Victims of crime should have a legal right to meet their offenders under a system of restorative justice, MPs will say today.

At present the right is subject to a “postcode lottery” so that it is only available in certain areas of England and Wales, the Commons justice committee says in a report.

The MPs called on ministers to investigate how such a right could be enforced. They said that the right to make use of restorative justice to meet an offender should only be enacted once ministers have demonstrated to parliament that the system has the capacity to deliver.

Restorative justice is a process by which victims of crime can meet with the offender. The process gives victims an opportunity to be heard and provides offenders with the chance to face the consequences of their crimes and in some cases make amends.

Public awareness of the system remains low, at 28 per cent, according to a poll. However, research has shown that 80 per cent of people thought to be victims should have the right to meet their offenders.

Bob Neill, MP, the committee’s barrister chairman, said: “The priority must be to ensure that victims of crime are properly informed. The Ministry of Justice should focus its resources on ensuring restorative justice is well understood by bodies within the criminal justice system who can then convey this information to victims.

“A rigorous system should be introduced to improve compliance with the police’s requirement to inform victims – perhaps something as straightforward as a box at the end of the victim impact statement form.”

The committee also found that restorative justice was subject to a “postcode lottery” and whether resources are provided locally.

An elite group of law firms with “public affairs” departments has controversially avoided being forced to sign up to the Westminster lobbying register, it emerged yesterday.

The decision from registrar Alison White comes against the backdrop of increasing moves by City of London legal practices to beef up lobbying efforts on behalf of clients over Brexit trade negotiations.

A report in The Times today highlights moves by international trade specialist lawyers to position themselves as US-style lobbyists. They anticipate that ministers and MPs will be ripe for advice as the UK drafts individual trade deals in the run-up to leaving the EU.

The Lawyer magazine reported yesterday that White ruled that up to 15 law firms would not have to register as lobbyists because they do not “directly” lobby ministers. So far, only two firms have signed the register – Clifford Chance and PwC Legal.

White’s ruling angered the Association of Professional Political Consultants, which said that the decision would create an “uneven playing field”.

The magazine listed a group of firms that advertise public affairs legal advice on their websites while not having signed the register: Allen & Overy, Bates Wells Braithwaite, Bevan Brittan, Bircham Dyson Bell, Browne Jacobson, DAC Beachcroft, Fieldfisher, Hogan Lovells, Kingsley Napley, Mills & Reeve, and Trowers & Hamlins.

European mobile device operators and internet service providers should not be allowed to impose blanket blocking of advertising, an EU advisory body has said.

In a move that will cheer proponents of the “net neutrality” principle, the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications sounded a clear warning on the legality of blocking advertising. Guidance published on Tuesday said that blocking of advertising content by communication providers was likely to fall foul of the EU net neutrality laws which came into force late last year.

According to the guidelines, preventing advertising would breach the restriction on blocking of content under the regulations, unless the move fell within limited exceptions for legitimate traffic management. The exceptions allow blocking to comply with the law, preserve the integrity and security of a network, or prevent impending network congestion.

"As such measures must be proportionate and non-discriminatory, it is difficult to see how providers could rely upon these limited exceptions to implement permanent advertising blocking measures within their networks,” said Angus Finnegan, a partner at Taylor Wessing, an international law firm based in London.

But Finnegan said that advertising blocking was not necessarily dead. “The net neutrality regulations do not apply to measures implemented by users through their devices,” he said, pointing out that the advisory body “considers that measures implemented at a network level by communication providers to facilitate preferences of users – activated through their devices – should be permissible.”

Finnegan also pointed out that there was uncertainty over whether the UK would be bound by the regulations if it left the EU. He described the regulations as being “clearly unpopular with network operators”, and, therefore, “if Brexit implementation gives the UK government discretion in this area, it may be persuaded to adopt a lighter touch to regulation in this area if it means it can obtain greater commitments for network investment by network operators”.

Businesses routinely impose a “baby penalty” on female employees, lawyers claimed in the wake of a parliamentary report exposing “shocking” discrimination in the workplace.

“Some employers believe that once a woman has had a baby she is no longer as valuable to the business,” said Homa Wilson, an employment lawyer at Hodge Jones & Allen, a London law firm.

She was reacting to findings from the House of Commons women and equalities committee, in which MPs yesterday called for women workers to be protected from redundancy for six months after their return from maternity leave.

Wilson said that employers “often make assumptions” that female employees will not be as committed as they were once they have had children, and that they will not be able to work the same hours before maternity leave.

Karen Jackson, the founder of Didlaw, a London firm that specialises in discrimination claims, said that while current pregnancy and maternity laws made it difficult in theory for employers to dismiss women on maternity leave, she claimed that “during mass redundancies it is easier for employers to wrap up a discriminatory dismissal in a wider restructure. The burden of proof on employees has become too high”.

However, other lawyers cast doubt over whether the committee’s proposals would ever reach the statute book. “Some of the proposals,” said Alex Bearman, a partner at the London law firm Russell-Cooke, “including making it much more difficult for employers to dismiss expectant and new mothers and extending the three-month time limit for bringing claims, are quite radical and it remains to be seen how keen the government will be to put these into action”.

A third of people have not seen a bobby on the beat in their area in the past year, a survey has found, reports Richard Ford.

Overall, more people are dissatisfied than satisfied with the number of uniformed police officers in their district. Britons are four times more likely to say they had seen fewer police than more over the past year.

An Ipsos Mori poll of 26,000 people carried out for HM Inspectorate of Constabulary found that 36 per cent had not seen a police officer on patrol over a period of 12 months. Another 23 per cent said they had only seen police on foot once or twice over the past year.

Overall, 18 per cent of people thought the service provided by local police had become worse regarding visibility of uniformed officers and response times to non-emergency incidents — the areas where opinion was most negative. People living in deprived neighbourhoods were more likely to report having seen a uniformed officer on foot, and those in the most affluent areas were least likely.

Home Office figures show the total number of police officers fell by 2.5 per cent to 124,066 in the year to March 2016. The number of frontline officers fell from 110,853 to 106,411 in the same period.

In today’s Times Law

• Brexit to span US-style lobbying boom
  
• Summer break? We’re busy with lawsuits
  
• Why the Dangerous Dogs Act has failed
  
• Let’s make confiscation orders work
  
• A judge should never get in a p***ing contest with a skunk, says David Pannick, QC
  
• Lawyer of the week: Anne-Marie Hutchinson
  
• Edward Fennell’s law diary: Heading for a scrap
  
• Gary Slapper’s weird cases: Limits of a teacher’s language
  

Elsewhere …

• Apple drafts in Freshfields as it faces €13bn EU tax bill – Legal Week
  
• First Western firm to open alternative legal services hub in China – Legal Business
  
• Regulator considers publishing firms’ complaints and claims records – Legal Futures