Public Support for Haldane VP Phil Shiner

The Haldane Society welcomes the public show of support for Phil Shiner set out in The Independent (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/david-cameron-likened-to-vladimir-putin-by-leading-human-rights-lawyers-over-treatment-of-phil-shiner-10270027.html).

Haldane Society Vice President Phil Shiner has come under constant attack from the government for the work that he and his firm have done attempting to hold the government to account in many different spheres.  The public show of support from senior lawyers, published in The Indepedent, sets out that the government's attacks are an attack on the whole justice system, and the role of lawyers.

Bill Bowring, professor of law at Birkbeck College, London, International Secretary of the Haldane Society, and member of the Bar Human Rights Committee of England and Wales commented: “I think the present government attacks on him are outrageous, and would not be out of place in Putin’s Russia.”

And Dame Helena Kennedy QC, another Vice President of the Haldane Society, commented: “Free societies need lawyers like Phil Shiner...unless the state is held to account by fearless lawyers, bad conduct will be covered up and terrible injustices take place.” She added: “I would rather a dedicated determined lawyer occasionally got it wrong than see the legal profession bullied into passivity so that power can strut its stuff with impunity.”