Access to Justice

The Government’s proposals for reforming legal aid are fundamental, extensive and bold.

They are intended to reduce by £350 million a year the cost of the system (which, with expenditure of more than £2 billion annually, is one of the most expensive in the world) at a time when the Ministry of Justice has to reduce its overall spending by almost a quarter.

The main way in which the Government is seeking to make those cuts is by taking certain areas of law outside the scope of legal aid, with some areas being removed in their entirety and some remaining partially within scope. This is where we focus most attention in our Report.

The Government proposes to remove from scope many areas of family law, although where domestic violence is present, it intends to keep cases within scope. We are not convinced that using domestic violence as a proxy for the most serious cases is advisable and we call on the Government to look at other ways legal aid can be focussed on the most serious family law cases. If the Government does continue to use domestic violence as a criterion for eligibility, it should broaden the definition to include non-physical domestic abuse.

We welcome the Government’s support for mediation services in family cases, but it is not a panacea. Further work needs to be done on how difficult and unresolved cases can be dealt with if legal aid is not available. The implementation of the proposals regarding family law should not happen before the Family Justice Review Panel has produced its full report.

We encourage the Government to look at other possible ways of reducing costs, including creating a financial incentive for public bodies such as the Department for Work and Pensions to get their decisions right first time, and so avoid expensive court and tribunal cases. We also think that the Government should reconsider whether legal aid should be available for certain types of judicial review.

We consider the effect the proposals will have on the providers of legal aid services, including the not-for-profit sector, and we look at the steps the Government is taking to try to alleviate those effects. We examine the Government’s case that, where it is removing legal areas from scope, alternative sources of help exist and individuals will be able to represent themselves, because tribunals are user-friendly and the cases concerned are not particularly complex.

There is a degree of consensus amongst all political parties that the cost of legal aid needs to be reduced, but it is imperative that there is a careful assessment of the impact of the proposed changes on those people most dependent on legal aid. We call on the Government to assess more fully the likely impact of its reforms, for example, on the operation of courts and tribunals, and for public expenditure more generally, before deciding whether to implement them. The Government needs to refine its proposals further before introducing a major change in the way the accessibility of the justice system has come to be viewed.