Gangland crime bosses and fraudsters would not normally come high on any list of deserving cases.
Nor, as their large houses, flashy cars and other bling trappings often testify, are many of them poor.
Nor, as their large houses, flashy cars and other bling trappings often testify, are many of them poor.
Yet when contentious £350 million cuts to legal aid, which will hit victims of medical negligence, benefit claimants and special needs children, go before MPs for approval this week, these major criminals are one group that won't lose out.
Galling it certainly is, as well as unjust. Spend a few moments listing the unsavoury recipients - who include the notorious London crime boss Terry Adams and two multi-millionaires who ripped off the Candy brothers in a property scam - and any feelings of disgruntlement about the blatant misuse of public money are bound to intensify.
So why is it happening? The reason is that whenever a wealthy criminal is arrested, one of the authorities' first steps is to freeze all their assets. This is sensible. It stops them sending their illicit profits abroad.
The trouble is it also means they are deemed to be poor because they have no money at their disposal, allowing them to qualify for legal aid.
The fact that many still own multiple houses, jewellery, yachts, cars and more besides isn't taken into account.
What's worse is that because their cases are often complex, the legal aid costs are usually high too. The eye-watering case of another London crime boss, Raymond May, illustrates this well. He made £3.26 million in a VAT scam, but received at least £411,000 in legal aid, despite owning a £2.5 million house, a £175,000 yacht, and four other properties.
His accomplice, Vincent Stapleton, received tens of thousands despite making £1.6 million from his crimes.
He once boasted that he never paid tax because all his income came from crime, but was able to tap the public purse for legal aid all the same, later lying repeatedly in court in a further distasteful example of taxpayers' money being squandered on the utterly undeserving.
Official figures showing how £93 million a year is spent on such "very high-cost" cases highlight how much legal aid is lavished on the country's worst criminals.
The system does mean, of course, that if a villain is convicted, all his assets remain available to be confiscated as proceeds of crime. It's true too that judges can order wealthy convicts to repay some or all of their legal aid costs.
The problem is that it's often hard to get the money. Years of court battles frequently ensue as the criminals use every dodge possible to avoid paying.
The effect is that the state pays up front in legal aid in the vain hope that it can recover the money later. That doesn't make sense.
Instead, wealthy suspects should pay for their own defence. Their frozen assets should be released at legal aid rates, under court control, to meet their lawyers' bills.
It would save the public vast sums. There would be the advantage, too, of seeing criminals squirm as they watch their wealth disappear into their own lawyers' pockets.
It's a simple enough change and it should happen this week. When the genuinely needy are facing legal aid cuts, not a penny more should be wasted on society's least worthy.
source: thisislondon.co.uk
