Letters: Now pay a fee to be punished by the courts

These letters appear in the 16th April issue of The Independent

From Monday, a defendant who is found guilty of an offence in the magistrates’ courts faces an additional bill, the criminal courts charge. This is on top of the victim surcharge, which can be anything from £15 to £120, plus the prosecution costs, which would be at least £85 for a guilty plea.

Legal aid is now hard to get, and so defendants now frequently represent themselves to avoid further costs. This new charge is mandatory on magistrates and varies from £150 to £1,000. And all this before the punishment has been determined.

Our justice system has evolved to become the finest and most emulated in the world, but this new measure, on top of a slithery escalation of other costs, has reduced the criminal justice system to nothing better than a fundraising organisation to support a foundering Treasury.

Chris Grayling now presides over a Ministry of Injustice and I hope he heeds the warnings that he has taken a foolish step. Otherwise the prisons will be full of people who have been unable to pay for the upkeep of the state’s courts and staff rather than the criminals from whom we should all be protected.

Anthony Young

Chidham, West Sussex

A new financial charge applying to all defendants in criminal proceedings is being introduced in respect of offences committed on or after 13 April. Courts must impose a fee upon all convicted defendants, in addition to any other penalty which might be imposed. In a clear attempt to discourage defendants from electing for trial by jury, the highest fee applies to such cases.

There has been no debate in Parliament. The minister responsible, Chris Grayling, has introduced the change by means of a statutory instrument, not a Bill. The idea seems to be that defendants, who are already liable for prosecution costs, a victim surcharge and compensation, should pay towards the costs of running the courts. Given the constant linking by politicians of “rights” with “responsibilities”, this, it seems to me, entitles paying defendants to expect a certain level of service in return.

On 31 March, I sent the following inquiry to the Ministry of Justice: “Can you confirm, please, what financial redress a defendant will have when his trial can’t go ahead because no interpreter turns up with no explanation given, because CPS have failed to get witnesses there, because it’s triple-listed by the court but has lower ‘priority’ than other trials listed in the same court, because it’s listed as a ‘floater’ but isn’t reached, because vital DVD evidence won’t play on the antiquated equipment provided, because CPS haven’t complied with court directions, because it turns out the witness availability information was incorrect at the time the trial listing took place, because he or a co-defendant isn’t produced from prison?

“It’s a non-exhaustive list, of course, but they’re all things that happen in our courts regularly nowadays so I’m sure the Ministry of Justice has made some sort of provision. It’s just that it’s not been published alongside the fees.”

I have not yet received any reply.

A Kennedy

Solicitor

Barnsley

Food from Fukushima

Whilst it may be important to highlight deficiencies in the monitoring processes in the UK’s food chain, the tone of your article “On the way here, food tainted by Fukushima” (14 April) suggests that inclusion of ingredients grown in Fukushima Prefecture in processed food in the UK may present a risk to health.

The only Fukushima-related contamination likely to be present (apart from that naturally occurring in our foods) is that from Caesium-137. The evidence from Chernobyl is that exposure to the very low doses of radiation in the contaminated food that the population ate has not resulted in increases in any type of cancer. The increases in thyroid cancer post-Chernobyl have been due solely to exposure to radioactive iodine (no longer present at Fukushima since it quickly decays) and not from Caesium-137.

Fukushima Prefecture covers a large area, and the contamination from the accident is restricted to certain areas of the prefecture. The Japanese test their food and have a much stricter cut-off level for radioactive contamination than we do in Europe. In this particular case, as the concern is for processed food, the levels of any contamination present would be diluted by combination with other non-contaminated ingredients.

I would have absolutely no hesitation in eating the food grown in the Fukushima region – its nutritional value would certainly outweigh any risk from the minute doses of radioactive contamination that might be present.

Geraldine Thomas

Professor of Molecular Pathology, Imperial College London

Spend your pension pot on riotous living

George Osborne says he has given us our financial freedom. He tells us we are at last to be treated as adults, that we have worked hard and that we can be trusted with our pension pots, to have and to hold or to spend just as we wish. It has been suggested that some of us may wish to buy expensive cars, go on round the world cruises, buy houses to let: no doubt others may wish to spend their pension pots on gambling and riotous living.

But, amazingly in this brave new world, gifts, even to one’s family, are still taxable. For example, one may wish to give money to a child or a grandchild to buy a first home, or help with university expenses of many thousands of pounds a year. However any such gifts, even to help to repay the monstrous imposition of tuition fees, will still be taxable if one is careless enough to die within seven years of the date of the gift.

The message the Chancellor sends is: “Be as lavish as you wish with, for example, lap dancers, but, if you assist your daughters or granddaughters, I’ll be watching you and, if I can, I will tax your estate when you die. You may spend as you wish, but beware of giving.”

David Hindmarsh

Cambridge

Old people face a Tory ‘inheritance trap’

I find it incredible how ill thought through David Cameron’s announcement of a £1m tax break on inheritance tax on family homes is. Leave aside the politics, did no one advise him on the possible impact it could have outside of his narrow objective of preserving inherited wealth?

You’ve heard of the “poverty trap”, well now he’s created the “inheritance trap”. Anyone wanting to downsize in old age now risks depriving their children of large sums of written-off inheritance tax, which will be lost unless they sit tight in their larger, more valuable property.

What does this mean? Fewer family homes being released for the younger generation as the elderly stay put instead of moving into smaller, more manageable homes. Worse still, older people, asset rich, but income poor, will stay in homes they can’t afford to heat or maintain properly and which may be totally unsuitable as they approach the end of their lives, putting both emotional and financial pressure on them at their most vulnerable point.

The case against doing this is exactly the same as the argument that has been put against assisted dying: that it would make older people feel pressured into making decisions that were good for other people, rather than best for them. Let’s put an end to it now.

Hilary Cooper

Cambridge

Her Majesty’s loyal Commons

Lies, rudeness, backstabbing, promises which cannot be kept: we are now going through the charade of party campaigning which precedes any general election.

Are we not lucky that we have as head of state a constitutional monarch who is above all this, instead of an elected president who would inevitably be drawn from those performing in this not-so-comic opera?

Mike Timms

Iver, Buckinghamshire

Defeat to a weird usage

Why have unlucky sports teams started being beaten or defeated not by better ones, but to them? Even Stephen Brenkley has succumbed to this pointless neologism: “After Bangladesh’s defeat to India ...” (31 March). What’s the point of it?

Chris Sladen

Woodstock, Oxfordshire

Right to buy for all tenants

If Ed were really Red then his response to the Tories’ plans to extend the right to buy to housing association tenants would be to state that a Labour government would extend it to private rented accommodation.

John Orton

Bristol

Cameron’s idea of a good life

David Cameron insists the Tories are offering “a good life” for all. His reference to the famous 70s BBC sitcom is no doubt deliberate in that he means to force people to subsist on home-grown vegetables.

Sasha Simic

London N16