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A packed fringe meeting at the Labour Party conference in Brighton last night heard from speakers including the Shadow Attorney General, Emily Thornberry MP, who lamented the loss of her former chambers, Tooks Court, and attacked the Government's record on legal aid.
The closure of Tooks Court had been announced on the chamber’s website earlier in the day. Tooks was established in 1984 at the height of the miners strike and it had built its early reputation around defending striking miners who had been wrongly arrested. As Thornberry told the meeting last night, barristers at the chambers went on to represent clients in many high profile cases such as the Guildford Four, the Birmingham Six and the family of Stephen Lawrence, but had been forced to close 'because of legal aid cuts'.
The Shadow Attorney General stressed that the legal aid system was not 'just about lawyers, as it exists to ensure vulnerable people get a voice and access to justice'. She was highly critical of the government’s plans to reform judicial review, arguing that for a minister falling foul of the procedure 'goes with the territory', but the problem is that the coalition government 'don’t want to be accountable in the courts'. She also said that the government's austerity programme was 'ill judged and goes too far'. However, she warned that if Labour returned to government they would 'have to be realistic about how much money will be available' for legal aid and other public services.
The event entitled, ‘Legal Aid in Crisis: What should Labour do?’ was organised by Legal Aid Practitioners’ Group (LAPG). Carol Storer director of LAPG chaired the meeting which also heard from Paul Bowen QC, a barrister at Doughty Street Chambers, Lord Bach, Labour peer and former legal aid minister and Steve Hynes, Director of the Legal Action Group (LAG).
In a well argued speech, Paul Bowen, expressed his concerns about the potential impact of the government’s proposals for legal aid on 'one of our deepest constitutional principles - the rule of law'. He defended judicial review as essential to encourage a culture of 'transparency and accountability' on government. Referring to the proposals contained in the government's consultation document, Transforming legal aid, Bowen observed that the economic case for them 'is deeply flawed, as the downstream costs of the changes are likely to far outweigh any savings that might be made'.
This theme on the true costs of the cuts in legal aid was picked-up by Steve Hynes in his contribution. He pledged that the Low Commission on the Future of Advice and Legal Support will be reporting on evidence which demonstrates 'that every one pound spent on legal aid saves the state five to seven pounds in other public services'. Hynes argued that access to justice and equality before the law should not be seen as issues which only concern politicians of the left and lawyers, 'as they are fundamental to every citizen of this country, rich or poor'.
Emily Thornberry praised Lord Bach for his efforts in ensuring a motion on legal aid made it to the ballot for prioritising emergency issues to be debated by the conference. Unfortunately, Bach explained, the motion had narrowly missed out being debated, but he believed that the high vote for it in a ballot of delegates, 'reflected the growing concern amongst party activists over legal aid'.
In his speech Bach defended Labour's record in government, stating that the numbers of people assisted by civil legal aid increased under his watch, in contrast to the current large decline reflected in the figures recently published by LAG. He described the cuts in legal aid as 'deceitful, monstrous and wicked' and stressed that legal aid 'has to begin with the vulnerable; ensuring people get a voice and access to justice, and ensuring that our legal system contains the checks and balances that we need in a democratic society'.