Opinion

Earlier this year Watford employment tribunal awarded Elon de Oliveira £35,700 after a sustained period of racist abuse he suffered at work as a hospital porter at Hammersmith Hospital...

Public, not vested, interests lie at the heart of Jackson LJ’s final report,says Andrew Parker

The Chilcot team has completed the first phase of its Inquiry. It has revealed few new facts, but has reminded us of those already known. They confirm what ought to be Chilcot’s blunt conclusion: our leaders took us into a war that was illegal, immoral, unnecessary, and hugely destructive.

The inquest into the death of David Gray, who died in February last year after a visiting locum GP, Dr Ubani, gave him a lethal overdose of Diamorphine, attracted national publicity. William Morris, the coroner for North and East Cambridgeshire, sat without a jury and did not mince words in his summing up last month.

The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) announced its “ground breaking global agreement” with British Aerospace (BAe) earlier this month. Under its terms, the company will pay £30m in return for the SFO terminating its prolonged investigation of it for overseas corruption.

In the few weeks since publication of Sir Rupert Jackson’s final report last month, the most talked about of his recommendations has been the proposal to abolish the ability to recover success fees and after the event (ATE) insurance premiums from the losing party. The reactions have ranged from outraged cries that access to justice will be stifled, through a broad welcome from those who have to pay them now, to the ostrich-like assumption that the primary legislation needed will never happen.

The General Council of the Bar has publicised the possibility of litigation against the government and the Legal Services Commission.

The greatest myth of the moment is that “Jackson will never happen”. It will and soon. Momentum is the word of the moment.

I was greatly encouraged by the publication of the latest HMRC Charter in November and by the comments made by Dave Hartnett in the 2009 Hardman Lecture...

Fourteen years ago Lord Woolf advocated a fast track for low value claims. Inherent in his proposals was the idea of a matrix of fixed costs for all claims within the track limits.