JERSEY’S Law Officers’ Department spent more than £1.6m of taxpayers’ money on UK lawyers’ fees in less than a year, new data has shown.
A request under the Freedom of Information Act revealed that the department spent £1,612,507 on external legal fees from October 2023 to September 2024.
The Jersey advocate who requested the data, Darry Robinson of local firm Benest Syvret, said that the figure was “obscene”, especially as Jersey Crown advocates were “paid upwards of £100,000 a year” and that much of the advice sought from UK lawyers was for “simple criminal cases”.
“I was dealing with a simple trial in the Magistrate’s Court and was surprised to find that a UK counsel was sitting behind the lawyer from the Law Officers’ Department telling them what to say and what questions to ask,” said Advocate Robinson, writing in Saturday’s JEP.
“It was an extremely low-level case with no complex points of law,” he said.
Advocate Robinson said he had subsequently found out that UK barristers had been brought to the Island for more than 18 months to prepare cases for Jersey advocates, with their work including preparing scripts to be read in court.
“If Crown advocates are unable to deal with run-of-the-mill criminal cases without being told what to say, then what are we, the public, paying them for?” he asks.
Robinson’s initial FOI request was rejected as the Law Officers’ Department, unlike the UK Crown Prosecution Service, is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act.
On appeal, the government agreed to extract the data through the Treasury Department.
The Law Officers’ Department is not a “public authority” for the purpose of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 and is therefore not obliged to respond to any FOI requests.
In the UK, however, the Freedom of Information Act 2000 gives the public the right to access official information held by the Crown Prosecution Service.
The JEP recently launched a campaign to have the Law Officers’ Department, along with other governmental bodies and arm’s-length organisations, added to the Freedom of Information Act.
The JEP has approached the department for comment. A government survey published earlier this year found that the happiest public sector workers in the Island were those at the Law Officers’ Department, with more than 80% reporting a positive experience at work, and only 1% describing themselves as “bored” and 11% as anxious.
