Independent: Gordon Brown withheld funds demanded by the armed forces in the months leading up to the invasion of Iraq, it was revealed yesterday.

Geoff Hoon, the defence secretary at the time of the Iraq war, told the Chilcot inquiry that the Ministry of Defence had “asked for significantly more money than we eventually received” from the Treasury in July 2002, less than a year before the invasion.

Mr Hoon, who was behind last month’s failed putsch against the Prime Minister’s leadership, added that spending cuts imposed on the military by Mr Brown had led to the shortage of helicopters experienced by British troops operating in Afghanistan.

Independent: Grandparents will today be promised new rights by the Government as the battle to win the “family vote” intensifies in the run-up to the general election.

Ministers will announce plans to scrap a requirement for grandfathers and grandmothers to apply to the courts when they are denied contact with their grandchildren by the “resident parent.” An estimated one million children lose contact with their grandparents following adoption, divorce, separation or family feuds.

Some 68 per cent of grandparents feel very close to their grandchild. But while most enjoy caring for children, half of them feel stressed. A “BeGrand” website for grandparents will provide a directory of services and peer support, online advisers, information and advice ranging from cooking to legal rights. In a Green Paper published today, the Children’s Secretary, Ed Balls, will acknowledge the important role many grandparents play in supporting and caring for grandchildren.

Times: Over eight thousand children have been taken into care in the year since the Baby P tragedy came to light — an increase of some 40 per cent.

Cafcass, the children’s court advisory service, said that the passage of time had resulted in no slow down in the number of children being removed from their homes as social workers become more risk averse.

November 2009 — a year after the news of the death of the 17-month old toddler emerged — saw 753 care orders going to court, the third highest monthly total since Cafcass records began in 2005. In total, 8,524 care applications were made in 2009 compared with 5,968 in 2008.

Guardian:

• IPCC upholds complaints against five Met officers
• Fury from victims as none faces disciplinary action

Telegraph: Rights for NHS patients to be treated with dignity and respect are now enshrined in law for the first time, ministers have announced.

Times: Two businessmen will learn today how long they must serve in prison after an appeal that has reignited controversy over “have-a-go heroes”.

Yesterday the Court of Appeal rejected an application for leave to appeal against conviction by Munir Hussain, 53, of High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, and also by his brother Tokeer Hussain, 35.

But the judges went on to hear argument that the sentences should be cut and will give their decision today.

The Lord Chief Justice will rule on whether to cut jail terms of 30 and 39 months imposed on Munir and Tokeer Hussain for chasing an intruder down the street and attacking him with a cricket bat.

Times: A judge has encouraged the Charity Commission to end a lengthy battle with The Times by handing over documents about George Galloway’s suspected financial links with Saddam Hussein.

Mr Justice Calvert-Smith, a former Director of Public Prosecutions, said that the regulator should make the information public because the issues raised were of real importance.

Mr Galloway, the Respect MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, is expected to stand in the general election. However, the 10,000 pages held by the commission about his charity could be kept secret for 30 years. The Times used the Freedom of Information Act to ask the commission for the papers it holds suggesting that the MP may have known that an appeal he ran received aid money diverted by Saddam’s regime.

Times: How far can householders go to defend themselves? The reignited debate on “have-a-go heroes” is already prompting fresh calls from politicians for reforms to the law.

Yesterday the Conservatives promised “greater protection to householders who defend their homes against intruders” although there are no specifics on what that would be.

Times: A devout Christian began an appeal today against a ruling that British Airways did not discriminate against her by asking her to stop wearing a cross visibly at work.

Nadia Eweida, 58, from Twickenham, southwest London, wants three judges to overturn a decision by the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) in 2008 that she was not a victim of indirect religion or belief discrimination.

The tribunal had heard that she was sent home in September 2006 for wearing a small silver cross on a chain around her neck, which she wore as a personal expression of her faith

Times: E-Clear, the credit card processing company used by Globespan, the collapsed airline, was placed into administration today, in the latest step in a £35 million legal dispute over flight payments.

