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24 March 2021 / Dr Jon Robins
Issue: 7926 / Categories: Opinion , Covid-19 , Legal services
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Legal advice by video-link: not remotely fair?

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Jon Robins reports on the potential short-changing of suspects during the COVID pandemic

A duty police station lawyer once described his clients—the ‘lowest level of society’ (his words)—in the following disparaging terms. ‘They are violent, fighting mad, hopelessly intoxicated,’ he wrote. ‘At all times of the day or night, weekend or holiday, we deal with the sad and bad. Cells daubed with excrement, clients vomiting copiously, bleeding, headbanging…’

And what does a solicitor receive for his pains? A fixed fee irrespective of whether they spend one or six hours down the station of somewhere between £126.58 and £274.66 depending on where they are.

Fundamental right

Anyone who is detained or interviewed by the police is entitled to a legal aid lawyer to be physically with them; however that fundamental right, enshrined in the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE), was put on hold last April because of the health risk posed by COVID-19.

In early April 2020, organisations representing solicitors, prosecutors and the police signed

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