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Talk 200 is a new lecture and podcast series from The University of Manchester, launching to mark our bicentenary: 200 years of making a difference.
This year we’re reflecting on our past, celebrating our present and looking to the future – and Talk 200 invites listeners to be part of the journey.
Our podcast host, Manchester aficionado, author, and University alumnus Andy Spinoza will be joined by a diverse line-up of guests from our community – pioneering academics and notable figures, inspiring staff, alumni and students – to discuss topics such as health, digital and AI, climate change, and equality and justice.
[Music]
Hello and welcome to Talk 200, a lecture and podcast series to celebrate The University
of Manchester's Bicentenary Year.
Our 200th anniversary is a time to celebrate 200 years of learning, innovation and
research.
200 years of our incredible people and community. 200 years of global influence.
In this series, we'll be hearing from some of the nation's foremost scientists,
thinkers and social commentators, plus many other voices from across our university
community
as we explore the big topics affecting us all.
In this episode, Nazia Afzal, Chancellor of The University of Manchester and
former Chief Crown prosecutor for Northwest England, discusses inequalities in access
to justice
and the steps towards fairer treatment in the legal system.
Discover the limits to equality within our legal system and how, in the face of recent
scandals in the UK and overseas,
we can widen access to justice.
Okay, thanks, Nazir. Can I now invite our panellists to come to the stage please and you
can take a seat
after telling us all about the things that we need to change in our justice system.
Okay, so I just want to reflect a bit on what you've just said. There's a lot to take in
actually
especially the list of things that we need to change and in fact 1989 when you were first
practicing I was studying for my A-level law in the late 1980s and I was just thinking
about
the fact that a lot of what I was being taught and the essays we had to write in our A-
level
law exam I was listening to you talking about the same thing and in fact I think we're
going
backwards so I think it's worse than it was in the late 1980s. I think in the early 2000s
there
were money going into the system so much of our improvements happened between
about 2004 and
2008 or something and then of course financial crash happened but you can't do this on
the cheap.
Absolutely and in fact it was that it was during that time that I got involved in
that sort of issues of access to justice needs what's driven sort of me professionally and
and personally throughout my career and I suppose that you know it's the sad thing that
we're
here today listening to you talking about many of the issues which were prevalent in the
late 1980s
and I also so I was listening to some of the things you were saying about
at racism, and the work that Professor Quinn has done in SALC, and myself and
Keir Monteith from Garden Court, on racism in the judiciary and the other work that I
know that
Professor Quinn has done on Art Not Evidence and rap and drill music being used to
convict
minority communities so lots of things that sort of I was thinking about when you were
talking that
that we are doing here. And the final thing that I was sort of thinking about before we
go on to talk to the panel ask the questions is I was reading Andy Burnham's and Steve
Rotheram’s
book recently and they were talking about the fact that we need to rewire the UK and
underlying that is the rewiring of the legal system and that's another thing I think which
sort of springs to mind just in that title alone so when I was reading that book I was
very much thinking about this evening and it certainly sort of makes me think well how
can we do this
and I suppose these are some of the questions that I'm going to sort of ask the panel
this evening
So, so over to you first, Tom, and you’re a postmaster who's been exonerated, you've
had your
conviction overturned and can you tell us about the day that you were wrongfully
convicted,
and why on that day you pleaded guilty to something which you knew that you hadn't
done
Well, thank you Claire and good evening to everybody here and those watching at home.
It's obviously etched on my memory my, my appearance at Lincoln Crown Court which
is
incidentally is 48 miles from my home prior to obviously going into court I'd been at
magistrate's
court but the case was too serious for them to to look at and I did get legal aid and I did
get a lawyer but even 15 years ago legal aid was not exactly a lot of money and it's been
eroded
ever since and like all things in life you get what you pay for there were only two firms
locally that did legal aid so I one of the firms there was a guy I knew work there as a
solicitor I knew him very well because he'd lived in the village where my shop was and
Post Office
when he moved out, he did a flit owing me 30-odd pounds with an outstanding bill that
he'd
ran up in the shop never did pay it so I didn't want to go to him so I approached the other
firm
and they didn't have any capacity so I ended up with the rogue and I think it sums it up
that I ended up with a rogue lawyer and he certainly was a rogue because he owed me
money
and he wouldn't of course he totally forgotten that by the time I had my dealings with
him
but we discussed the case and you got to remember that on the day of my audit when
this nightmare
Happened, within 10 minutes of them finding the shortfall, the money they claimed I
owed to them,
they changed the alarm codes, they changed the logins on the computer, they took the
keys to the
Safe, to the fortress area, away from me, and from that point in I had nothing I had no
means of
getting any information because everything existed within that Horizon system
so bearing that in mind when you go and I did go and see this lawyer and we we
discussed the case
and I said look I didn't take this money I'm actually certain it's the Horizon system I
complained on hundreds of occasions to anybody within the Post Office that would
listen that that
was the case but nevertheless they, the people at the top, believed it worked and
worked well
and he said well look, you're on legal aid, you've no means of getting any special
accountants in to look at the figures and all the rest of it ,he said now look
I could tell you here now if you plead not guilty in that court,
you've got no means of defending yourself because you can't get any information,
and the jury will not believe that that esteemed wonderful Post Office that they all love
and have love for years would have anything other than a bomb-proof computer system.
