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From The Socialist newspaper, 17 October 2018
No to fat-cat top judges' £59k pay hike - fight for decent pay for criminal justice workers
Top judges now get nearly a quarter of a million a year, photo Brian Turner (Creative Commons) (Click to enlarge)
Greg Randall, lawyer and member of Lambeth and Southwark Socialist Party
The Senior Salaries Review Body recommends that salaries for High Court judges be increased by 32%, taking them from £181,500 to £240,000 a year. The establishment pay board says this is needed to recruit future judges.
Civil servants providing administrative support in court will be astounded by this. Their union, PCS, has rightly pointed out the contrast between already very well-paid judges getting a massive pay rise while most workers' pay is falling in real terms.
Money could be better used to end swingeing austerity cuts to the court service. The applications that I file at court as a solicitor are regularly delayed and mistakenly rejected, sometimes repeatedly, because there are not enough trained staff to deal with the administrative workload. This adds to my clients' costs as I have to do the work of putting things right.
My experience is shared by other lawyers who take cases to court. A judge once apologised to me after I had to unnecessarily cross London and appear before him due to a basic mistake. He said that his court's staffing has been halved since 2010, so this happens frequently.
Because of the removal of legal aid from most cases, the meltdown is made worse by the need for staff and judges to deal with a surge of claimants and defendants who can't afford lawyers. The system, especially the family court, gets clogged up by litigants trying to run their own cases and negotiate complicated procedural rules.
If the court service were properly funded, with enough trained staff on decent pay, the system's running would be much smoother to everyone's benefit. It's recruiting, paying and retaining these workers that matters.
As a socialist lawyer, I would also like more judges - but I want them to be lawyers who have worked at the sharp end of the law, not the ruling-class milieu that most judges are drawn from now. Then we could get both value for money and a better quality of justice.
Bail hostel worker: "We haven't had a pay rise in ten years"
"I can't tell you how angry I feel about the proposed pay rise for judges. I work in the criminal justice system in a hostel for ex-prisoners, convicted of violent and sexual crimes including murder and rape. We haven't had a pay rise in ten years. I've also had to take on additional responsibilities while my role has been downgraded. I get £10.30 an hour. We deserve a decent pay rise. What's good enough for the judges is good enough for us."
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In The Socialist 17 October 2018:
What we think
Tories' Brexit bust-up - general election now
News
Universal credit = universal misery
New anti-poll tax type revolt needed today
Toxic fracking gets the go-ahead while protesters jailed
No to fat-cat top judges' £59k pay hike - fight for decent pay for criminal justice workers
Tory and Trump hypocrisy over murder of Saudi Arabian journalist
Mental health
Fully fund mental health services now
Workplace news
PCS union: nominate Chris Baugh as Left Unity candidate for assistant general secretary
Striking Brum home carers reject 'final' pay cut offer
South Western rail workers launch five-day safety strike to save guards
Uber drivers strike against unfair 'deactivation' and low pay
Bolton hospital workers strike
Grimethorpe dinner ladies stage all-out strike against redundancy
Cable makers' pay strike bites as production falls 33%
Newham finance staff fight pay and grading insult
International socialist news and analysis
Libres y Combativas: striking for women's rights in the Spanish state
Engels
The renewed relevance of Engels' classic Socialism: Utopian and Scientific
Socialist Party reports and campaigns
Socialism - the podcast offering Marxist analysis for the movement against capitalism
'Corbyn-council' faces a choice: Implement or fight the cuts
Devon foster carers fight 30% cut in allowances
Opinion
Peterloo film exposes bloody nature of capitalism
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