What guards?

Who guards the guards?
I have always believed that a strong criminal defence solicitor is the guard against a police state and miscarriages of justice. Thus allowing the public to know if the state turned its might against them wrongly then there would at least be someone to protect them.

This government has now put forward the removal of the defence. Accused will no longer be able to choose who defends them. If you earn between you and spouse more than £37k you will have to pay, oh and even if you win you can't get your money back.

The rate of pay is to be so low that there will not be any firms left able to pay for quality advocates. We will end up with a copy of the American two tier system where the rich choose who they want and receive a rolls Royce service. The poor will get a public defender allocated to them and the rates so poor they will be lucky if they get a robin reliant service.

We know most people have little to no sympathy with criminals but perhaps you should know that 25% of people charged with an offence are Innocent!

I have represented teachers, doctors, dentists, nurses all alleged to have committed a crime when in fact they had not.

The government call us fat cats and talk of those earning Upto £500k a year. Ironically the only such people are to be excluded from theses changes. This will affect grass roots firms that in reality are working unsocial hours at the police station and courts for rates that have been frozen for 20 years and reduced in the last few years till we are on less than plumbers mechanics and many others.

We don't do this job for the money, if we wanted that we would have become commercial solicitors. We do it as a vocation, we are the guards. Don't let this government destroy the last safety net before decent into a police state.