And he said for the amount of money that they claim you owe the tally's 4 years in jail
that's a very sobering thing to hear 4 years, I was 58.
He said the only thing you can do is now damage limitation
plead guilty, get some good references, let me do the, some pleading on your behalf
and I'll give you 95% that you I’ll keep you out of jail.
What would you do?
It's a fait accompli, it is complete damage limitation and sure enough I went in I pleaded
guilty and then it comes to sentencing and this is where the justice system can be very
cruel.
I'm standing in the dock and the judge says you've been a very naughty boy,
or I'm paraphrasing obviously, and this is you know the thing against the state,
an offense against the state so I'm going to sentence you to 7 months imprisonment.
And I'm deliberately pausing because he deliberately paused for a good 30 seconds
before saying
but that sentence will be suspended for 2 years and he let me squirm
that was cruel, utterly cruel. And that's, that's the reason why I pleaded guilty because I
was backed
into a corner it was like playing poker where I had a mirror behind my head and
everybody could
see my cards. I had no chance and I suspect the vast majority, well I know the vast
majority of all
the other Postmasters were backed into a very similar corner and yes the system is
broken because
the people in power, if you like, hold all the cards and we mere minions we're just
confetti that could be thrown into the air and hopefully the wind will blow away.
Yeah Professor Justin Brooks a friend of mine who runs a project in the US he says it's
like
a roulette game where the stakes are just so high it's unquantifiable stakes. I mean the
other thing
that got me on that day, when he'd given the sentence and he said oh and we'll charge
you a thousand
pounds costs for Post Office’s costs for bringing that and the the barrister for the Post
Office
who was there with his second person his junior, and I had a solicitor advocate,
they, they actually claimed for four thousand pounds but give my guy his due and it’s
about the only
good thing he did for me, he did say that's disproportionate given that you knew my
client was going to
plead guilty before we even came here today, and the judge did drop that down to a
thousand
pounds but I got, having been kicked, they then kick you again it's just yeah okay I'm
moving on to
being kicked and kicked again the Post Office which he said they they took the keys off
you and
so on but you still had the shop which was attached to the Post Office and after you
were convicted
you had to deliver newspapers in your local village with your face on the front of those
newspapers
how how did that make you feel and what was the reaction from people in the village?
Well of course
you see the village where where our shop and home was was about a thousand people
so you knew
everybody by sight, you knew most of them by name, and it was awful because the
following week we were
all over the front page of the local paper, what a terrible man, I was accused of stealing
the pensioners’ pensions, that's how the local paper put it, and to have my name and all
this all over
the front page of the local paper and then to have to go and put that through people's
letterboxes,
oh it's so humiliating. I mean half the village wouldn't couldn't believe it
and were very supportive but the other half thought I was an utter rogue and you say we
had a shop,
within 4 months of my conviction we had to shut the shop because all the footfall had
just
dropped away it was unprofitable. And we were in sort of dire straits, maxed out every
credit card we had,
we were literally living hands a mouth. It was, it was really bad. So my final question to
to you
Tom is that perhaps some of us have seen the iconic picture of you outside the court
and you've
got a bottle of fizzi n your hand and other sub-Postmasters around you, what did you
feel like the
the day that you had your conviction overturned? Well I have to give a great big thanks to
the
CCRC, who gave me a great deal of help to get that my case along with the other 39
people on the day
and we ended up in the course of appeal down in London on the Strand there, and I
knew,
we'd been told that it was going our way ,and the couple of days before I've been seen
my mother
who was about 92 at the time, sadly she's passed away now but that's by the by,
and she asked me to go and do a bit of shopping for her and she said I want you to go to
Aldi
and here’s the shopping list, now I understand you're going to London and you're having
your
conviction overturned next week and I said yeah that's right, she said right
well while you're getting my shopping with my bank card she said,
buy a bottle of Prosecco, they do a good one for $4.99.
And she said just remember, now I want you to open that when you come out of court,
she said just remember the name is Hedge’s, not Rothschild’s don't get their
champagne that's $9.99!
And that's, but I mean it was a wonderful it was a wonderful day to sit there in court,
if you watch the drama I was sitting next to Noel Thomas
when the lead judge there started reading out the names of all the people that have
been acquitted
and it was just wonderful, it it's up there with the day I got married I was so happy at
that,
and the day both my children were born and I was given those little bundles of joy,
it's up there with that that's how wonderful it was, and I was so pleased for the other 7 or
800 people that had their convictions quashed just a fortnight ago in the last session of
Parliament
when that headlining bill to get them all cleared out went through, but it'll never, for
them it's
great they're going to piece paper through the post telling them that's the case but it's
not
quite the same as being there and having the judge because it's, it, courtrooms
are intimidating places and they're grand places and certainly those the High Courts
of Justice in London, a fabulous building, if you've ever been there for the right reasons
they're horrible, wouldn't go for the wrong reasons, but no, it was absolutely brilliant.
