A Justice Secretary who understands the importance of advocacy would not be assisting in the peddling of the lazy fiction that seeks to demonise legal aid lawyers as "cashing in", as The Sun headline put it. My second example of this Government's lack of appreciation of the value of advocacy is the recently enacted Justice and Security Act which allows for closed hearings in civil claims where evidence is sensitive in national security terms. Claimants and their lawyers are excluded from such closed hearings. During the Parliamentary debates, Ministers refused to address the central point that a closed hearing is fundamentally unfair because it prevents effective advocacy on behalf of the client. It is fundamentally unfair because the judge will be deciding the case by relying on evidence which one side has had no opportunity to challenge. As Lord Kerr of Tonaghmore said in the Supreme Court in 2011 in the Al-Rawi case, "evidence which has been insulated from challenge may positively mislead". It is the role of the advocate to challenge the evidence. My third example is that in a consultation which closed yesterday, Mr Grayling is proposing that the rules of standing for judicial review should be restricted so that claims could only be brought by persons with a direct interest and not by public interest groups such as NGOs, charities and pressure groups. Any attempt by Government itself, the defendant in so many of these cases, to restrict the efficacy of judicial review must be very carefully scrutinised to ensure that the changes are being
A Justice Secretary who understands the importance of advocacy would not be assisting in the peddling of the lazy fiction that seeks to demonise legal aid lawyers as "cashing in", as The Sun headline put it. My second example of this Government's lack of appreciation of the value of advocacy is the recently enacted Justice and Security Act which allows for closed hearings in civil claims where evidence is sensitive in national security terms. Claimants and their lawyers are excluded from such closed hearings. During the Parliamentary debates, Ministers refused to address the central point that a closed hearing is fundamentally unfair because it prevents effective advocacy on behalf of the client. It is fundamentally unfair because the judge will be deciding the case by relying on evidence which one side has had no opportunity to challenge. As Lord Kerr of Tonaghmore said in the Supreme Court in 2011 in the Al-Rawi case, "evidence which has been insulated from challenge may positively mislead". It is the role of the advocate to challenge the evidence. My third example is that in a consultation which closed yesterday, Mr Grayling is proposing that the rules of standing for judicial review should be restricted so that claims could only be brought by persons with a direct interest and not by public interest groups such as NGOs, charities and pressure groups. Any attempt by Government itself, the defendant in so many of these cases, to restrict the efficacy of judicial review must be very carefully scrutinised to ensure that the changes are being