Ministers are failing the public by not legislating for no-fault divorce and by not giving cohabiting couples the same rights as those who are married, one of the UK’s most senior judges said yesterday.

Lord Wilson, a Supreme Court justice, said that the law should be changed so that couples in long-term cohabiting relationships should be given rights “analogous” to those who are married.

His comments will add to pressure on ministers, reports The Times, after the Court of Appeal last week rejected a claim by two heterosexual Londoners to be allowed to enter into a civil partnership, which would have given them similar rights to married couples. However, the court, in a split decision of two to one, said the government should review the law around opposite-sex couples and consider reform.

Lord Wilson, who is one of 11 justices on the UK’s highest court, strongly backed legislative reform to give all cohabitees enhanced rights. A senior family court judge for 12 years before being appointed to the Court of Appeal and then to the Supreme Court in 2011, Lord Wilson said that he and colleagues were “very disappointed” when attempts in the mid-1990s to eliminate the requirement for fault in divorce cases failed.

He spoke to Radio 4 yesterday to pay tribute to his colleague and friend, Sir Nicholas Wall, the former president of the family court, who committed suicide last week after being diagnosed with dementia. The Supreme Court justice said that Sir Nicholas found the approach of successive governments to divorce reform frustrating. He said that many senior judges – including Lord Wilson himself – agreed with the view that ministers were creating injustice by failing to legislate.

Severe cuts to the legal aid budget – which came into effect in 2013 and removed £270 million annually from family cases – were also putting children at risk because of a lack of access to legal advice, Lord Wilson said. “Many of the parents battling there – and the grandparents and others – they simply cannot present their cases effectively,” he said, claiming that family judges now faced a “plethora of litigants in person”, which was “clogging up the system” and “lowering morale” of the judges.

A British Bill of Rights is still on the government’s agenda but it will be delayed until after MPs deal with legislation around the country’s departure from the EU, the lord chancellor confirmed.

Liz Truss, who is also the justice secretary, said in an interview last Friday that Brexit involved “major constitutional change” and therefore moves towards a Bill of Rights would be on hold – but not scrapped.

“The British Bill of Rights, whilst it remains a commitment, is not something we can do at the same time as we are putting through that Great Repeal Bill,” Truss told the Politics Home website. “That is going to affect the constitution ... it’s important we only do one constitutional reform at a time.”

Truss also ventured back into the debate over her response to some media reaction in the wake of the High Court ruling on Article 50 and Brexit. Many lawyers and other commentators criticised her for, in their view, not performing the lord chancellor’s statutory responsibility of defending judges.

Truss told the site that “we live in a free society and free democracy and we have a free press. It is very important that politicians don’t get into the business of policing headlines and saying what is acceptable or not acceptable to print … the independent judiciary and free press are bulwarks of our freedoms and we need to protect them jealously.”

Ministers were not wrong to pay £1 million compensation to the British Muslim convert who was held in Guantanamo Bay and then went on to become a suicide bomber, the QC terror watchdog said at the weekend.

Speaking to the Daily Telegraph, Max Hill, QC, the head of Red Lion Chambers in London, said ministers at the time “cannot be held to account for a risk that was simply not present, not visible, not detectable at the time of the pay-out. We have to be more sophisticated in our criticism than that and more sophisticated in our solutions”.

The Blair government awarded Jamal al-Harith, originally Ronald Fiddler from Manchester, compensation in 2004 after he spent three years at the US detention base in Cuba.

Hill, who was appointed last week as the government’s independent reviewer of anti-terrorism legislation, said he opposed “draconian” measures clamping down on free speech online.

Scotland’s top law officer has been charged with a firearms offence, it emerged on Friday (Jeremy Watson reports).

Richard Keen, QC, the advocate general, who is also a Conservative peer, is alleged to have contravened section two of the Firearms Act 1968 by failing to secure a shotgun.

Lord Keen of Elie, a former chairman of the Scottish Conservative Party who was made a life peer in 2015, is charged with breaching the legislation at his Edinburgh home on December 31 last year.

