Poor Law

Another left-wing firebrand has spoken out against the Government's new system of fines for pleading not guilty. This time the troublemaker is the Lord Chief Justice, Baron Thomas of Place-the-Welsh-Secretary-Probably-Cannot-Pronounce, who attacked the scale of the fees in a speech ostensibly about the supposed legacy of Magna Carta. He made the speech to an audience of legal workers in New Zealand last month, but it was apparently not thought safe to release the contents here on the mainland until after Michael Gove got safely through his turn at the Conservative Party's belch-and-burble in Manchester.