded its targets? The only reason must be money and ideology.”
"We will sell to no man, we will not deny or defer to any man either Justice or Right" (Clause 39 Magna Carta, 1215)
'Privatising the courts system: the public are not customers, they are citizens'
An article by Sarah Vine who is a criminal barrister at 2 Pump Court Chambers (www.2pumpcourt.co.uk)
“The tide of privatisation inches closer to the heart of our justice system by the day. Security, probation, transport and interpretation services are long gone. G4S provide child-abuse investigators and rape recovery suites, for profit. Legally-aided representation is in the MoJ's cross-hairs. If Grayling has his way, the only heads left above the corporate water will be the judges. For a while, at least.”
“On Tuesday, in response to public alarm at the leaked plans to privatise the courts service, the Ministry of Justice issued one of its increasingly familiar, and decreasingly plausible, reassurances. In terms of impression management, it was the ministerial equivalent of "I'm not a racist, but…". The MoJ stated that the proposals were not for the "wholesale" privatisation of Her Majesty's Courts & Tribunals Service (HMCTS).
The MoJ did not define what it meant by "wholesale", but it probably matters little. The justice secretary is a huge fan of outsourcing, and has a talent for ignoring troublesome evidence, however compelling. He also regards anything which smacks of rights – constitutional or human – as an irritant, an outmoded obstacle to thrusting reform, and to be dispatched as swiftly as possible. Certainly an 800-year-old prohibition on the sale of "justice or right" is not going to stand in his way. Not when there is money to be made by big business.
In a new spin on the process by which public services are "outsourced", it is proposed that HMCTS be offered both to the lowest bidder (for the provision of staff and buildings), and also to the highest, by charging wealthy litigants fees, over and above their legal costs, for using the courts' service. In this way, Grayling seeks to transform it into a profitable enterprise, offering "attractive returns" to investors.
But HMCTS is not an enterprise, designed for the pursuit of profit or growth. The very idea is repugnant. The public are not "customers". They are citizens, and are entitled to public, accountable justice, administered without fear or favour; no sale of justice or right. If the insertion of private interests into the administration of justice did not offend against that principle, it would have been achieved by now.
Court staff are a close-mouthed breed. Most people who come into contact with them will report that they are courteous, approachable and helpful. They deal, routinely, with people who are having the worst day of their life. They are also incredibly, almost pathologically, discreet. They see and hear information which could prove the undoing of a case, a litigant, a juror, a witness or (whisper it) a judge. They are often responsible for when a case is heard, and which judge hears it. Court staff are the foot-soldiers of judicial independence, and even a fool could grasp the imperative to protect their impartiality.
But pay people less, erode their job security, and ask them to serve two masters, and you cannot be surprised if they choose the one holding the purse-strings. Litigants paying over the odds for their chance to litigate in the UK will be expecting some kind of preferential treatment. It will start with queue-jumping, and judge selection. And perhaps the contract-winning companies (don't make me say G4S) will be more than happy to instruct their staff to oblige. Of course, the contract winners themselves will also be litigants, perhaps defendants in health and safety prosecutions, or being sued by relatives of someone like Jimmy Mubenga.
When a trial takes place, objections can be taken to jurors, judges and even court locations if there is a real possibility that their involvement may damage the integrity of the trial process. What conceivable protection will be afforded any opponent of the contract winners, or those wealthy litigants, when the entire court system is run by those in their pay? Outsourcing will have relieved the justice secretary of responsibility for such "operational matters". In place of a sacred constitutional principle, Mr Grayling proposes a royal charter, the ministerial equivalent of "some of my best friends are black".
The tide of privatisation inches closer to the heart of our justice system by the day. Security, probation, transport and interpretation services are long gone. G4S provide child-abuse investigators and rape recovery suites, for profit. Legally-aided representation is in the MoJ's cross-hairs. If Grayling has his way, the only heads left above the corporate water will be the judges. For a while, at least.”
Original source: Privatising the courts system: the public are not customers, they are citizens
Read more: Chris Grayling's worst failure? Not transport: the probation services
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Swedish riots: A stark rise in inequality has brought about unprecedented rioting in Stockholm
…”The first thing to observe about Sweden is how rapidly a gulf is opening up between rich and poor. Between 1985 and the late 2000s, according to the OECD thinktank, Sweden saw the biggest growth in inequality of all the 31 most industrialised countries. It's important not to overstate this: the country remains one of the most egalitarian in the world – but it is taking big steps in the wrong direction. Swedes used to pride themselves on their sense of moderation, what they referred to as lagom. Prime ministers were supposed to live as modestly as school teachers. Compare that with the recent craze in for vaskning. It means sinking, and refers to a practice adopted by young, gilded Swedes of buying two bottles of champagne and then ordering the barman to pour one down the plughole. When Matilda von Sydow described it to me, I thought it was some urban legend, but no: she has seen it happen in Stockholm's swanky Stureplan. As she says: "Imagine being an unemployed teenager in Husby and hearing about such practices." And that's the other thing: while much of the initial rise in inequality was about rich Swedes getting richer, increasingly poor Swedes are getting pushed backwards, either by unemployment and incapacity benefits getting relatively meaner, or by the rise in joblessness. On some measures, one in four young Swedes are out of work. In some towns, they are handed money to emigrate to richer Norway. Von Sydow lives in Oslo and observes: "In any local cafe, the barista will be a Swede."- Details
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Privatisation agenda locks Australia into failure
…”Serco has over a billion dollars’ worth of contracts with Canberra to manage the never-ending stream of asylum boats. No other country in the world has outsourced these services to so few companies (you can count on on one hand the corporations receiving the vast bulk of the government’s money). In recent years, countless alleged cases of mismanagement and price-gouging have been documented within Serco and the Department of Immigration and Citizenship. These include Canberra’s failure to impose an independent auditing regime to monitor the multinational’s conduct in its many centres and the apparent failure to address potential remaining asbestos risks at Villawood.
Despite such problems, both the Labor and Liberal parties support the model currently in place for immigration detention, and few voices in the mainstream media challenge the underlying philosophy of having a for-profit company managing some of the most vulnerable people in society. The results are high rates of self-harm, mental health problems and attempted suicide (all documented last week in a damning report by the Commonwealth and immigration ombudsman), restricted media access and unnecessary commercial-in-confidence agreements between the government and corporations. There is an ethically blurry environment where the more refugees arrive on our shores, the more profits companies make.- Everything you wished to know about “Austerity”: Watch this Video
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