Okay, thanks, thanks Tom, okay so over to you Suzanne for some, some questions
before you you started your PhD, and full disclosure she's disclosure, Suzanne is my
PhD student and
now also a colleague because she's a lecturer with us as well, and before that you had a
very
successful career as a solicitor, you were managing director of appeal, and I don't know
if anyone saw
the documentary last night on Andy Malkinson's conviction being overturned but that's
the charity
that Suzanne headed up and you also worked on the Hillsborough inquiry, and going
back to what I
said about Andy Burnham and Steve Rotherham's book when they spoke about rewiring
the UK legal
system they also talked in in that book about a duty of candour because they talk a lot
about
Hillsborough, and a duty to put parties, and this is something that you talked about as
well Nazir,
as they are, on an equal footing to fund access to justice because that that is very
problematic
and I suppose this this goes back to what you were talking about as well Tom in terms of
that disparity and being able to defend yourself. So they talked about that parity of
funding
and another example would be an inquest where there is that parity between the public
body
and the families involved so how far do you think so this is my first question how far do
you think
we are off from from coming to the stage where we will have a Hillsborough law duty of
candour
and parity of funding and do you think that it was a critical factor in the families not
getting
justice earlier in the original inquest when we were talking about well not just
Hillsborough
I suppose we're talking about all the things that you mentioned tonight the
infected blood scandal, Grenfell which we'll talk about later, and so on so that's my first
question.
Yeah absolutely I mean firstly I think it sounds quite ridiculous to people to suggest that
we need
a law to tell people to tell the truth, aren't we all taught that by our parents when we're
very
very young? But we all break it. Yeah but. Have you eaten that sweet? No. But but most
of us most of us
move on from that and I think that a lot of people were reluctant to the idea that there
should
have to be a lawful duty saying to people you know what you you have to tell the truth
here,
you've got to come clean you've got to put your hands up you got to say yes I did eat the
sweet
Essentially, but when you look at the the scandals that we've spoken about here, the
common theme in
Hillsborough, in Grenfell in the Post Office cases in all of that, it is the fact that the
institutions
who had actively harmed people who were involved in causing harm hid hid the
evidence of that
they hold all the cards in the sense of disclosing the information whether it's
Hillsborough, the police
taking the statements at the time and choosing to alter the statement, that the police
officers on
the scene at Hillsborough were told don't write everything down in your police officer’s
notebook
as you have done from the moment you began your job, no no no write your notes
separately,
we will then have a team go through them and tell you which bits of that should make
their way
into your statement, so the bits where the fans will behave in badly yeah you need to
write that in
anything where the police might have been seen to do anything wrong, no that's not to
go in your
statement. And so the the by holding the cards, by controlling the information, they get
to set the
course of the narrative of what goes on and if we focus on the original inquest that took
place
in 1990-1991 just after the disaster, the truth about the reason that those people died on
that day
was known because the the Lord Taylor's report at the time had uncovered so much of
the truth about
the mistakes that were made that, the actions that took place and you know opening
the gate,
all the structural issues that that caused the disaster but that didn't come out in
the inquest and and the two key reasons for that are the fact that the families were not
told the truth
because the information was withheld from them, and secondly because there was no
equality of arms
and the families were not represented so as as Tom said it that how he felt in court,
when the
the Post Office, unlimited funds for legal representation, the same for the police, the
same for all these
other organisations we've spoken about, but in the original Hillsborough inquest the
families didn't
have legal aid for representation at all, a few of the families could contribute a small
amount of
money to pay for a barrister who did some work, but the vast majority of them they
they were working-class families by and large they didn't have money to pay for lawyers
and that
meant that they had to represent themselves and they did an incredible job you know,
people
who'd never set forth in a courtroom of any kind having to suddenly represent their their
children, their brothers, their mothers, their fathers and try and stand up for their
interests
in an inquest which was far more adversarial than it should have been but the fact that
they
weren't represented meant that they didn't know what questions to ask and they didn't
stand a
hope in hell of getting to the truth of why the people had died that day and that was
clearly
one of the factors that led to those inquests coming to a finding of accidental death and
the Hillsborough disaster was no accident and so the families could not accept that and
it took
27 years of fighting for them to get justice and to get those inquest verdicts overturned
and to get
the new verdicts of unlawful killing which accurately reflected what happened to the 97
people that day.
And so the Hillsborough law which has been campaigned for by the Hillsborough
families,
but they've also joined together with the infected blood families, Grenfell,
so many other people are coming together to say ideally there would never be another
disaster
in this country, no one's going to die in these circumstances, but that's not, that's not
reality,
these things are always going to happen and so we have to have a system that can
adequately
deal with it when it does, where we tell the truth ,where we tell people this is why your
loved one
Died, and these these are the actions that we're going to take to stop it from happening
to people
again in the future, because in the vast majority of these cases that's what the families
want,
they're not out for blood, they're not out for people to lose their jobs and go to prison,
they want the truth and they want to know it will never happen again.
Now there are cases where people deserve to go to prison don't get me wrong,
but by and large that the Hillsborough law the duty of candour is about taking some of
the heat
out of that situation, making things fair, we're here to talk about equality and and that's
what
we need in the system, we need to know that if you are the victim of something terrible
goes wrong
to you or someone you love, that you have you have a chance of getting justice for them.
Okay and do you think we're far off that?
See it's a loaded question again I know, we have to be careful there's an election coming
up but
the Labour party has promised that if they are to get in power, and if we are to believe
the
the electoral polls, there is a reasonable chance of that happening, they have said they
will introduce
legislation to bring in a duty of candour. Whether the law that gets passed is one that the
family is
happy with, you know, who knows, we know how these things these things have a
tendency to happen
but I am reasonably hopeful that we may end up with some form of a duty of candour
but I will hold hold my views on whether or not the law that's passed is adequate.
