Police must act on Bazley Report corruption claims

Justice Minister Simon Power must waste no time ensuring revelations of legal aid swindling and lawyer corruption are referred to the police for immediate investigation and prosecution of crooked lawyers.

Dame Margaret Bazley’s devastating expose of the $120 million-a-year legal aid scheme, released today, is a condemnation of those greedy and incompetent lawyers who cheat the publicly-funded system.

Her now widely published disclosures don’t come as news to the National Business Review, which has campaigned persistently for more than ten years for greater scrutiny and accountability over legal aid.

There are system-wide failings and the system is open to abuse.

For example, a claim now that up to 80% of lawyers working in the Manukau district court could be “gaming” the system by delays or changing pleas part-way through the process to maximise legal aid payments should be enough to initiate an immediate police inquiry.

It’s fraud by any other name.

Singling out one of the most shameful legal gravy-trains of all, Dame Margaret said as a matter of urgency, the government should clarify funding streams for Treaty of Waitangi claims and modify them to ensure there is not possibility of double or triple-dipping by claimants or lawyers.

Lawyers who swindle the system, often with the connivance of crafty criminal clients, must be removed from it.

Dame Margaret’s proposal to bring the legal service agency under the control of the ministry of justice has considerable merit and will make it more accountable.

In a statement today, justice minister Power said the government would act very quickly on the Bazley Report recommendations.

What Dame Margaret identified “goes to the very centre of the integrity of our legal system,” Mr Power said.

That legal system and the legal profession have been gravely injured by cheating lawyers.

We shouldn’t have to say we told you so.

But we did.