According to court papers, Lord Keen is alleged to have failed to comply with the conditions of his firearms certificate by not securing a 12-bore shotgun. The charge states that, according to the conditions, shotguns must at all times “be stored securely so as to prevent, so far as reasonably practicable, access to the shotguns by unauthorised persons”. The case is due to call at Edinburgh Sheriff Court on March 1.

One of Scotland’s leading lawyers, Lord Keen, 62, is a former Dean of the Faculty of Advocates and was appointed as advocate general in May 2015. He recently represented the UK government at the Supreme Court hearing on the triggering of Article 50, arguing that the consent of the Scottish parliament was not needed before negotiations on Brexit formally begin.

A UK government spokeswoman said: “We are aware Lord Keen is in correspondence with the procurator fiscal regarding a legal matter relating to an inadvertent breach of licence conditions.

“Having considered the issue carefully, we are satisfied that this matter has no bearing on Lord Keen’s ability to carry out his ministerial duties to the highest standard."

Half the British public is dangerously ignorant of inheritance tax rules and forthcoming reform, with some completely unaware that they will be subject to the charge when relatives die, lawyers have warned.

Research shows that 47 per cent of Britons are unaware of how assets are distributed after death. Another 60 per cent have not drafted wills and another 54 per cent do not have a record of all the accounts and investments held by their partners or other family members.

The issue is exacerbated, lawyers say, by the still-booming UK property market. The average UK house price is now more than £215,000 – £400,000 in London – meaning that many estates will be pushed over the present nil-rate band of £325,000 under which people pay no inheritance tax when pensions, savings and other assets are taken into account.

Reform is scheduled for April, which will go some way towards alleviating the problem. New rules will add an extra £100,000 to the threshold for properties that those leaving an inheritance have lived in and that they are leaving to a direct descendant.

Lawyers have described the reform is the most significant change to inheritance tax for decades. “Many people across the UK will be subject to inheritance tax without even knowing because the value of their estates will be higher than they realise,” said Gillian Coverley, a partner at the national law firm Irwin Mitchell, which commissioned the study.

“There are also many people whose estates are worth considerably more who could benefit from the new rules with a bit of extra planning and organising of their estates.”

She described the forthcoming reform as “positive”, saying that it was “the first time special status has been given to family members”.

A criminal law barrister has been disbarred after being convicted of conspiring to supply cocaine with a street value of up to £60,000.

Omar Mohammed Khan, 31, was jailed for three years at Nottingham crown court last April after he and three other men admitted to charges of conspiring to supply more than 1kg of the class A drug.

Khan, who was dual qualified as a solicitor and barrister and specialised in criminal defence work, had been practising at a local law firm, The Johnson Partnership.

On Friday, the Bar Standards Board, the body that regulates barristers in England and Wales, disbarred Khan – who was was called to the Bar by Lincoln’s Inn in 2009 – after bringing three charges to a disciplinary tribunal.

It found him guilty of “engaging in conduct which is likely to diminish the trust and confidence the public places in him or the profession”. A spokeswoman for the board said: “A conviction for conspiring to supply a class A substance and subsequent prison sentence is incompatible with membership of the Bar.”

At sentencing, it emerged that Khan and his three fellow defendants had been involved in at least two deliveries of uncut cocaine from the south of England.
When diluted, the resale value of that amount of cocaine would be at least £50,000 and possibly upwards of £60,000.

Slater & Gordon revenues slump as lenders circle – Law Gazette and Legal Futures

Could court ruling throw whiplash reform into doubt? – Insurance Business

Grandmother deported despite living In Britain for past 30 years – BuzzFeed

Fire chief jailed considers suing police after being falsely accused of historic child sex abuse -- Daily Telegraph

Legal challenge confronts Trinidad’s anti-gay laws – Erasing 76 Crimes blog

OJ Simpson set to walk free 24 years early to enjoy pension millions -- Sunday Express