You’ll believe it when you see. Yeah, good, good final point on that question Tom so my
next question
or which we talk about a lot, so we turn into access to justice in the criminal justice
system,
and I'm talking mainly post-conviction, now certainly Nazir talked a lot about sort of pre-
conviction,
but I'm talking about post-conviction, and you teach miscarriages of justice here,
and you you have worked for appeal, what do you think are the main issues ,the
problematic issues, with
post-conviction in the criminal justice system? Okay there's really nowhere near enough
time
for me to give my true answer on this, but the fact is when someone like Tom finds
themself in
a situation where they've been convicted of an offense that they didn't commit, the
prospects
of them being able to undo that harm and overturn their conviction are incredibly,
incredibly slight.
The system as we've spoken about is so broken in terms of the pretrial situation it's
worse once
you have been convicted, it's so much harder to get the system to acknowledge it’s
errors and to
reverse it and to reverse it. When it works well, as Tom's found, the Criminal Cases
Review
Commission is the body, the independent body, that was set up after the Birmingham
six cases and the
series of miscarriages of justice in the late 80s early 90s and their role is to investigate
alleged miscarriages of justice and send them back to the Court of Appeal and say you
need to
have another lot, we think that there may have been a miscarriage of justice here, we
think this
conviction is unsafe. Less than 2% of the people who apply to them get their cases as
Tom did, as I say when it works well it can be the difference and it can, but they are the
body who
have had the biggest cuts to their budget within the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry
of Justice
is the government's department who've had the biggest cuts to their budget throughout
so, when
you look at everything else that doesn't work believe me when I tell you that the CCRC is
in
worst state and all of them because they've had bigger cuts to their budget. So the the
chances are, I don't know if anyone got to see there was a documentary last night on
BBC2
about the case of Andrew Malkinson, and the charity who I used to work for, Appeal, if
you haven't
watched it, watch it on the iPlayer, it's a really good documentary, it tells the story of a
man who
was wrongly convicted and spent over 17 years in prison for a crime he hadn't
committed, and it
gives some indication of how hard it is to get that conviction overturned, and the
damage that it does.
I was so proud of Andy and that he was so open and so vulnerable with with the crew
who made
the documentary and I think it gave it gave a really really good insight into what a
wrongful
conviction can do to somebody. But he, he had three applications he was in prison for
17 years
for a crime he hadn't committed, and he had three applications to the CCRC and he
kept saying I didn't
do this, there is DNA on the victim's clothing it is not my DNA, will you please do some
tests and
find out whose DNA it is? And they kept saying no, they kept saying it's not cost efficient,
we don't
think this is going to work, they weren't interested, and it took, he was in prison for 17
years before
he was released on parole, and then it took a further 3 years, it was July last year that his
conviction was overturned because the charity Appeal, that I used to work for, managed
to get
access just to the clothing essentially and get the testing done and they found out that it
wasn't
his DNA, but it was the DNA that did belong to somebody who was on the police
national database.
That person hasn't been charged with the offense but when Andrew's case was
overturned in
July last year, the Court of Appeal said the person whose DNA it was, fitted the
description
better than Andrew Malkinson did, lived in the area, didn't have an alibi for the lighting
question
and had relevant previous convictions. That wasn't the person that the police sought to
prosecute for
the crime, it was an entirely innocent man. So it shouldn't have taken a very small
charity
having to intervene in that case, and it took it took 4 or 5 years from the moment
Andrew first approached Appeal to get that conviction overturned when it was so so
obvious
to anyone who looked at it that that was an innocent man sitting rotting in a prison cell
and I think that case gives it a really good idea of quite how hard it is. We've spoken
about
Funding, about the fact that legal aid is really really hard to get before you're convicted,
once
you have been convicted, the circumstances in which you'll be eligible for legal aid are
even
more limited because it's such a difficult area very few practitioners doing it
are prepared to do that work anymore, so many have walked away from it, so you have a
situation where
people are left in a situation where they have been wrongly convicted and they they
have nowhere
to turn. So if there's one thing I could do about that it would be put an awful lot more
money in
the system at every level, let's try and avoid the wrongful convictions happening but let's
accept
that they do, there are human beings involved in the criminal justice system which
means we're
always going to make mistakes, and let and let's get a lot better at admitting our
mistakes and
trying to rectify them. And, and apologising. Yes. Okay so thanks Suzanne, so over to
Thalia,
and you've also been involved in high profile cases in the UK, so the COVID inquiry being
one
of them uh, the Grenfell inquiry, what have you identified as the major barriers to
achieving
justice for for marginalised communities and what steps do you think need to be taken
to overcome
these barriers? I know we sort of touched on this but... So I actually met Suzanne
during my representation of bereaved families in Hillsborough. Yeah Suzanne was
representing
one group of bereaved families and I was representing another, and like Suzanne I also
call for a
legislated duty of candour, legislation that puts public authorities to account for there to
be
disclosure in a timely manner, and also for there to be equality of arms through funding.
