Donald Trump is not the only prominent figure who may be regretting his dealings with the disgraced financier and child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

In October 2019, Barclays Bank sent a letter to the Financial Conduct Authority assuring the FCA that the bank’s chief executive, James Edward “Jes” Staley, “did not have a close relationship with Mr Epstein”, who had died in prison two months earlier. Staley’s “last contact with Mr Epstein was well before he joined Barclays in 2015”, the letter asserted.

A month ago, the Upper Tribunal tax and chancery chamber “found that Mr Staley knew, when he approved the letter, that its contents were factually inaccurate”. For that reason, it declined to interfere with the FCA’s decision in May 2023 banning Staley from performing any senior management role in regulated financial services. He had resigned from Barclays in October 2021 after being told of the FCA’s preliminary conclusions.

The FCA confirmed its decision last week after Staley had run out of time to appeal. He must pay a penalty of £1.1m by next week.

Should the Financial Conduct Authority punish financiers for non-financial misconduct? And what implications does this case have for other professionals — lawyers, for example, whose regulators may seek to regulate what used to be regarded as their private lives?

Those are among the questions I raised in the latest episode of A Lawyer Talks with David Hamilton, a partner at Howard Kennedy who specialises in financial services enforcement and compliance (pictured). We discussed whether the FCA had struck the right balance between protecting consumers and encouraging investment.

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Reforms to the way sexual assault cases are prosecuted and tried in the courts of England and Wales are recommended in a report today by the government’s reform advisers.

The Law Commission’s proposals are intended to provide better protection for complainants while maintaining fair trials for defendants. For the first time, complainants would be given legal advice and representation at hearings to decide whether to disclose their personal records and evidence of their sexual behaviour.

If ministers agree, reforms would be introduced to ensure that the defence could present relevant evidence without relying on rape myths and misconceptions and without causing unnecessary trauma to the complainant.

For the latest episode of A Lawyer Talks, I have been discussing these recommendations with Professor Penney Lewis (pictured), the criminal law commissioner responsible for the project. Our ambition was to sum up her 620-page report in a conversation of half an hour.

My regular podcast series is a bonus for paying subscribers to A Lawyer Writes. Everyone else can hear a short taster by clicking the ► symbol above.

“The present way in which trials are organised, allocated and tried is no longer sustainable and, if continued, will lead to the collapse of the criminal justice system,” Sir Brian Leveson says in his report today on the criminal courts of England and Wales.

Leveson was invited to carry out his review by the justice secretary, Shabana Mahmood. She welcomed his 400-page report and promised to do “whatever it takes” to bring down the backlog of cases awaiting trial.

Thanking the former head of criminal justice, Mahmood said, “We will now consider all his recommendations and will respond, in full, ahead of legislating in the autumn.”

As expected, the former head of criminal justice is recommending that more cases should be decided by magistrates and fewer cases should tried by a judge and jury. He proposes a number of ways in which this can be achieved:

* Remove the right for defendants to elect (choose) trial by jury in cases that can currently be tried either by magistrates or in the Crown Court (“ether-way cases”) and where the maximum penalty is two years’ imprisonment.

* Reclassify some either-way cases as summary only, which means they would no longer be eligible for trial in the Crown Court.

* Create a new “bench division” of the Crown Court consisting of a judge and two magistrates, which could try all either-way cases and would deal with defendants expected to receive no more than three years’ imprisonment on conviction.

* Allow defendants in the Crown Court to elect trial by judge alone, subject to the judge’s consent.

* Require serious and complex fraud cases to be tried by judge alone.

* Allow courts to direct trial by judge alone in cases of exceptional length or complexity.

We discussed all these options in depth when I interviewed Leveson yesterday for the latest episode of A Lawyer Talks. But we didn’t spend too much time on his recommendations for encouraging greater use of out-of-court resolutions — alternatives to prosecution — even though that part of his report had been leaked to the Daily Mail in what was seen as a classic “dead cat” distraction strategy.

Initial reaction to Leveson’s proposals has not been entirely supportive — although I received a pretty dusty answer when I suggested he was taking on the entire legal establishment. To give those most affected by Leveson’s recommendations a chance to study the report — and listen to his only in-depth interview — I’ll leave coverage of the responses until tomorrow.

