Michael Fallon accused of influencing prosecution of law firm

The defence secretary, Michael Fallon, may have pressurised an independent legal regulator to prosecute the law firm Leigh Day over its role in allegations – later abandoned – of torture and murder of Iraqi detainees, a tribunal has been told.

In the latest twist to the dispute over the behaviour of lawyers pursuing human rights claims, the Ministry of Defence has been accused of using inappropriate “influence” to persuade the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) to charge Leigh Day with serious misconduct offences.

Seeking disclosure of documents and emails exchanged between the MoD and the SRA, Patricia Robertson QC, for Leigh Day, said that the prominent London law firm was being prosecuted for “who they are” rather than for “what they have done”.

The challenge follows a decision by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal last week to disqualify another lawyer, Phil Shiner, for dishonesty and misconduct over claims following the so-called Battle of Danny Boy near Basra in 2004.

The fighting erupted after members of a Shia militia, the Mahdi army, ambushed a UK military patrol. Some insurgents, it was alleged, were captured and taken back to a British base where they were supposedly tortured and murdered. The claims were found to be fictitious by the Al-Sweady inquiry in 2014. Leigh Day had helped Shiner to pursue the original claims for compensation. Robertson told the disciplinary tribunal that: “It was the clients who were lying [about what happened in Iraq], not the lawyers.”

Every day of the week, solicitors’ clients are found by courts to have lied, she added, but that does not mean all those lawyers find themselves in front of disciplinary tribunals. The reason for moving against Leigh Day was because it suited the MoD.

“Reports in the media show that the MoD has been claiming that it does have influence in disciplinary matters [at the SRA],” Robertson said. “Maybe things are being reported as serious misconduct which, had they occurred in other circumstances, they might not have been.”

The MoD may have been interested in “passing the buck” for the expensive Al-Sweady inquiry, which cost £25m, she said.

Leigh Day, she said, wanted to clear its name. The firm had not been criticised in the Al-Sweady report. The failure to disclose a list of detainees during its pursuit of compensation claims was, Robertson said, the “the sort of oversight that occurs in litigation”.

She added: “There’s been a great deal of pressure around this case. No regulator is immune to a degree of pressure in the media to be seen to be taking action.”

There had also been discussions around the same time of “streamlining” the SRA in terms of reducing the number of legal regulators, the tribunal was told.

Leigh Day wanted to see the correspondence because, Robertson said, “anything that could be seen as undermining the independence of the SRA in bringing this prosecution is a matter of concern.” But Timothy Dutton QC, for the SRA, said that: “statements made by Sir Michael Fallon do not justify an assertion that there may be undue influence against the SRA.” Leigh Day, he said, had already run up costs of £3.9 million in defending itself against the SRA charges.

Leigh Day and two of its solicitors, Martyn Day and Sapna Malik, are facing a total of 19 misconduct charges which they all deny.

At the end of the hearing on Friday, the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal ruled that the SRA should disclose all relevant correspondence about the Leigh Day case with the ministries of Defence and Justice and the Commons defence select committee.

The trial relating to the charges against Leigh Day is due to start in late April.

Source: The Guardian