Seven firms of solicitors joined together today to launch a High Court challenge to the abolition of a discretionary compensation scheme for victims of miscarriages of justice.

The abolition - “overnight and without warning” – unfairly brought to an end more than 100 years of payments to people suffering injustice at the hands of police and state, the court was told.

The seven firms, along with three individual claimants, accused the Government of acting “unfairly and unlawfully”.

Two judges were told that those who received awards in previous cases would now have got nothing.

Rabinder Singh, QC, appearing for the solicitors, said this included the family of Derek Bentley, who was convicted in 1952 of the murder of a police officer and hanged.

In 1998 his conviction was posthumously quashed by the Court of Appeal as a result of errors made by the trial judge. His family were compensated under the scheme – which was “the only remedy available”.

Mr Singh said the non-statutory scheme was abolished in April last year without prior warning by the then Home Secretary Charles Clarke, who said it could no longer be justified.

The Home Office had operated the scheme in recent years alongside a separate statutory scheme set up under the 1988 Criminal Justice Act to comply with the UK’s international law obligations.

Mr Clarke said the discretionary scheme was “confusing and anomalous” and could no longer be justified. It cost over £2 million a year to operate but benefited only five to ten applicants.

But Mr Singh told Lord Justice May and Mr Justice Gray the payments to victims of miscarriages of justice went back over 100 years. Awards were made to people who had spent time in custody following a wrongful charge or conviction after “a serious default” on the part of the police or other public authority.

Payments also went to individuals accused of wrongdoing who were later completely exonerated.

The first documented award was in 1905. Other payments went to the men who became known as the “Cardiff Three”, who were convicted of murdering prostitute Lynette White and spent four years in custody before their convictions were quashed on appeal.

Mr Singh added that since no transitional arrangements were made and no warning given, applicants whose cases had not yet been considered by the time the scheme was abolished were denied the chance to seek compensation.

Three of these individuals joined the group of lawyers in today’s claim. They included Hamidreza Taghibeglou, from Surrey, who had his conviction for indecent assault quashed on appeal.

The appeal court said the prosecution’s case was “so implausible as to defy belief” and that it “defied common sense”. Mr Singh argued that Mr Taghibeglou would have had a good prospect of qualifying for the scheme “were it still in existence”.

The solicitors firms bringing today’s legal challenge include Bhatt Murphy, Bindman and Partners, Bird Solicitors, Fisher Meredith, Hickman and Rose, Hodge Jones Allen and Stephensons.

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