Mr Justice Vos, sitting at the High Court in London, signed an order placing E-Clear into administration and said BDO had been lined up as administrator for the business, which acts as a middleman between credit card companies and airlines.

Telegraph: Airport body scanners, which show the naked form of anyone who passes through them, could breach human rights, according to the UK’s equality watchdog.

Telegraph: A man was arrested under the Terrorism Act and issued with a life ban from Doncaster’s airport after joking on Twitter that he would blow it “sky high” if his flight was delayed.

Times: Going to law has become so expensive that many can face ruin if they bring or defend a claim. At the same time, the costs regime — whether for an accident claim, business dispute or libel action — has become an industry costing taxpayers and insurers millions of pounds a year.

Costs have spiralled out of control, fuelled by lawyers charging a 100 per cent uplift when they bring a successful claim on a “no win, no fee” deal and by middlemen taking a cut when they pass on a claim. This “bizarre and expensive” system, as Lord Justice Jackson put it yesterday, stems from moves to widen access to justice. Lord Irvine of Lairg’s Access to Justice Act 1999 extended “no win, no fee” deals to personal injuries at work, replacing legal aid. But the insurers moved in and “after the event” policies flourished, by which litigants paid premiums to protect themselves against paying the other side’s costs if they lost their case.

Times: Libel trials should be heard by judges sitting without juries, Lord Justice Jackson recommends.

He also proposes an increase in libel damages of 10 per cent and making claimants pay the “success” fees that their lawyers charge if they succeed with a “no win, no fee” claim.

But success fees need not be capped, as he recommends for accident cases, because in libel claims, damages payments would not have to be used to fund future personal care bills. In accident cases he suggests an uplift limit of 25 per cent, compared with the 100 per cent that can be charged now.

Referring to libel claims, he said: “The main vindication is vindication by the judgment of the court or the statement in court after settlement. I see no reason why such claimants should not be prepared to pay a substantial proportion of the damages to their lawyers as success fees.

Times: An end to the spiralling costs of going to law and the bonanza of “no win, no fee” deals was signalled yesterday with a landmark report on civil justice.

Proposed reforms would cut millions from the £140 million paid out annually in legal costs by the National Health Service. They would also reduce costs in accident, libel and privacy claims and lead to many accident victims recovering more damages.

The biggest shake-up in civil litigation for ten years was outlined by Lord Justice Jackson, the Court of Appeal judge, in a 557-page report. Costs were out of all proportion and prevented access to justice for those with valid claims and valid defences, he said. The proposals would “bring the costs of civil litigation back under control and promote access to justice”.

He said US-style contingency fees, where lawyers act for a share of the damages, would be permitted, though with controls. “Costs associated with an accident claim worth up to £25,000 should be fixed.”

Times: Lord Justice Jackson has likened his review of civil litigation costs to a trial. He gathered evidence, he heard from opposing advocates and now he is ready to deliver his judgment. But whatever Sir Rupert hands down, it will be a suspended sentence. The question of what happens once he reports — which has hung over the review from Day 1 — now comes into sharp focus.

Independent: Until about 40 years ago, mining had been going on beneath the Forest of Gwydyr since the Bronze Age. Today, the only signs visible above ground are a handful of derelict buildings. But concealed within the labyrinth below, where men toiled in the dark in search of zinc and lead, lies a truly explosive secret.

A huge cache of abandoned dynamite has been discovered in one of the deepest mines in the North Wales forest. The explosives, hastily abandoned when the mines were closed in the 1950s and 60s, and now highly unstable, have been left where they lay to rot, surrounded by newspapers dropped by the last miners as they finished their final shift. One mine alone is estimated to have up to 250 sticks of dynamite still inside.

The explosive power could still cause a lot of damage, said Robin Murray, a local fireman and cave rescue specialist. “There have been incidents in the past where some have gone off,” he explained. “They are highly susceptible to radio signals and sparks because as they decompose they become highly unstable. If this lot went up it would certainly cause a hell of a big hole in the ground.”