My regular podcast series is a bonus for paying subscribers to A Lawyer Writes. Everyone else can hear a short taster by clicking the ► symbol above.

When parents split up, it’s often the children who suffer most. But over the past three years or so, family judges have quietly developed an entirely new way of focusing on the most vulnerable members of a family. Rather than being litigant-led, it’s child-led.

To find out how the Pathfinder scheme works — and why it’s not available in large parts of England — I dropped in yesterday to interview the most senior family judge in England and Wales.

For the latest episode of A Lawyer Talks, Sir Andrew McFarlane, president of the High Court family division, told me about what he and his fellow judges regard as the future of private family law.

My regular podcast series is a bonus for paying subscribers to A Lawyer Writes. Everyone else can hear a short taster by clicking the ► symbol above.

Critics who imagine that we can secure our borders against migrants simply by leaving the European convention on human rights have overlooked another major international agreement that the UK signed at around the same time.

The United Nations refugee convention of 1951, extended in 1967, gives important rights to people who have a well-founded fear of persecution in their own countries. In particular, refugees must not be sent back to a country where they face serious threats to their life or freedom.

Speaking in the House of Lords on 2 June, Lord Macdonald of River Glaven KC (pictured) said that at the time the convention was agreed in 1951 there were thought to be around 2.1 million refugees under the mandate of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Last year, according to the UNHCR, there were no fewer than 43.7 million refugees.

The former director of public prosecutions said:

It is in the light of the changes since 1951 that I believe the rubric of the refugee convention must be considered. It says that anyone with a well-founded fear of persecution in their place of abode is entitled under the convention to asylum when they arrive in a contracting state, but that characterisation applies to literally tens of millions of people worldwide and may plausibly be claimed by tens of millions more.

Macdonald suggested that the UK might need to “revisit” the refugee convention. But how could that be done? And what might happen if we don’t?

Those are among the questions I put to him yesterday when we recorded the latest episode of A Lawyer Talks.

My regular podcast series is a bonus for paying subscribers to A Lawyer Writes. Everyone else can hear a short taster by clicking the ► symbol above.

In recent weeks we’ve seen cyber attacks on bodies such as the Legal Aid Agency and companies such as Marks & Spencer. But many other attacks are simply not made public. How should organisations defend themselves against risks to their data? And should they pay ransom demands in the hope of getting it back?

These are among the questions I have been discussing on the latest episode of A Lawyer Talks with James Moss, director of cyber investigations at the international law form Addleshaw Goddard (pictured). He’s a former director of enforcement at the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), which, as he explains, is expected to take on new powers and responsibilities under the government’s planned Cyber Security and Resilience bill. Ministers are also considering whether to ban some ransom payments — a proposal that, as he explained, may prove controversial.

My podcast series is a bonus for paying subscribers to A Lawyer Writes. Everyone else can hear a short taster by clicking the ► symbol above.

What impact has English common law had on the legal system of Israel? That’s the question Lord Pannick KC discussed yesterday with Dorit Beinisch, president of the Supreme Court of Israel from 2006 to 2012.

The answer turned out to be considerable. During the British mandate period, there were appeals to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London. For decades after Israel’s independence in 1948, Israeli lawyers relied on used well-worn English textbooks — Salmond, Wade, De Smith — and cited leading English precedents. Senior judges from the United Kingdom often referred to Israeli cases during the years when there were regular exchanges between the two jurisdictions.

The leading barrister and the former judge were in conversation at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem as part of the Lionel Cohen lecture series — established in 1953 to honour Lord Cohen of Walmer, a law lord from 1951 to 1961. The discussion, attended by two of Cohen’s grandsons, marked the 75th anniversary of the university’s law faculty; the Hebrew University itself is celebrating its centenary this year.

Although Pannick led the discussion, he also answered questions from Israeli judges and academics at the seminar who demanded his insights on aspects of English law and on cases he had appeared in. Beinisch particularly admired Pannick’s success in persuading the UK Supreme Court to overturn Boris Johnson’s attempt to prorogue parliament for five weeks in 2019 — the sort of decision that she thought her own court would not have been brave enough to take.

It was a fascinating discussion on many levels — there was discussion of judicial appointments, checks and balances, Gouriet v HM Attorney General — and you can hear it by clicking the ► symbol above.

* Sorry that some of the questions from the floor are a bit hard to hear. Comments are disabled for this piece.