Tom spoke
about the passage of time, Suzanne spoke about the 27 years, Nazir has spoken about
delays,
justice delayed is justice denied, and a common theme in Hillsborough, Grenfell in fact
in 2017 it
was a year after we got the conclusions in Hillsborough that put to bed the false
narrative
that had run for over 20 years against the fans, the families and the people of Liverpool
that it
was the fans to blame, and as one of the lawyers representing the families, not being
from England,
I'm Jamaican, and not living in England at the time, it really struck my core that a system
could be
so unjust that it had a city and families who lost their children, their loved ones hanging
in such
State, living with this hanging over their heads for so long and it really really struck me I
thought my God, having had that watershed moment that I experienced, like Tom you
know when he had
that moment in the in the Court of Appeal, when I was with the families as Suzanne was
in Warrington
when we got the verdicts, I remember the families jumping for joy when they got
unlawful killing but
equally so when the question came back from the jury that the fans weren't to blame
and I thought
England couldn't have, you know, another disaster where you have a system of of delay
and a state
where you do not have systems in place for there to be immediate investigation that will
deliver
answers and justice for victims and here I was in June, the 14th of June 2017, I was
actually in Jamaica,
and I was watching on the, I think it was CNN, this fire in West London and I remember I
was
in my aunt's house and she said you know that's, that's London and I was like oh my
goodness and I was
on WhatsApp to my friends in England and you know we spoke about what was
happening and when I got
back to to London a couple of weeks later I remember going down to the community to
pay my respects
and I just could not believe that this was 2017 it felt like England was repeating 1989
where the victims of a huge disaster in the one of the wealthiest boroughs in the world
had to be coming together you know ordinary citizens, just like the Hillsborough
families,
had to be coming together campaigning for justice, you know, like the Hillsborough
family support
group, like the Hillsborough justice campaign, Grenfell United and the other Grenfell
campaigning
groups were born out of ordinary people seeking answers for justice and I think it's
actually
disgraceful that we have a system which is not fit for purpose because it does not
deliver
justice to victims in a timely manner. In the 21st century in England victims should not
be
suffering and and having their grief and bereavement and sense of injustice
compounded by a failure
of the state to bring accountability. This will be 7 years since the fire and we're expecting
the report in September and we've heard that criminal proceedings will need or the
outcome
of criminal investigations will need to await the report, and then you know further
investigations
into that Nazir you spoke about you know the review of the F, LFB,
when you have such a delay in bringing you know criminal investigations it will impact
on the
sense of justice that their victims feel is delivered, it will invariably impact on the state
of the investigation and I think that we also need to have a system that delivers criminal
prosecutions arising from what we see mass disaster or mass feelings in a more timely
manner.
Infected blood, how many years? So you know, coupled with Suzanne's call for
legislation that brings
in a duty of candour, we must have a system that ensures the delivery of justice for
victims in a
much more timely manner. Yeah, absolutely. It consumes people's lives and it's not, it’s
everyone involved
isn't it? It makes them ill, it makes them ill. Absolutely and I met someone albeit in the
USA
at a conference and, and, Suzanne, was there as well and he'd been in prison for 52
years and wrongly
convicted and I couldn't take it in for a while because that's how old I am so it was my
whole
life he went to prison when he in his 20s and he was now in his 70s and he'd been in
prison
that whole time and he still hadn't had that apology that he was you know that he was
seeking.
But but yeah so it's the passage of time. And also you you mentioned the apology
because you know so many
of the Grenfell families, they wanted the apology, the acceptance of of of wrongdoing
from the
RBKC and the TMO and it was just not forthcoming. And so my final question before we
move to
to audience questions then so one of our research beacons at the University of
Manchester is
is global inequalities and you've done a lot of international work as well as your your
domestic
work, can you tell us a bit about the work you're doing in East Africa and also the work
you've done
for Barbadian people, the Barbudan people, sorry. Yes well you don't go into Barbados in
at some point? No when I actually did my degree so I had I did my degree at the
University of the
West Indies and I lived in Barbados for two years so I'm a very much Caribbean person
it's er Barbudan.
Yes the Barbudan people, yes so my involvement with Barbuda actually also came
about in 2017,
following the passage of a hurricane Irma which devastated the island that has under
10,000 people
and effectively there was this hurricane and at Barbuda is a part of a twin island state,
Antigua
and Barbuda, in the eastern Caribbean, and the seat of government is based in the
capital of Antigua
and the government evacuated the people from the island over to the mainland but this
was just
the beginning of very sad days for Barbuda because what unfolded was a plan to
dismantle a
state of, a system of communal land ownership, that the people of Barbuda enjoyed up
to then and to turn
over the land on the island for, to private ownership. Now we talk about, I don't know if if
anybody here
or there is the research centre, looks at disaster capitalism which a journalist well no
journalist,
Naomi Klein, I think she's written pieces about this was just disaster capitalism
unfolding where
you have a disaster, Barbuda has really really beautiful beaches you know it's just
pristine
waters and lovely people and what the government saw was an opportunity to remove
the people from
the island and to go into arrangements or bring to full fruition arrangements
with private investors you know including celebrities whose name I, names I won't really
mention on the
Stage, but surprising you know celebrity names who had invested into ventures on the
island for
these you know developments, all-inclusive type exclusive properties that exclude the
people of
the island from access to the land ,so that's how my involvement came about and it, it
actually
has culminated more recently with a landmark Privy Council judgment on access to
justice
because as a part of you know the plan to develop the island, the government
proceeded with private
investors to to take steps to build an airport, whilst the people of the island had been
evacuated
from the island and environmental systems were not in place. No EIA was done the, the
plans for the
airport was being undertaken, or the airport was to be undertaken on limestone areas,
of course we
know that's not stable and so two members, two, two Barbudans, took on the the case
and we talk about
access to justice being access to funding you know, legally, it's a global problem,
particularly so
in countries in the global south, you know like the Caribbean, like African countries and
so
Garden Court, members of, of Garden Court, have been supporting a number of
Barbudans in this
in this fight and it's become an environmental, a huge environmental challenge because