Independent: Unscrupulous firms that urge people to make frivolous legal claims after suffering an injury face being shut down under radical proposals designed to cut millions off the cost of civil justice.

“So-called “claims farmers”, which refer all of their cases on to a personal injury lawyer, would be banned under a plan drawn up by one of Britain’s most senior judges.”

Lord Justice Jackson, a judge in the Court of Appeal, said: “The focus of our litigation process should be upon compensating victims, not upon making payments to intermediaries and others. That such substantial referral fees are being paid shows that there is too much money swilling around in the personal injury compensation process.”

His reform looks set to be supported by the Government as it attempts to tackle the spiralling cost of defending legal actions against the health service. Clinical negligence claims cost the NHS £796m last year.

Lord Justice Jackson warned that in some personal injury “no win no fee” cases, the legal “costs war” meant that solicitors’ fees were more than 10 times the amount of damages finally paid out. He added that changes should be made to the way solicitors were paid to discourage speculative and costly cases………..

Independent: Seven men and two youths have admitted conspiracy to commit grievous bodily harm in connection with the murder of an Army cadet.

Joseph Lappin, 16, from Liverpool, was visiting a youth club when he was stabbed through the heart. James Moore, 17, admitted the murder at Liverpool Crown Court on Wednesday.

The victim, from the Liverpool Scottish Regiment, had travelled from his home to the Shrewsbury House Youth Club across the city in Everton on 20 October 2008, where he and his friends, Callum Naden and Greg Harold, were attending a band practice.

Legal Week: New Bar Council chairman Nicholas Green QC is urging chambers to set up separate business units to help them compete with solicitors to win work from clients.

The groundbreaking initiative would see individual chambers encouraged to set up business units, called ‘procurecos’, which would be used as a means of winning work direct from companies and public bodies, cutting out the solicitors who generally serve as middlemen between chambers and clients.

Each procureco would bring together barristers with solicitors and other professions, like accounting firms, effectively enabling chambers to offer a one-stop shop to clients at a cheaper rate than solicitors.

The move would reverse the traditional referral system that sees solicitors appoint chambers on behalf of clients and would put more control in the hands of the Bar, with each procureco effectively operating a number of panels for different professions……

The procurecos would source rather than supply work, allowing solicitors and barristers working under the umbrella units to remain regulated as individuals by the Solicitors Regulation Authority and the Bar Standards Board (BSB) respectively.

Law Society Gazette: The Law Society has filed a judicial review application in a move to overturn new government regulations restricting the costs that can be recovered by acquitted defendants.

Regulations that came into force on 31 October 2009 cap at legal aid rates the costs recoverable by acquitted defendants who have paid privately for their defence.

The Law Society said the ‘unlawful and grossly unfair’ new scheme would leave people with ‘crippling costs’ despite winning their cases. It has instructed London firm Kingsley Napley to act.

Telegraph: A legal adviser tricked two estranged couples into believing they had been divorced in order to pocket their fees.

Ministry of Justice: Jack Straw said:

‘I would like to thank Sir Rupert for undertaking this review of costs in the civil courts and for producing such a substantial, comprehensive and detailed report. It is a remarkable piece of work which is based on extensive consultation and puts forward a broad range of significant recommendations for reform. I look forward to considering these proposals in detail.’

The Ministry of Justice will look at Sir Rupert’s package of recommendations in depth and will set out the way forward in due course.

Sir Rupert Jackson’s Review of Civil Litigation Costs is available via the Judicial Communications Office website, Judiciary of England and Wales.

Independent:

Why are we asking this now?

This week Britain’s first crown court criminal trial to take place without a jury in more than 400 years started at the Royal Courts of Justice. The case, involving four men accused of a £1.75m armed robbery, is being heard by a judge, sitting alone, who will decide upon the men’s guilt or otherwise…….

Guardian: The home secretary may have acted unlawfully by pursuing the extradition of the computer hacker Gary McKinnon, a high court judge said yesterday.

