Professional Competency in UK Law

One of the most important factors tending not only to the just, but also to the swift, determination of litigation, which is so desirable, is that those who act as advocates for the litigants concerned have been thoroughly trained and are indeed adequately experienced to do so.

In my judgment that exposition of the two stage process of the Court considering: first whether the statutory obligation to give "due regard" has been discharged; and second, (if it is sought to review it) the decision which flows from it, involves the Court, at the first stage, deciding whether the authority has, in fact, surmounted the threshold required by the statute. That is not, on my reading of it, a Wednesbury based exercise.

There may be cases where such an order would be justifiable: for example, a very nervous plaintiff. In such a case it might well be, indeed it probably would be, preferable to have some other person present rather than a consultant whom he or she has probably only seen once. Another case might be the sort of case which arose in Starr v. National Coal Board, where it was thought that the consultant who the defendants wished to examine the plaintiff was one who tended to be hostile to plaintiffs.

As has been said many times in this court, for manslaughter the sentence can vary considerably. I myself, as a judge at first instance, have passed a sentence of a conditional discharge. On the other hand it is within my professional knowledge that sentences of 15 years not so long ago have been upheld by this court's predecessor in cases where someone has been acquitted of murder and found guilty of manslaughter.