there was you know we're... It's little David's up against the Goliath of the state and one
of the
arguments that the government brought in opposition to the legal challenge,
environmental challenge,
against the construction of the airway airport was oh you two Barbudans who live on
this really
small island that are saying that you will be affected by an airport do not have standing
because
you won't be directly affected. And really, really important Privy Council judgment
Mussington against the government of, of Antigua if any of the students want to look at it
on
the Privy Council website ruled that for environmental challenges ordinary citizens have
standing and it's, it's really important because as we move forward in an age where the
climate,
we are facing an existential crisis because of climate change, environmental activism is
now
more important than ever, and this went across the Atlantic to East Africa because my
work there
again you know pro bono Garden Court assistant with another NGO that's based here,
International
Lawyers Project, that has represented Indigenous and, and minority communities, we
worked together
in February of this year with communities in the Maasai people I don't know if people
know of the Maasai communities in East Africa in Kenya and Tanzania we worked with
some of the
community members in Kenya and we also did some work with the Ogiek community,
they are a hunter and
gather group who were historically based and lived in the Mau Forest region of Kenya
and
the issue that these communities, Indigenous community, face is that the state private
entities
Are, similar to Barbuda, have an agenda to take their lands that they have held in
traditional
communities in as Indigenous with Indigenous practices for private development, and a
big
part of this of course impacts on the environment because there are developments that
are earmarked
and are taking place the community is not engaged, the community is not informed of
developments that
are earmarked, and you know are to take place on their lands or their adjoining lands, a
lot of which
may very well have harmful environmental consequences for the communities and so it
was really about
engaging with the communities, informing them and enabling them and empowering
them to assert
their rights, particularly as they face development and environmental challenges so it's
sort of
come full circle, but you know it just shows the importance of the global community in
this time,
to work together to protect the environment. Yeah and this, this goes back to what you
were saying about pro bono work and how important it is obviously nationally and
globally.
Okay so... Thanks everyone and, now it's an opportunity to, to open up questions to
the audience if I may. So do you want to ask a question first?
Okay so my question is to Nazir. My name is Jawad I'm an ex-Manchester student, I work
as a GP now,
so why is it in 2024 we still have this statistic of 9 times more likely, and why is there no
political appetite to challenge this? What, do you think we'll ever get to the stage where
justice is served equally irrespective of race? Well I think well I'm always optimistic that
at
some point we will get to the stage but the reason I said is I’m alarmed that we haven't
had
any significant improvement. And actually the fact, we've gone backwards I think we've
touched on
it earlier on, because of the lack of resources in the system, we've gone backwards so if
the
government say “right, we want you to tackle crime in a particular community” which is
disproportionately
Black or Asian, police go in there with one, one approach, to arrest, stop, search, rather
than thinking
well actually crime happens everywhere, and they shouldn't just focus on one
community. So,
to answer your question I don't know the answer I do think you know we're probably
going to be
asked to later on about what the University could do, the University could do, the more
research we do
in this field, the more evidence that supports this, because sometimes when I use that
figure,
somebody comes back and says well it's actually 7 times right now, you know as if
somehow that's
fantastic improvement, you know so the more research we have in this field, the better
we'll
we'll be able to push back on those people who think it isn't a problem but to answer
your
question will we ever get there? Yes I hope but it comes down to what others have said
about
proper funding. We must get there, we must get there. So can I just can I just come in on
that point because I
think that the use of joint enterprise, joint enterprise laws, contributes to the significant
number of Black, young people in particular, who are in a criminal justice system and
we really
need to rethink and relook at the laws relating to joint enterprise, and I think that's a very
important aspect of working towards that sort of reduction in the over representation of
Black
people in the criminal justice system. Yeah absolutely, and coupled with the use of
evidence
against certain communities as well, like the, the Art not Evidence campaign yeah
rapping and
drill music and the Art Not Evidence campaign you know it's critical really because it's
just
the different factors together make a huge difference. It doesn't help that there's no
Black
Chief Constables, it doesn't help that there are no you know, if the representation is not
there
at the top, well things are not going to change overnight are they? Yeah, okay and I think
there's
a question there, I think somebody had their hand up there then there’s just one there.
So I just want,
I'm like you Nazir I'm a I'm an optimist, we may have a Prime Minister soon who is legally
literate,
Am I expecting too much to hope that we have a Home Secretary at some stage who will
be legally
literate as well? How can they be legally literate? It's impossible to answer that question
without
being political, I've worked with some people who might be in government in three
weeks' time and
they are legally literate uh, so I'm hopeful, one has to be hopeful, but when you, you
know when you
start appointing people to roles who've got no experience of that area and then they rely
upon 23
year old special advisors, no, no disrespect to 23-year-olds in the room, but the point is
you know
you need experience, you need knowledge, you need access to knowledge, and so you
know we used to
Have, you know the only people that would be Lord Chancellors would be people
people who were, you know, 30
years in the law, you know, that kind of stuff rather than somebody that's just walked in
out of
bar school, no disrespect the current one. If I could just add it that Claire and I teach
miscarriages of justice here, and there are very few textbooks that have been written on
the topic of
miscarriage of justice, so one of the books that we still use is one that was written about
20 years
ago by a professor at the University of Leeds and one of his former students who was a
young,
radical, human rights lawyer by the name of Keir Starmer, so he literally wrote the book
on
miscarriages of justice, he knows they exist, he knows a lot of what needs to be done to
fix them,
is it going to be top of his priority list when, when, if, he walks into Downing Street? I very
much
doubt it, but as you say he, he is someone who we can say absolutely knows the issues
because
he literally wrote the book on them. Yep okay so another question, I think you've got a
question
there and yep. Hi I think that there's like quite a big taboo against going against
like large corporations and groups, similar to the saying like do you know who I am?
