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In addition, professional officers are required, on an individual case basis, to make a declaration to their supervising officer if an assignment involves a conflict of interest. The supervising officer would then consider whether it would be more appropriate to assign the case to another private practitioner or to instruct another professional officer to handle the case. Where the supervising officer has a conflict of interest with the proposed private practitioner, the proposal would be submitted to the supervising officer's own supervisor for approval.
These arrangements were put into place on 30 June of this year on the advice of the Corruption Prevention Department of the ICAC; and will be kept under regular review by the Departmental Monitoring Committee chaired by the Director of Legal Aid, and attended by a representative from the ICAC. The monitoring committee, including a member of the ICAC, has been scrutinising assignments since 1993. The whole committee were aware that the Deputy Director is the spouse of a member of the Bar.
Mr President, as regards the Legal Department, the civil service rules on conflict of interest to which I have just referred apply and there are no additional rules relating to briefing out of cases to relatives of senior staff. In fact, no directorate staff within the Prosecutions or Civil Divisions of the department has any relatives at the private Bar. Two have relatives working in solicitors' firms but so far as we can ascertain no government legal work has been assigned to these firms. The present briefing out procedures of the Legal Department have developed over the years and have incorporated changes recommended by the ICAC following reviews in 1988, 1990 and 1993, as well as new measures adopted by the Director of Public Prosecutions early this year. As Members are aware, a broadly based Working Party has recently been set up to review briefing out procedures in the Legal Department. That working party will look into the question of briefing out to relatives to see whether further improvements are necessary,
The existing system in the Legal Department for briefing out cases is designed to prevent unfairness and favouritism. Briefing out of standard criminal cases is done on the basis of rotation and availability of counsel on the briefing out lists. For all cases of unusual length and complexity, or those which involve fee negotiation, at least two directorate officers are involved in the selection process, with the final approval resting with the Law Officer concerned. In all cases, a written record is kept on file of the time and date of contact, the name of counsel contacted, the results and the reason for selecting a particular counsel.
End/Wednesday, July 19, 1995