The value of nothing

If there is any justice, this column will be out of date by the time you read it. "Rubbish!" you will say, tossing the magazine aside, "she can't even get her facts right!"

Normally such a review would make any writer thoughtful at best, and sunk in gloom at worst '“ but if the news on the Tuesday 22 June is that Refugee and Migrant Justice (RMJ) has been saved from administration and is functioning again then this writer at least will be delighted. RMJ, a charity, has provided legal advice and representation for migrants and asylum seekers since 1992, with over 300 staff in 13 centres, as well as outreach offices in detention centres. In some parts of the country they are the sole providers of immigration advice '“ and in all parts of the country they are notable for care, efficiency and effectiveness.

Awarded the Justice/Liberty Human Rights Award in 2009, and supported in their recent campaign to stay alive by a host of great and good from Mind and Liberty to the Archbishop of Canterbury, they had to call in the administrators on 16 June because they cannot pay their bills. And they cannot pay their bills because the government does not pay theirs. RMJ is owed about £2m in legal aid fees, which, since the introduction of the fixed-fee system three years ago, are paid in a leisurely manner at the end of a case, and not one minute before. The fixed-fee system was a double whammy '“ not only did their fee income drop by about 40 per cent per client but interim payments were scrapped.

Organisations like RMJ that do their job properly do not process cases as quickly as profit mongers do: they stretch the fixed fee of £459 '“ yes, you did read that right, £459, however complicated the case or tragic the facts of it '“ over the necessary weeks and months a properly litigated case takes, taking as long as they had to under the hourly rate system but on an enforced pro bono basis. The RMJ is not going under because they have wasted their resources, nor are they asking for any extra money '“ all they want is the money they are owed.

No chance

In a last ditch attempt to avoid disaster '“ not just for them but for their 10,000 clients who are among the most vulnerable in society '“ the administrators had a meeting with the Ministry of Justice to ask for interim financial help. Fat chance. The MoJ statement tells it all: 'As other organisations have successfully made this transition [from hourly rate to fixed fee] it is only reasonable to expect RMJ to do the same.' Amidst some babbling about how important it is for the government to get 'value' for public money, they turned them down. Which raises another question: what precisely is 'value for money'? How does one balance cash with the liberty of the subject and basic justice?

Unfortunately, the 'other organisations' held up as examples to us all by the MoJ include those immigration advice providers who make a handsome profit from the fixed-fee system by taking the money and running. £459 for an hour's advice in which the asylum seeker is told they have no case and must be returned to the hell hole from which they fled comes under the heading of 'a nice little earner': is that value for public money? If it rids the system of the unwanted sojourners from despair and persecution then it probably is. And if that is too cynical a view, cynicism in the Oscar Wilde definition is the current fashion: knowing the price of everything, but the value of nothing.

Feel the weight

Criminal practitioners too are much bedevilled by questions of value. Basically, we have none. Our time has no value, and is treated as having no value, because it is no longer paid for. The hours spent by the defence hanging around court while overloaded lists move like glaciers are simply not counted by even the most obsessive compulsive of government-funded bean counters. But keep a judge waiting for a single minute and one is reminded, sharply, that running the court costs £3,000 per hour. Our expertise has no value '“ time and skill expended on preparing a case is judged only by the page count: never mind the quality, feel the weight. Time spent preparing a case one does not in the end do has no value at all, unless it hits the magic figure of eight hours, an inducement to fraud by the dishonest and inducement to sullen despair in the righteous.

But I have fallen into the same trap of which I complain: making a direct correlation between 'value' and money. Money is not the only measure of value, handy though it is for keeping the wolf from the door, but is the only criteria used for criminal justice and those who labour in that mildewed vineyard. Lawyers are 'fat cats' or 'failures' depending on their income; all we do is 'whine' about our fees, legal aid is a 'gravy train' which has either hit the buffers or is still expensively chugging on depending what newspaper you read.

Unlike doctors and police, who have both a better press and a better PR system, the work we do is treated as if it were a communicable and embarrassing social disease. We get the guilty off, wasting public money while we do it. And that is not the reality of life as it is truly lived around the courts: a case done well whether it results in acquittal or conviction can save lives from ruin, protect the vulnerable, restore confidence in the mechanisms of the state, turn young lives around, protect essential freedoms and keep liberty alive. Perhaps we are worth the money after all.