‘Lawyers will miss evidence if they are not paid to go through it all’

DEFENDANTS have an increased risk of suffering a miscarriage of justice because defence lawyers face growing amounts of evidence which they are not paid to sift through.

An influential committee of MPS has warned that the existing legal aid system, in which lawyers do not receive additional remuneration for reviewing unused prosecution material, is “increasingly prejudicial to the defendant”.

Lawyers are being presented with more unused material because of the nature of modern police investigations and particularly the collection of digital data. They are tasked with reviewing such material to make sure there is not a “needle in the haystack” which could exonerate a defendant.

But the justice select committee said the “pressure placed on defence lawyers to fulfil their professional obligations by reviewing increasing quantities of unused prosecution material is fundamentally unfair” because they are not paid extra to do it.

Legal sources said the lack of payment was leading to low morale among defence lawyers, with the current legal aid rules criticised as an “analogue system in a digital age”.

Meanwhile, the committee warned the system was “likely to become unsustainable” and suggested it could even lead to defendants being wrongly convicted.

The report calls on the Government to restore legal aid payments for reviewing unused material above a certain page threshold. It gives an example of a domestic violence case where 17,000 pages of unused prosecution material was given to the defence on the trial’s first day, which had to be reviewed without extra remuneration.

Bob Neill, the chairman of the committee, said: “The Government must carry out comprehensive reviews to develop policies that are sustainable in the long term.”