.
Lobbying for justice
Thursday 7 May 2015 might seem a long way off, but the run-up to the next general election has commenced. Provided it is sustained, the slight turnaround in the economy which is being reported currently will form a big part of the Conservative party’s and the Liberal Democrat party’s pitch to the electorate. They will argue that the austerity medicine has worked. Somewhere in the political tussles over economic policy, those of us who care about access to justice will have to create the opportunity to put the case that austerity policies have damaged our justice system and are jeopardising the rule of law.
Over the last two years, we have been forced onto the defensive by the coalition government’s relentless quest for cuts. Lawyers and campaigners are continuing the fight against the government’s proposals in Transforming legal aid: delivering a more credible and efficient system to cut £220m from legal aid (see page 4 of this issue). The work of the Law Society, the Justice Alliance and others has been excellent; however, such is the overwhelming opposition from the legal profession to the proposals to introduce competitive tendering for criminal legal aid, which included a report from the Judicial Executive Board that was scathing of the plans, that this has tended to dominate the debate at the expense of the other changes which the government intends to make. LAG sees the second consultation, which the government has announced will be published this month, as an opportunity to reiterate our concerns about the proposals on legal aid for prisoners’ rights, the residence test, judicial review and borderline cases. We believe that, if implemented, these cuts jeopardise the defence of human rights and further undermine the UK’s international reputation for upholding the rule of law (see page 4 of this issue).
LAG’s main purpose in establishing the Low Commission on the Future of Advice and Legal Support last year was to use its final report in the run-up to the general election to galvanise support from the political parties for social welfare advice services. At an early stage the commission recognised that it could not just call for the reinstatement of those areas of social welfare law (SWL) cut from legal aid, but instead needed to look to other ways of providing advice and legal support. The commission published its emerging recommendations last month, which discuss the necessity to reduce the need for legal advice and support through preventative work and early intervention (see page 7 of this issue). At the core of its recommendations is the need to establish a £50m per annum national fund to pay for direct SWL services and infrastructure. The commission is asking for your feedback on its recommendations before finalising its report to be published in December.
We recognise that the Low Commission only addresses a narrow set of concerns to do with providing advice and legal support in SWL cases. In the 20 months to the general election, there are wider issues that will also need to be raised. Chief among these is that it is fast becoming apparent that the legal aid system post implementation of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders (LASPO) Act 2012 does not provide the limited human rights safety net it purports to do.
LAG is getting feedback that the number of domestic violence cases being dealt with by the courts is falling because of the difficulties in obtaining legal aid, despite the assurances given by the government when the LASPO Bill was before parliament. It is also clear that the exceptional cases regulations, which were put in place to prevent a breach of human rights, are not working. Exceptional funding: a fig leaf, not a safeguard, a report from the Public Law Project (PLP), reveals that there were only 233 applications for exceptional funding in the first three months of the operation of the scheme (see page 40 of this issue). The Ministry of Justice had estimated that 5,000–7,000 applications would be granted annually. Only two grants of exceptional funding have been made in non-inquest cases (funding for inquest cases was usually granted under the previous exceptional funding scheme). The PLP has expressed concerns about these figures as they are very low compared with the original projections and there is evidence of poor quality decision-making in the cases being rejected.
One of the important concessions won during the LASPO Bill debates was the provision to bring areas of law back into scope without primary legislation. As the gap widens between the rights that the law allows people and their ability to enforce them, the justice system is in danger of slipping back to being only for the rich. LAG wants to join with a broad coalition of interest groups in the build-up to the next general election to lobby for a justice system which upholds the law fairly for everyone, regardless of means. Making the argument for a change of policy on what is covered by the legal aid scheme will be an important part of this.