'Legal Aid Reform Will Be Fair To Aid Recipients'

The Director of Legal Aid, Thomas Kwong, on Saturday brushed aside concerns over the government's proposal to reform the legal aid system, stressing that it would not violate the Basic Law or affect aid recipients' interests.

Under the proposal, legal aid recipients in criminal cases will no longer be able to choose their own lawyers unless there are exceptional circumstances. The proposal also lowers the number of legal aid cases a lawyer can accept each year. For example, solicitors will only be able to take up to five judicial review cases a year, and barristers three.

Speaking on an RTHK radio programme, Kwong said around five percent of the 720 lawyers who had accepted legal aid cases last year had handled around 20 percent of the cases.

Kwong added that it might not be a good thing for aid recipients if their lawyers were burdened with a number of cases at the same time.

The Bar Association has said it supports the proposal in principle, but it urged the government to make sure that the proposed changes do not violate article 35 of the Basic Law, which protects people’s right to choose their own lawyers.

Kwong said the planned changes would not breach the Basic Law or human rights provisions. He said the Legal Aid Department’s mission was to provide competent legal representation for those on legal aid and current laws do not specify that recipients have the right to choose their own lawyers in criminal cases funded by legal aid.

He said the fact that aid recipients had been able to choose their lawyers in criminal cases was because the department had eased their rules.

Asked whether an aid recipient’s legal interests would be harmed if they were assigned a lawyer who did not share their political stance, Kwong said he believed all lawyers would understand that they were obliged to protect their clients’ interests once they had taken up a case.