The Saville Report into the events of Bloody Sunday has finally been delivered. And it brings to an end a pork barrel / gravy train / turkey shoot for a host of lawyers.
The longest-running and costliest inquiry in legal history has cost the UK taxpayer over £200 million (with some reports of £400 million floating about). Of which at least £100 million will be pocketed by the multitude of lawyers involved, to the delight of the general population.
Key amongst these are Eversheds, which was employed to take 2,500 witness statements at the outset in 1998. According to Shaun Woodward (in his former role as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland), the firm was paid an impressive £13,253,720 up to the end of December 2008. Nice work if you can get it.
Madden and Finucane, acting for the families of the deceased, were close behind on £12,968,409 - again, only to December 2008.
The bean feast didn't end there. Devonshires, Kingsley Napley and Payne Hicks Beach raked in almost £8.5 million acting for some of the soldiers. But at the Bar, the sums were even more impressive. After 434 days in session, Sir Christopher Clarke QC - lead counsel for the inquiry - received almost £4.5 million. His opening statement took 42 days to deliver. So that was about £400k just for getting warmed up.
Clarke - together with Jacob Grierson, Alan Roxburgh, Cathryn McGahey and Bilal Rawat - formed the inquiry's team of counsel. Between them, they sit pretty on £12.3 million. Not far behind, Edwin Glasgow QC, senior counsel for the armed forces, snaffled £4 million.
Not everything went to the lawyers, of course. Well, not directly anyway. The Times reports that a further £15.4 million was spent on accommodation for the participants. Plenty of whom seem to have been lawyers.
Copies of the Saville Report are available in bookshops. Price £572. So that's 350,000 copies which need to be sold before UK PLC could possibly break even. Just how much does justice cost nowadays?
Tip Off ROF
The longest-running and costliest inquiry in legal history has cost the UK taxpayer over £200 million (with some reports of £400 million floating about). Of which at least £100 million will be pocketed by the multitude of lawyers involved, to the delight of the general population.
Key amongst these are Eversheds, which was employed to take 2,500 witness statements at the outset in 1998. According to Shaun Woodward (in his former role as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland), the firm was paid an impressive £13,253,720 up to the end of December 2008. Nice work if you can get it.
Madden and Finucane, acting for the families of the deceased, were close behind on £12,968,409 - again, only to December 2008.
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The Saville marathon reaches its end |
The bean feast didn't end there. Devonshires, Kingsley Napley and Payne Hicks Beach raked in almost £8.5 million acting for some of the soldiers. But at the Bar, the sums were even more impressive. After 434 days in session, Sir Christopher Clarke QC - lead counsel for the inquiry - received almost £4.5 million. His opening statement took 42 days to deliver. So that was about £400k just for getting warmed up.
Clarke - together with Jacob Grierson, Alan Roxburgh, Cathryn McGahey and Bilal Rawat - formed the inquiry's team of counsel. Between them, they sit pretty on £12.3 million. Not far behind, Edwin Glasgow QC, senior counsel for the armed forces, snaffled £4 million.
Not everything went to the lawyers, of course. Well, not directly anyway. The Times reports that a further £15.4 million was spent on accommodation for the participants. Plenty of whom seem to have been lawyers.
Copies of the Saville Report are available in bookshops. Price £572. So that's 350,000 copies which need to be sold before UK PLC could possibly break even. Just how much does justice cost nowadays?