ILLEGAL SERVICES COMMISSION

Legal Services Commission. 4 Abbey Orchard Street London SW1P 2BS
Colin Stutt, a barrister, is a legal adviser to the Legal Services Commission, where he works on both legal and policy issues and regularly acts as a spokesman for the Commission. He has involvement in high profile cases, group actions, clinical negligence, the principles of funding, alternative dispute resolution and the European Convention on Human Rights. He drafted procedures to restrict clinical negligence work to particular firms. He was responsible for drawing up the Funding Code under which the Commission funds litigation.

This man determines the outcome of key Group Actions. He allocates work to friendly, ie corrupt, law firms so that claimants are swindled out of deserved compensation. In this way he protects Government and its pals by perverting the course of justice. A stark example is the way that victims of the first Gulf War found their claims being handled by corrupt firm Hodge Jones and Allen. Stutt controlled the funding of the action ensuring that the victims lost. The performance of Hodge Jones and Allen, Stutt’s chosen firm, was so outrageous that it became the subject of a House of Lords debate and the Countess of Mar led a deputation to the Legal Services Commission where Stutt declared his satisfaction with Hodge Jones and Allen’s performance but could only bluster when facts about HJA’s performance were presented. He also controlled the swindle of the MMR vaccine victims, using Hodge Jones and Allen again and introducing a new funding code in June 2003 so that funding could be withdrawn.

David Keegan plays a key role in protecting Government through controlling the funding and handling of key cases. He runs a unit that operates under different names eg Special Cases Unit, High Costs Cases Unit. In reality his job is to ensure that cases embarrassing to Government are steered in the right direction. He does this by ensuring that cases are handled by a clique of friendly firms. He also uses straightforward bribery by operating a scale of payments but going outside that scale when it suits him. He has shown a special interest in terrorist cases and has linked very closely with Blair’s dodgy pals - Henry Hodge, whose firm was given the Gulf War and MMR Group Action contracts and who went on to be President of the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal. Hodge’s firm was permitted to claim £198 an hour for the work of unqualified staff in 1998, contrast that with Keegan’s proposal that a QC's fees for trial preparation work should be between £91 to £145 an hour. In the MMR litigation the three QCs appointed to represent the claimants were given £1.5m for running the action up a blind alley.

John Baker is a solicitor who works for the Legal Services Commission. He is based in Bristol but, strangely, was made case worker for the MMR litigation that was being run in London, where he was subordinate to Stutt and Keegan. He helped ensure that the entire action was guided to destruction and the damaged children were denied justice.