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The Parole Board should increase the number of public hearings it holds each year, an internal review has recommended. It’s one of the ways that the board hopes to achieve greater public understanding of its work.

The Parole Board is an independent body whose members make judicial decisions on whether people who have committed serious offences or who are assessed as potentially dangerous need to stay in prison for the protection of the public.

But the public have little idea of how panels of board members question prisoners and assess risk. Some people think the Parole Board has a say in all prisoner releases; others believe it can shorten sentences passed by the courts. But neither is true and the review suggests that greater openness can reduce allegations of secret justice.

It was carried out by Peter Rook KC (pictured), who’s vice-chair and the senior judicial member of the Parole Board, and Michael Topolski KC, who’s also a senior member of the board; both are former Old Bailey judges.

Thanking them for their report, the board’s chief executive Cecilia French said it had made great strides in becoming more transparent over the years but was keen to do more. “The transparency review highlights the key areas we should focus on to further progress our transparency agenda,” she added. “I am looking forward to implementing the recommendations in this review.”

For the latest episode of my podcast A Lawyer Talks, I asked Rook about the review’s findings. As a general rule, he explained, parole hearings would remain private. But he hoped the board would find new ways of helping the public to understand its work.

Rook referred to the judiciary’s transparency and open justice board whose chair, Mr Justice Nicklin, gave a lecture in Oxford last night that I plan to cover shortly.

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It would be “constitutionally improper” for ministers to comply with treaty obligations if that would mean ignoring laws made by parliament, the shadow attorney general said yesterday. Lord Wolfson of Tredegar KC (pictured) was responding to allegations by Lord Hermer KC, the government’s senior law officer, that the Conservative front-bencher had adopted a “pick-and-mix approach, in which states can sometimes justifiably refuse to comply with their international legal obligations when they judge it not to be in their national interests to do so”.

In an interview for my podcast A Lawyer Talks, Wolfson said that ministers would always seek to comply with international law if they were able to do so. But, he continued:

a minister has to abide by an act of parliament and it would be constitutionally improper, I would suggest, for the minister to say, “I’m going to ignore what an act of parliament says in order to comply with a treaty obligation”.

In truth, he claimed, the Labour government was itself taking a pick-and-mix approach to international law. “We do — under this government and under previous governments — legislate, for example, contrary to double-taxation treaties,” Wolfson said. “We do put in place tariffs which are contrary to the WTO [World Trade Organisation].”

Wolfson has known Hermer for 30 years and they have a great deal in common — apart from their politics. The shadow attorney general’s declared aim is always to “play the ball and not the man”. Listen to A Lawyer Talks and hear whether he succeeded — particularly when I asked Wolfson about Hermer’s references to Carl Schmitt.

Here’s a short glossary for non-specialists:

* a fortiori all the more so

* purdah period between election announcement and formation of new government

* spad minister’s special adviser

* sui generis unique

* “thick” or “thin” rule of law concept

My somewhat irregular podcast series — there will be another one tomorrow — is a bonus for paying subscribers to A Lawyer Writes. Everyone else can hear a short taster by clicking the ► symbol above.

Lawyers for the families of 29 military and civilian intelligence specialists who were killed when an RAF Chinook helicopter crashed on the Mull of Kintyre in 1994 have said they will “consider all legal options” to find out how their relatives died. They have launched a campaign seeking answers and accountability.

Around the time of the 30th anniversary of the disaster last June, the families discovered that Ministry of Defence records had unexpectedly been sealed for a further 70 years. They are calling for a judge-led public inquiry to assess the available evidence. Their solicitor Mark Stephens CBE, from the law firm Howard Kennedy, argued that there could no longer be any operational need for secrecy.

The military helicopter was carrying passengers from Northern Ireland to a conference in Scotland. One of those on board was Lt Col John Tobias MBE, 41, an army intelligence officer.

His son Andy was eight at the time. Andy Tobias (pictured) told me this week why he thought the prime minister’s commitment to a duty of candour for public bodies meant the families should finally discover whether their loved ones had boarded an aircraft that others knew was not fit to fly.

You can hear our discussion in the latest episode of A Lawyer Talks. My regular podcast is a bonus for paying subscribers to A Lawyer Writes. Everyone else can hear a short taster by clicking the ► symbol above.