Following a long campaign by the Law Society, we have welcomed the government's announcement that frozen assets of wealthy suspected criminals will be released to pay for their defence costs.
As the law currently stands, where the assets of a wealthy defendant in a criminal trial are frozen, those assets cannot be used for defence costs, or even for paying a legal aid contribution. As a result, at best the frozen assets go to the Home Office at the end of the seizure process, and at worst, they are returned to the convicted criminal. In both cases, the legal aid fund bears the whole cost of the defence.
Law Society president Lucy Scott-Moncrieff said:
'The Law Society is delighted that our campaign to see frozen assets of wealthy suspected criminals released to pay defence costs has been successful. We welcome the Ministry's amendments to the Crime and Courts Bill to implement this long overdue change.'
The Society has been lobbying for a change in the law to allow frozen assets to be released to meet defence costs since our Access to Justice Review in November 2010. It appeared in our response to the green paper, it was part of our Sound Off For Justice Campaign, and we lobbied MPs in autumn 2012 to raise this issue via a private members bill.
The government has this week tabled amendments to the Crime and Courts Bill to permit the release of funds. We welcome the change and congratulate the Ministry of Justice who has evidently had to win an internal political battle within the government to achieve this.
We also congratulate the Evening Standard journalist Martin Bentham who has been campaigning on this issue for the last two years.