Do, how do we like encourage accountability and go against this?
I mean power, power has always corrupted, an absolute power corrupts doesn't it?
we've, we've been quite successful in recent years around sexual misconduct for
example.
You've seen some Hollywood superstars and others who finally been brought to book
for what they
what they've done for decades on end, but you know we haven't even mentioned the
financial crash,
you know that was that destroyed tens of thousands of lives and there have been 2
convictions
and both of them are currently appealing. You know so Hillsborough we've had one, one
health
and safety conviction if I'm if I remember rightly, we've had none for infected blood
we've obviously
now had not, apart from the miscarriages in Post Office, we were, we had none for Post
Office so
I think the worm has to turn and that everybody should you know I thought, I thought, I
thought
I thought, I thought, my whole point was that the law was it applies to everyone and
there may
well be some solutions that we might touch on in a minute or two that will enable the
powerful
to be held to the same standard that the rest of us are held to.
Anyone else want to add to that one? Well I, I think that I mean you know there needs to
be
legislative teeth to ensure that you know corporations are, they don't elude justice
particularly
following mass disasters. I mean the health and safety legislation in some ways
encompasses
That, but paying a fine, a corporation paying a fine you know when you have human
failing
contributing to deaths or systemic feelings is quite a difficult pill for victims to swallow.
So I do think that there needs to be some legislative change in that respect. I, I just want
to throw
something in here, in health and safety law, if something terrible happens and
somebody loses
an arm or or the worst case gets killed, in a workplace situation
the actual health and safety manager director, call him or her what you will,
it them personally they get it's hauled up into court and they can go to prison. We've had
that
in our law here for 20 plus years and over that period thankfully the incidence of that
type of thing happening has plummeted, because all companies know that the bosses
themselves
can be called to account. Now surely there's a lesson that should be learned from that
when it comes to the thing, the other things that we're talking about where people are
obfuscating the truth and not offering all the information and all the ramifications that
run from it, if the law stated that the bosses end up in jail, or never mind finding a
corporation or
a body, millions of pounds, the bosses have to pay as well, I tell you what it would it, it
would square things
up pretty quick I think. I think there's there's somebody there that wants to ask a
question.
Hi I, I, I, I wondered whether any of you think there is a role, or could be a role, or should
be a
role, in improving access to the law for trade unions because I think trade unions are
substantial
commissioners of legal services on behalf of ordinary people, now mostly that's to do
with
health and safety but I don't know that it necessarily has to be limited to health and
safety
and I think the the good thing about health and safety isn't so much the people who get
Prosecuted, it's the damages that get awarded to victims, but the other thing that's
relevant I
think to workplace is the importance that you've pointed out about whistleblowers
because I think
it's all very well to present whistleblowers with the duties to tell the truth and disclose
whatever it is and give them a duty, but most whistleblowers are, most significant
whistleblowers are employees in a workplace and they're afraid of the consequences
and it's the
trade unions that can protect them from the consequences, and protecting them from
the consequences of
saying what needs to be said is probably more to the point than giving them a duty to to
tell it.
So you know where do trade, do you see trade unions fitting into the
path of making this situation better? I mean if I can just weigh in on, on that question in
this way,
i have seen first hand the value of the work of trading unions in the Covid Inquiry so the t
of TUC is, has been, uninterested, what has been given interested person status in the
Covid
Inquiry and I and I tell you one of the challenges that the TUC has faced is that they
haven't gotten
funding, they haven't gotten you know, they haven't they don't have that pool of funds to
mount a full representation and, and you know, fund a full complement of legal team
but and I don't
know if you have been following the Covid Inquiry at all during the module one which is
the
Pre-pandemic preparation and module two which has been the decision making stage
I think your mic isn't working. My mic isn't working? Oh dear, thank you. Better? Yes.
Thank you. And, but,
so we have seen a lot of material coming out from the trade union to the inquiry, it's all
in the
Public, on the support, the warnings, the cautions that they, they have given and the
exposure and risk
that workers who are members of the trade union faced during Covid, and some of the
workers
who have given statements and evidence and material that we have seen in the inquiry
Are, you know, would fall into that category of, of whistleblowers so I, I absolutely
support
proper funding for trade unions because they, their members are really at the heart of
evidence gathering, lobbying and information and again with Grenfell, the FBU, the FBU
and
Matt Wrack have been very, very instrumental in bringing to light some of the failings in
the LFB and ways that things need to be improved, particularly with the impact of
austerity, that's
been a main theme that the trade unions have carried in calling for accountability where
we have these huge failings. Okay thanks, did you want to add to that or, yep, okay, okay
so
that's all the questions we've got time for but I just wanted to ask you all a final question,
so we've finished with our audience questions because we're running out of time, and
this is a
question to you all, so in in the areas that we've talked about this evening, what do you
hope our sort of third century of of the university of Manchester will, will bring in in this
area?
