Solicitors who reaped millions from dealing with the miner compensation claims may have to return some of it. Mrs Justice Swift has ruled that lawyers were paid too much. The Times
Unless there is a successful appeal, it looks as if Jim Beresford, senior partner of Beresfords, who paid himself £16.7 million last year, may well be breaking into the piggy bank and be writing a cheque to the government.
As The Times reports: Mrs Justice Swift noted in her judgment that a detailed study of the time spent by solicitors on each coal claim “gives rise to the strong inference that the work has been significantly less onerous than had originally been anticipated”.
The former Lord Chief Justice, Lord Woolf, has told MPs that the government cannot simply spend their way out of the prison overcrowding problem by building more prisons.
Lord Woolf said: “I think judges should know how much the sentence he imposes is going to cost…that is a very relevant matter, and if there is a suitable cheaper option, they should choose that option.”
It costs around £27k to keep someone in prison for a year. Even a one day ‘term’ has entry/ exit costs, so call it £500 plus £500 per week and you’ll be close. [Remember the automatic half served on licence!]
Even an ‘umble JP can do that sort of maths.
The problem is that line ‘suitable cheaper option’. By the point we’re seriously looking at gaol, we’ve already rejected CD, Fine, community order – all we have is suspended sentence and gaol. And the Press and Public see a suspended sentence as ‘this animal walked free from Court’.
A better understanding of the costs and IMPACTS of community orders would help. But so overworked/ underfunded are Probation that they appear costly and ineffective.
As they say in Dick Whittington – ‘bring back the cat’. At leas a good flogging would appease the red top press.
And the Operation Spanner accused would have loved it.
Hoddy