Traffic court yesterday revealed an interesting aside to the Governments restrictions on legal aid, particularly the duty solicitor scheme which operates in all courts. For the uninitiated, duty solicitors provide free legal advice and representation to un-represented defendants in court, although their free help and advice only extends, in most cases, to those facing an allegation which upon conviction carries imprisonment.
Thus, those facing allegations of driving without insurance, or licence, speeding and other such offences, must either employ a solicitor of their own or represent themselves, which is what most choose to do.
A number of cases came before the court yesterday which illustrated the difficulty caused by un-represented defendants.
One was charged with 'no insurance', despite having an insurance certificate which clearly showed he was insured, to drive a third-parties car not belonging to him, and a police report from the Motor Insurer’s Bureau saying he was insured, but not to drive a third party's car!
This case had to be adjourned for further enquiries to be made as we could not be confidant enough of guilt to convict.
Another was a defendant accused of driving without a licence, despite producing a full clean licence to the court. In this case it was reported that the DVLA had rescinded (wrongly as it turned out) her licence, a quick check with the DVLA revealed that after being stopped by the police, and a DVLA check having been carried out, the DVLA, realising their mistake, had promptly re-instated her licence, at no time informing the luckless driver what they had done.
The CPS took the wise decision to offer no further evidence and the case was dismissed.
Another unfortunate driver, having been stopped by the police and given a 'producer', to produce his document within five days at a police station, was charged with having no insurance, no licence, no MOT and failing to produce his documents as required.
In court he not only produced documents showing he had a full clean driving licence, comprehensive insurance and an up-to-date MOT certificate, he also had a receipt from his local police station showing all these documents had been produced within the required timescale, and that they were all in order.
Again, an embarrassed CPS solicitor was forced to offer no evidence and invite us to dismiss the charges.
None of the above, and a raft of similar 'cock-ups' were the fault of the CPS, who can only work with the information given them, but each case took upwards of half an hour to resolve, given the difficulties a court always faces when dealing with un-represented defendants who know nothing of court procedures, and often little about road traffic law and regulations.
Had these defendants been able to call upon the Duty Solicitor it is likely that none would have taken more than a few minutes to resolve, and may not even have got into court. Instead, for those three cases alone, one and a half hours of court time, three magistrates, a court clerk, an usher and a Crown Prosecutor were engaged in fruitless activity while 'genuine' cases went by-the-by.
I can't begin to guess what the cost of all this was, but I'll bet my pension it far exceeds what twenty minutes of a duty solicitor's cost would be.
The law of unintended consequences strikes again.
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