Oct 06 - GSD Says Government “Continues To Deflect Issue Of Legal Aid”
The Opposition has said that the Government “has once more chosen to play the man and not the ball” in the latest exchange regarding the change to the legal aid rules.
The GSD spokesman for Justice, Selwyn Figueras, has said that he “will not stoop to the Government's gutter-level politics” and that he will continue to focus on the issue which is that, as a result of changes brought about by the GSLP Liberal government in 2012, “this community has footed an overall legal bill of millions of pounds.”
Two years later, the Government has now introduced amendments to the legislation limiting the amounts that lawyers can charge in such cases. The question is, according to the GSD: why didn't they introduce those limitations in 2012? Surely, says the Opposition, the Minister “cannot expect people to believe that in order to ensure the fair trial of four defendants, those limits could not have been introduced in 2012 but that the same logic no longer applied to other defendants in either complex fraud trials or other criminal cases.”
The GSD Opposition's position in relation to the timings and effects of the changes to the Legal Aid Rules in both 2012 and last week, is as previously set out and it says that all members of the Opposition share the view. The Minister for Justice's suggestion that the Opposition may be split on the issue is about as true, it argues, as it is politically genuine “but that is to be expected.”
Selwyn Figueras explained that "since the Minister for Justice lost his stewardship of the Ministry for Financial Services, he clearly has plenty of time on his hands to find new and innovative ways to avoid taking responsibility for his Government's policy."
"The Government is seeking to rely on advice that only they have the benefit of having seen and which we are being asked to accept at face value. The Minister fails, however, to explain why the Government now considers that a limit on fees payable in exceptionally complex cases is acceptable today but how or why that wasn't the case in 2012," Mr Figueras concluded.
