Lawyers employed by the UK's Ministry of Defence (MoD) have risen in number by 130 in 1999 to 190 this year.The real current figures may be higher as there were another 80 civilian lawyers employed by the MoD last year - and legal executives and legal secretaries are excluded from the statistics.During the same period the MoD has run a programme of lay-offs, with the effect that the armed forces have lost one sixth of their members. A member of the Commons Defence Committee, Julian Brazier MP, said: 'This sorry overhead reflects the fact that the legal environment for the Armed Forces has got more and more difficult and litigation culture is becoming more and more prevalent.' The Committee is to investigate what it sees as the growing problem of legal restrictions on the military services. The increase was reported by the Daily Telegraph as a result of a Freedom of Information request.
Email your news and story ideas to: [email protected]
