One-eyed police killer gets £310k in legal aid
POLICE killer Dale Cregan has been awarded almost £311,000 in taxpayer-funded legal aid, including money for his “mental health” battles in prison.
Documents reveal how Cregan, 35, racked up huge bills for solicitors and barristers during his murder trial.
And they show how he has since been awarded public money to hire solicitors for advice on “mental health” cases behind bars.
Earlier this year former prison officer Neil Samworth alleged that Cregan had “faked” mental health problems to get moved to a “cushy” maximum security hospital.
In all, the one-eyed killer spent five years at Ashworth psychiatric unit in Merseyside before being hauled back to prison after boasting about his workouts and time playing snooker.
It has now emerged that he has been given handouts for legal advice over his mental health on at least two occasions since being jailed in 2013 for shooting Greater Manchester Police officers Nicola Hughes and Fiona Bone.
Documents show how between 2013-14 Cregan received legal help for a mental health case involving an alleged problem with “treatment/medication”. His solicitors cost taxpayers £1,321.03, according to a freedom of information response from the Legal Aid Agency.
In 2015 he was awarded a further £340.64 for solicitors to advise him again over an issue with mental health treatment/medication.
The same year he hired a solicitor with a view to making a judicial review. That time, taxpayers shelled out £79.49.
Nicola’s father Bryn, who used to work as a prison officer, said yesterday: “I would question the use of legal aid for those sort of facilities when they are readily available in prison.
“Is there any need for a legal adviser to get involved and for the legal aid system to foot the bill? I don’t see why it should meet that cost. At the end of the day he was given a whole life tariff and by the nature of the murders he committed and being locked up for rest of his life, he’s bound to have mental health issues...but so what?
“People have to look at the consequences of their actions. In this case, the consequences are devastating for the rest of my life, the rest of my family’s life, the rest of Fiona’s family’s life and the other two people he killed.”
The bills come on top of vast sums of public money to cover Cregan’s lawyers at his trial.
The serial criminal had been on the run for the murders of David Short, 46, and son Mark, 23, when he shot dead PCs Hughes, 23, and Bone, 32, in September 2012 after luring them to a house in Hattersley, Tameside, with a bogus 999 call.
The freedom of information response shows how solicitors at the Crown Court cost £142,271.87.
Cregan’s barristers cost a further £121,126.92, while disbursement costs added £45,188.
Solicitors representing him at the police station cost £566.96, according to the FOI response.
A Legal Aid Agency spokeswoman said: “Anyone facing a Crown Court trial is eligible for legal aid subject to a strict means test.”