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Director
of Liberty to discuss faith and rights in the workplace
The director of human rights group Liberty is to deliver the annual
LexisNexis Butterworth Lecture on Law and Society at Queen Mary,
University of London on Tuesday 23 March 2010.
Shami Chakrabarti is a leading civil liberties campaigner and
lawyer. Her talk, entitled: ‘The Small Question of Religion:
Faith and Rights in the Workplace’, will discuss whether
people have a legal right to wear religious symbols and dress
in public life - an issue Liberty frequently campaigns on.
Most recently, the pressure group represented airport check-in
clerk, Nadia Eweida - a devout Christian, who challenged a British
Airways’ dress policy that stopped her wearing a crucifix
at work.
BA eventually relented, changing its policy to allow Eweida to
return to work, but she is now taking the airline to the High
Court in a bid to force them to admit it was wrong in demanding
she stop wearing a religious symbol.
A trained Barrister, Shami was called to the Bar in 1994, before
spending six years working at the Home Office as a legal adviser
to ministers and senior policy makers.
She joined Liberty, as In-House Counsel, on 10 September 2001
and spent the following two years campaigning against post-9/11
anti-terrorist measures and counter-terrorism legislation. Since
becoming Liberty’s Director in 2003, Shami has written,
spoken and broadcast widely on the importance of human rights
and civil liberties.
She is Chancellor of Oxford Brookes University; a Governor of
the London School of Economics and the British Film Institute;
a Visiting Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford and a Master of
the Bench of Middle Temple. Shami was appointed a Commander of
the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2007 Queen's Birthday
Honours.
Lecture: ‘The Small Question of Religion: Faith and Rights
in the Workplace’
Venue: Skeel Lecture Theatre, Queen Mary, University of London,
Mile End Road, London, E1 4NS
Date: Tuesday 23 March 2010
Time: 6.30pm
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The
Judicial Appointment Commission (JAC)
The
JAC is an independent Non Departmental Public Body (NDPB) set up
by the Constitutional Reform Act in 2005 to select judicial office
holders. We select candidates for judicial office, to both courts
and tribunals. We do so on merit, through fair and open competition,
from the widest range of eligible candidates. We were set up in
order to maintain and strengthen judicial independence by taking
responsibility for selecting candidates for judicial office out
of the hands of the Lord Chancellor and making the appointments
process clearer and more accountable. For the first time in 900
years, the Lord Chancellor no longer has the sole power to select
which judge to appoint. Instead we select, and make a recommendation
to him. He can reject that recommendation but he is required to
provide his reasons to us. The appointment process remains underpinned
by the principle of selection on merit. Once appointed, judges have
security of position, a principle on which judicial independence
rests. This means the decision to appoint a judicial office holder
must be the right one in every case. Merit remains the bedrock of
judicial appointments. But we are committed to ensuring that meritorious
candidates are secured from a much wider field. By encouraging more
eligible people to apply we are contributing to building an effective
and impartial judiciary. |
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Removing
the “Hard” from Hansard
Easy,
searchable route to Hansard provided by legal database platform
The
accessibility of material from Hansard and other data from the Houses
of Parliament is set to improve immeasurably on 1st June when the
notoriously difficult-to-navigate website is indexed by a new service,
Justis Parliament.
Though
jam-packed with highly relevant collateral for lawyers and legal
librarians, the transcripts of parliamentary questions, Bills, Select
Committees and debates have never been easy to find on the full-text
databases on which they’re kept.
When
indexed by Justis, this will change. The online legal library from
Justis Publishing will link into the full-text sources from its
intuitively searchable platform. Going back to 1979, this new material
will add three million records to Justis.
Justis
Publishing has operated a separate service, Parlianet, since 1994
but its incorporation into Justis opens up this rich resource to
practitioners and information specialists, bringing with it a number
of key benefits, summed up below.
•
Superior search functionality, including preset searches and advanced
searches of specific databases – features of the full Justis
offering
• Searches that can include the rest of the huge Justis legal
library of cases and legislation back to 1163 from the UK, Ireland
and beyond
• Superb results handling and filtering
• My Justis, a feature that allows users to save searches,
receive user-specified email alerts, see their search trails and
record their search activity
Masoud
Gerami, managing director of Justis Publishing, said: “This
development brings together the powerful Justis.com platform and
the rich collection of Parliamentary proceedings. It will also make
this pertinent material more accessible to practitioners in their
research activities.”