What do you hope might change or get, get better? Thalia, Suzanne? You want me to
start? Yes,
go on, you know. Well I mean Nazir touched on, on research you know universities
are you know research centres, you know your law faculty, I'm hoping that you produce
radical
lawyers who will carry on the fight for justice because you've got to be radical to fight for
change and you know it's not an easy road I hope that the university will, will build on its
development support I, I look forward to perhaps having more conversations with you
guys around
climate justice and environmental protections and safeguard but I, I mean my takeaway
from this
is continued, your work on the over-representation of and racial inequality and
injustice in the criminal justice system the work you've done with Keir Monteith of my
chambers on racism
in the judiciary and your project professor Quinn, Quinn, on you know Art Not Evidence
and the use of, of music, Black music um, so more research, radical lawyers. Yeah.
Tom>
Well I think this is my fourth visit to the university and the one thing that I always
are very heartened with whenever I, I sit in a room here, certainly with when it's mainly
student, students as the audience, is the fact that it's at least 50/50 male or female, in
some of the
some of the classes it's 70 female 30 male, and every colour under the sun, every race
appears
to be represented here. So I think there's a great start for that dissemination and the
the breaking down of this culture that exists certainly within legal system in this country,
of sort of old white middle-aged men, like me, and yeah, long may that continue, and
when those
students take up their positions as lawyers and start working for firms hopefully all that
will
take through, and I mean all the time I come I always talk about miscarriage injustice
because
unfortunately I'm an expert on that um, and for them, for the students to be aware of all
these
things that can go and do go wrong with our system. Okay, Suzanne? Yeah well I think
obviously,
there's the, there's the two key themes at the university, we've got research and we've
got teaching,
and just to focus a little bit on the teaching that when I was a trainee solicitor the, the
partner I worked for told me that the most important thing she was going to do for me
was to teach
to turn me cynical and I like that we do that with the students before they even go into
practice,
we teach miscarriages of just as, as a module so we're teaching them right from the get-
go that
it is a far from perfect system and we, we show them all the things that have gone wrong
with the
system and the harm that can be done and I think that that goes a long way to turning
out that, the
right type of radical lawyer that Thalia was talking about. The best lawyer that I ever
worked for um
was a man named Elkan Abrahamson who, in Liverpool, he was the lawyer who
represented the Hillsborough
Families, he worked on that case for, for about 27 years, and he got paid for maybe 2
years of
those 27, because he represented a woman called Anne Williams and, and he fought so
hard, for year
after year he was banging his head against a brick wall trying to get justice for the
families.
Now Elkan his, his mantra as a lawyer is that you have to make the law work for your
clients,
and if the law doesn't work for your client, get the law changed. And that's how that's
how he goes
about his practice and I like to think that at Manchester we're training the next
generation of
lawyers who are going to have that attitude, who, who are not going to just sit there and
accept all
of these inequalities and injustices and they're going to go about trying to, trying to
change the
Law. I mean I endorse all of that I mean as Chancellor ,of course I will, um
Manchester is the home of the cooperative movement, it's the home of the Peterloo
Massacre, the social
Activism, the home of the Suffragette movement, if it hasn't happened in Manchester,
hasn't happened
anywhere else. So I think that's, that has to be said straight off. In addition to what
Suzanne said
about teaching and research, the third core goal is of course social development and
we are number
1 in Europe, number 2 in the world for universities in meeting the UN Sustainable
Development Goals and that's all about ensuring that what we do impacts, and the
impact it has on
our communities, and I hope we do much more of that, that, we remain ,well we're the
only university in
the world to be in the top 10 since the league table was created and I hope that we will
always
remain number 1 or 2 because we recognise that we're not in a vacuum, that we are part
of the
communities of the North West of England, we're the part of the communities in the
United Kingdom
and we're part of the global community. Okay and I believe I'm to answer this question
as well so
my hope is and myself and, and Suzanne work on the Manchester Innocence project is
we
overturn convic-, convictions in in the next century, hopefully sooner or than later
so that, that's the first thing and as Chair I'm going to use my prerogative have a second
wish,
and that is that on the 11th of June the decision is being made on whether people who
are victims
of miscarriages and justice get compensation or not in Nealon and Hallam so that the
Grand Chamber
are handing that down on the 11th of June and that's my second wish, June, that's, that's
my second wish
is that it goes in their favour and that victims of wrongful convictions, not the Post Office
cases because that's separate, other victims, get compensation and get the
compensation they deserve
to rebuild their lives so and I think that, we're, everything's there and I’ll invite Luke back
up to close.
Well let, let me wrap up with three short phrases that that we've heard this evening uh,
one that
Thalia was talking about a lot was sense of injustice I think that's a good word because it
shows that
it's something that you feel as well as understand cognitively and I'm sure we've felt it as
we've
heard all the cases from our panels this afternoon. The second one was shine a light
and that's the
purpose of Talk 200 and I really do feel some very important lights have been shown
today.
The last one was rewiring the justice system, that we haven't done but perhaps there's
some pointers
for those who are going to do it, and as some have hinted there's another ex-Chief
Prosecutor out
there and maybe we should put our hopes in that thank you all Nazir, Claire, Tom, Thalia
and Suzanne
for your brilliant insights.
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