Report to the People
30th June 2003
Courting Common Sense
Much
excitement in the Health Committee last week as we took evidence from
petitioners on the vexed issue of food supplements.
Far
from being a cottage industry, food supplements are now part of a serious
international business. The
industry is worried, however, that new European laws will deny its customers the
remedies they want for anything from depression to allergies.
But
we needn’t worry. There are many
ways of easing ailments which don’t rely on food supplements or pharmaceutical
drugs. I, for example, have
discovered the perfect cure for insomnia and it does not contain so much as a
trace of sodium or strontium: reading up on the Executive’s proposals for High
Court reform.
Debates
on legal matters can become so technical and so pompous they would send anyone
to sleep. But, when the
impenetrable legal-speak is stripped away – as it was last week when the
Parliament debated the plans in full – we see how important this issue is to
us all.
If
you’ve ever been caught up in the legal system through no fault of your own,
you know that it doesn’t serve your interests particularly well.
If you’ve ever had to take a day off work or arrange childcare to allow
you to appear as a witness, only to be told that the defendant has pled guilty
at the last minute, you don’t feel that justice has been especially well
served.
The
Executive’s reforms, then, focus on putting the interests of people first, as
opposed to those of lawyers (or indeed their clients) who play the system.
To
stop victims and witnesses being mucked about, cases will be prepared earlier
and prepared better. They will only come to trial when they are ready to be
heard and it will be harder for reluctant witnesses or defendants to derail
justice. There will also be greater
certainty about when trials will actually start.
The
sentencing power of the
I’m
pleased that changes in the law for which we have been calling for years are
finally in sight. The challenge now
is to take these plans from the drawing board to the statute book and get the
law back on our side.
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