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2014 was the year the profession took the fight over legal aid to the streets and to the courts
This is the time of year to reflect on the events of the last 12 months and what the future may hold. Legal aid practices and not-for-profit advice centres have suffered swingeing cuts, but have also proved to be remarkably resilient and determined to continue to challenge the government’s attacks on access to justice.
Criminal legal aid has been at the forefront of the government’s attempts to make further cuts to the legal aid budget. Plans by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) to cut fees and to reduce the number of duty contracts led to an unprecedented show of unity among criminal legal aid barristers and solicitors. They demonstrated together outside courts across the country on 1 April 2014. The Bar’s decision to refuse returns and boycott high cost cases was, LAG believes, instrumental in forcing the government to negotiate. This led though to the fracturing of the unity between the professions as the Bar did a deal, leaving solicitors, who were in a tactically weaker position than selfemployed barristers, to fight on alone.
The professional bodies representing these criminal legal aid solicitors, the London Criminal Courts Solicitors’ Association and the Criminal Law Solicitors’ Association, supported also by the Law Society, deserve much credit for the successful judicial review against the tender plans. Although the MoJ says it is pressing ahead with tendering (see News, page 4), the delay caused by the extra consultation forced on it as a result of the judicial review means the proximity of the general election may yet scupper its plans. In any event, further legal action challenging tendering seems inevitable.
The battle against restrictions on civil legal aid has also been fought in the courts. Two especially notable successes in the summer were the challenge to the Legal Aid Agency’s failure to grant legal aid under the exceptional funding rule in six immigration cases, and the frankly brilliant judicial skewering of the government’s thoroughly unjust and (provided its pending appeal fails) illegal legal aid residence test.
LAG firmly believes that we are winning the debate on the damage the present government has wreaked on access to justice. Our opinion polling data published in July to mark the 65th birthday of the founding of the modern legal aid system (Legal aid at 65: is the government losing the argument over cuts?), showed that 49 per cent of the public disagreed with cuts to legal aid, while the number agreeing it should be cut as part of the deficit reduction programme had fallen from 34 per cent to 23 per cent. A result all the more remarkable, considering the government’s unrelentingly hostile attacks on legal aid.
‘These are people who tend not to pitch-up at court as litigants in person, but who, without legal advice, end up leading lives blighted by injustice.’
Over recent months, LAG believes that there has been growing recognition of the crisis in the family courts, which has been caused by the withdrawal of legal aid in most private law family cases. There are also deep concerns about the failure to protect victims of domestic violence. November 2014’s announcement by the government of more support for litigants in person and pro bono services is to be welcomed, but has to be criticised as inadequate. Pressure must continue to be brought to bear on the government to put back legal support from lawyers for litigants in the family courts.
A deep seated fear at LAG is that the problems in the criminal justice system and family courts will divert public attention and political focus from the rest of the civil law system, particularly those cases involving social welfare law. Much of our work over the next year will continue to seek to highlight the gaps in advice and legal services for many thousands of people facing civil legal problems.
Private practice and not-for-profit advice services have had to retrench due to the cuts to civil legal aid and to other public funding over the last few years. Their clients are often the poorest and most vulnerable in society. They are people who tend not to pitch-up at court as litigants in person, but who, without legal advice, end up leading lives blighted by injustice. It is for them we must all continue to fight.