Extraditing McKinnon, an Asperger’s sufferer who is facing a lengthy prison sentence in the US for breaching US military and Nasa computers, raises “stark and simple issues”, Mr Justice Mitting said.

In a letter, the judge described medical evidence that McKinnon would be at high risk of suicide in an American jail as “as yet unchallenged and unqualified”.

Times: Royal Bank of Scotland defrauded an Austrian bank by encouraging it to invest in a £140 million sham financial vehicle created for Enron, the collapsed energy giant, a court was told yesterday.

Raiffeisen Zentralbank (RZB) put £10 million into the vehicle, which was linked to Enron’s Teesside power plant and designed to allow the energy group to book future profits from the plant in its accounts before they had been earned. The vehicle, called ESOL and created in 2000, was arranged by the RBS department where the NatWest Three bankers had worked. The three, who served jail sentences in America and Britain after being convicted of Enron-related fraud, were not involved in the deal……

Times: Stacked on David Edmonds’ desk is a pyramid of 18 varieties of baked beans. “It’s a private joke,” he insists — declining to be photographed with them. “It shows the huge variety you can have, and quality at the same time.”

The joke is a reference to the Big Bang in legal services — opening up the market to different ways of meeting consumers’ legal needs. Edmonds, as chairman of the Legal Services Board, is the arch-regulator under the reforms of the Legal Services Act 2007 and is given the task of policing the landscape that is taking shape.

The reforms have been dubbed Tesco Law, although Co-op Law would be more accurate as the latter has been taking the lead in preparing legal services for its customers. Either way, the supermarket label has stuck: Bridget Prentice, a government minister, once said that consumers should be able to access legal services “as easily as they buy a tin of beans”.

The comment did not go down that well with lawyers — so Edmonds is careful not to stretch the analogy. But he agrees that what people want is “greater variety and greater choice”. And, he adds, transparency — to know the price that they are going to pay, and for what. “They want to see what’s on the tin and know what its contents are.”

Times: The Dutch Prime Minister insisted yesterday that he acted honourably in supporting the Iraq war despite the verdict of an independent inquiry that the invasion had no mandate under international law.

In a devastating rejection of the position of the Dutch Government, the inquiry, led by the former head of the Netherlands Supreme Court, decided that the UN resolutions did not provide a legal basis for the use of force.

Like the US and British governments, Jan Peter Balkenende relied on UN Resolution 1441 of November 2002 as the legal basis for supporting the Iraq war. This resolution threatened serious consequences if Saddam Hussein did not fully comply with his obligations to disarm.

However, the Davids commission in the Netherlands concluded in its 551-page report: “Despite the existence of certain ambiguities, the wording of Resolution 1441 cannot reasonably be interpreted as authorising individual member states to use military force to compel Iraq to comply with the Security Council’s resolutions without authorisation from the Security Council.”……

Times: The first significant criminal trial without a jury for 400 years in England and Wales opened yesterday with one of the barristers declaring: “We are breaking history.”

John Twomey, Peter Blake, Barry Hibberd and Glen Cameron are accused of taking part in a £1.75million hold-up at a Heathrow warehouse in February 2004.

The Court of Appeal ruled last year that the case should be heard by a judge alone because of the danger of jury tampering.

What will be the fourth trial of the case — after three previous trials collapsed at a cost of £22million — opened in the Royal Courts of Justice, rather than a criminal court.

Times: A key plank of the Government’s anti-terror laws was in tatters last night after the European Court of Human Rights ruled that police stop and search powers were unlawful.

The surprise ruling stunned the Home Office, which swiftly announced that the Government would seek to appeal against the unanimous ruling by seven judges.

Despite the judgment, Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary, said that police would continue to use the powers, which allow them to stop and search people without having to suspect them of involvement in terrorism.

The ruling is a further blow to counter-terrorism law, after the controversial control order regime — under which suspects can be held in a form of house arrest — was weakened by a series of court rulings.

