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LAG has joined a number of organisations with a stake in the civil legal aid system by supporting an open letter to the newly re-elected chair of the Justice Committee, Bob Neill MP (pictured). The letter calls on the committee to provide the Ministry of Justice with a clear steer on the priority areas and challenges that need to be addressed in the pending post-legislative review of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (LASPO).
The review had been announced by the government in January, but has been delayed due to the election. In an article in the Times on 26 July, Neill, in comments regarding legal aid, said he believed ‘we have removed more than the system can take and should rectify the anomalies as soon as possible’. He was also critical of the time it is taking to establish membership of the select committees: ‘over a third of the year will have gone without government, or anyone else, being subject to full parliamentary scrutiny’.
Following its summer recess, the House of Commons will return for the period 5–14 September before rising again for the party conference season. Membership of the select committees should be decided in this period.
The organisations supporting the letter to Neill include the Legal Aid Practitioners Group and LawWorks, the pro bono charity. As they state in the letter, the organisations believe that the government needs to adopt a more ‘coherent and rational’ approach to the scope of legal aid, prioritise access to justice as an essential feature of the rule of law and base decisions on the future of the legal aid system on the ‘evaluation of impact and evidence’. The organisations are also calling for a review of civil legal aid to take place ‘under a framework of independence from the Ministry of Justice’s policy and administrative machinery’. This is the approach that has been adopted by the Scottish government in the year-long review of its system.