Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

I was a member of the Criminal Injury Compensation Board for seven or eight years and resigned when the noble Lord, Lord Howard, introduced his tariff scheme in 1993. Reverting to the Scottish theme, I recall sitting in Glasgow on one occasion with two very senior Scottish QCs next to me. I was the junior member. We had an applicant in front of us who addressed us in a language that I did not understand. At that time, I had been married to my late wife for some 30 years. She was from West Lothian, so I was pretty well attuned to the Scottish dialect of the central belt. However, I noticed that my learned friends on either side were nodding as though they understood, so I said to the chairman, ““What’s he saying?””, and the chairman replied out of the side of his mouth, ““I haven’t a clue””, so I said to the applicant, ““Would you mind speaking more slowly please?””. He looked at me and said, ““Eh?””. He could not understand me, so there was a certain confusion. I there realised the importance of having an advocate who could explain the case clearly to the tribunal. On the other hand, the members of the Criminal Injury Compensation Board were, I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, will acknowledge, a pretty experienced bunch of people, and we handled most claims without representation and without any difficulty, so if there are priorities to be chosen here, this would not be one of mine.