For
further information, please call +44 (0)20 7267 8989 or email press@justis.com. |
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LSC announces Invitations to Tender for Immigration and Asylum
Contracts from 2010
30 November 2009
The Legal
Services Commission today (Nov 30) announces its Invitations to
Tender for all immigration and asylum work from October 2010.
We are
inviting tenders for immigration and asylum work separately from
the main civil tender process, which will take place in February
2010. The Immigration and Asylum tender process is happening now
in an effort to ease the burden on legal aid practitioners who
are taking part in both tender processes, and to alleviate the
pressure of running all civil bid rounds at the same time.
The closing
date for bids is January 28th, 2010. This allows sufficient time
to consider bids for immigration and asylum work on offer, and
takes into account the Christmas holiday period.
All current
civil legal aid contracts will come to an end in September 2010,
so we need to invite tenders to deliver services from October.
The aim of the tender process is to achieve immigration and asylum
services that put the client first, while ensuring value for money.
And the LSC is seeking to achieve these goals by changing the
services we commission:
·
The amount of legal aid work that we will commission
in each procurement area will be redistributed to reflect more
closely the volume of clients.
·
The award of contracts will be informed by the quality of providers
bidding. In certain areas where there
is high demand for contracts, bid rounds will introduce an element
of non-price competition.
·
Requirements for the new contracts have been developed in consultation
with representative bodies. New requirements are being set prospectively,
based on what an organisation is bidding to deliver, rather than
retrospectively based on what an organisation has delivered in
the past.
·
This gives
providers the opportunity to develop their business and change
how they are structured, and does not restrict providers to what
they have historically delivered.
·
Services will be commissioned with asylum clients as the focus
to reflect our priority to fund cases where there is a risk to
the client’s life or liberty.
LSC
Chief Executive Carolyn Regan said, “Changing the way we
commission immigration and asylum services means advice and representation
going to the people who need it most, delivered in the way they
need it, ensuring the most effective provision of services with
the most efficient use of public money.
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Leading
Barristers’ Chambers invited to participate in Diversity League
Table
Work
starts on the first ever diversity analysis of leading Chambers.
After months of preparation, formal invitations have gone
out this week to leading Barristers’ Chambers across the UK,
as part of the 2009 Diversity League Table report.
The
Diversity League Table provides an analysis of the diversity composition
of chambers and firms, as well as looking at diversity trends in
relation to the recruitment, retention and promotion of practitioners
from diverse backgrounds.
The
Diversity League Table is produced by the Black Solicitors Network,
in association with the Law Society (of England & Wales) and
with the full support of The Bar Council. First published in 2006,
this will be the first time that leading Barristers’ Chambers
have been invited to take part.
As
well as looking at the main figures around diversity, the report
will also try to look at some key areas identified within the Crown
Prosecution Services’ “Equality and Diversity Expectations
Statement for the Bar”, identifying how these leading sets
rank in relation to its guidelines.
50
leading law firms have already signed up to the Diversity League
Table; this number includes 9 of the Top 10 largest UK firms, along
with a number of major international firms.
Remarking
on this year’s Diversity League Table, Desmond Browne Q.C.,
Chair of the Bar Council has stated that, “The Bar Council
endorses the project and will encourage Chambers to see the benefits
of participation.”
The
increasing demand for diversity within the legal profession means
that the major purchasers of legal services are looking for greater
transparency of diversity policies and practice from their suppliers.
At
the Minority Lawyers Conference held earlier this year, the Rt Hon
Baroness Scotland QC stated during her keynote speech that, “The
Expectations Statement contains the promises I have asked the Bar
to meet when they undertake Government work. As a major purchaser
of legal services, it is my duty to insist that Chambers with barristers
undertaking Government work support, maintain and promote diversity
and equality.”
The
Diversity League Table will be sent directly to the legal services
procurement departments of leading law firms, FTSE 250 companies,
local authorities and other public agencies.
Invited
chambers will have until 12th August to complete the survey and
the results will be published in the autumn.
Media
enquiries should be directed to: Godwin Ohajah at the Satsuma Consultancy
at (0)20 7366 6311 or by email at godwin@satsumaconsultancy.co.uk
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