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Legal aid officers required to declare conflict of interest
Since June 30 this year, all professional officers of the Legal Aid Department (LAD) are required on first appointment to declare the names of any private practitioners on the Legal Aid Panel who have a close personal relationship with them, the Attorney General, the Hon Jeremy Mathews, said in the Legislative Council today (Wednesday).
Mr Mathews was replying to a question raised by the Hon Emily Lau concerning assignment of legal aid cases to a barrister in private practice who was the husband of the Deputy Director of the department. The barrister had been assigned 17 cases by LAD between January 1 last year and May 1 this year.
Mr Mathews said under the arrangements, all professional officers of the LAD were required, on an individual case basis, to make a declaration to their supervising officer if an assignment involved 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," he said.
He said these arrangements were put into place on the advice of the Corruption Prevention Department of ICAC; and would 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 Mathews said.
He noted that the professional officers of the LAD and Legal Department, like all civil servants, were subject to rules relating to conflict of interest, which gave guidance on how a conflict of interest could be avoided and the appropriate course of action to be taken if such a conflict arises.
A circular setting out details of the rules was circulated in both departments once every six months to remind all staff that they should avoid or declare, as appropriate, any conflict that might arise, he added.