The Strasbourg court ruled yesterday that Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 violated individual freedoms guaranteeing the right to private life. The court criticised the arbitrary nature of the power and also the way in which its use was authorised.

Under Section 44, the Home Secretary can authorise police to make random stop and searches in a designated area for up to 28 days, after which the power is renewable……

Times: A campaign to allow cameras into courts to film proceedings was announced by Sky News last night.

John Ryley, head of Sky News, said that there was one branch of the democratic system that broadcasting had still not properly penetrated – the courts.

“A coherent, and fair, judicial system is the keystone of a democratic system,” he said in a speech to the Cambridge Union Society.

“Today, any member of the public has the right to walk into any court, any day, and see justice being done, but few have the time or the means to do so.

“There can be no logic for excluding the cameras from events which are already held in public.”

Sky News had over the years devised innovative ways to circumvent the ban on broadcasting trials, he added.

It won permission to run live transcripts of proceedings, produced by stenographers and mounted nightly reconstructions with actors of the Hutton inquiry into the death of the scientist Dr David Kelly.

It used 3D digital graphics to reconstruct the Soham trial of Ian Huntley and his girlfriend, Maxine Carr and in America used actors to reconstruct the Michael Jackson trial.

“The ban on cameras remains, though there are signs that resistance is weakening,” he added.

The new Supreme Court had installed cameras and the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war had been televised.

Independent: Alastair Campbell faces potentially explosive questioning today over his role in overstating the reliability of intelligence on Saddam Hussein’s weaponry, as he becomes the first major political figure to appear before the Iraq inquiry.

Tony Blair’s former Downing Street director of communications is expected to be quizzed over a key claim that it was “beyond doubt” that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction (WMD), made in a dossier published in September 2002 setting out the Government’s case for war.

The assertion appeared in a foreword to the document, which appeared under the name of Mr Blair. However, Mr Campbell has already admitted that he was responsible for drafting it.

Guardian: Top universities accuse Gordon Brown of jeopardising 800 years of higher education, warning that they could quickly be “brought to their knees” by the government’s spending cuts of up to £2.5bn, thereby damaging Britain’s ability to recover from recession.

In a withering attack, the leaders of the Russell Group of 20 leading universities say: “It has taken more than 800 years to create one of the world’s greatest education systems, and it looks like it will take just six months to bring it to its knees.”

Writing in the Guardian, they say: “If government targets these huge cuts on university budgets they will have a ­devastating effect not only on students and staff, but also on our international competitiveness, national economy and ability to recover from recession … cuts of this magnitude in overall funding will impact on the sustainability of our research and cannot fail to affect even the most outstanding universities.”

The group, which includes Warwick, Liverpool and Glasgow universities as well as Oxford and Cambridge, say that ministers have failed to appreciate one of the “jewels in the country’s crown”.

“Perhaps the prime minister should consider what his international counterparts regard as being priorities … an investment of €11bn in higher education in France … Germany pumped a total of €18bn into promoting world-class research alongside university education, whilst Barack Obama ploughed an additional $21bn into federal science spending, as well as announcing a decade-long budget doubling $42.6bn for science, technology and energy.

Guardian: Peter Robinson temporarily stepped aside as Northern Ireland‘s first minister yesterday amid the storm over his wife Iris’s affair and finances, saying that he needed time to deal with family matters.

In a high-wire act that could still collapse power sharing in the province, the Democratic Unionist party leader installed the enterprise minister, Arlene Foster, as a caretaker first minister – the first woman to lead Northern Ireland – for six weeks with immediate effect.

Sinn Féin appeared to accept Foster (whose father, a part-time RUC officer, the IRA once tried to murder) although the Guardian has learned it is only prepared to wait for up to three weeks for the DUP. After that, Sinn Féin wants an assurance the DUP will agree to the transfer of policing and justice powers from Westminster to Northern Ireland; if not, it will consider not renominating Martin McGuinness as deputy first minister, which in turn would bring down the coalition and trigger assembly elections in the early spring.