Legal aid news – 10 Sept 2014

  • The judicial review of the government’s decision to impose a 17.5% reduction on criminal legal aid and reduce the number of duty contracts from around 1,600 to 525 was heard by the Administrative Court on 8 and 9 September. The case was brought by the London Criminal Courts Solicitors Association and the Criminal Law Solicitors Association. Judgment is expected in early October. The case was reported by the Guardian, the Law Society Gazette (first day here and second day here), the Morning Star and the Express & Star. The Twitter hashtag for the case is #justiceontrial and the Claimants’ Grounds are available here.
     
  • The All Party Parliamentary Group on Legal Aid met on 3 September to discuss the effects of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (LASPO) on access to legal advice. YLAL member Rebecca Aron provided this summary of the meeting. The Law Society Gazette (here) and Legal Action Group (here) also reported on the APPG.
     
  • The president of the Law Society, Andrew Caplen, launched its ‘Access to Justice Campaign’ this week, saying that access to justice is “on the verge of crisis” as a result of legal aid cuts and the Jackson reforms to civil litigation.  We will be discussing and canvassing ideas on how YLAL can be involved in this campaign at upcoming meetings.
     
  • New statistics revealed that the exceptional funding ‘safety net’ introduced by the LASPO is only granting funding in 4% of cases. As the Law Society Gazette report, the system is not working.
     
  • The Guardian DataBlog looked in detail at legal aid figures post-LASPO, finding that civil legal aid has fallen by more than half and public funding for some areas of law has become “almost entirely inaccessible”.
     
  • The last remaining Law Centre in Manchester, South Manchester Law Centre, sadly closed at the end of August as a “direct result of the swathe of legal aid cuts combined with cuts to national and local government funding”.
     
  • The UK Human Rights Blog has reported on the recent comments of Sir James Munby about the possibility of HMCTS funding the cost of “certain activities”, including the instruction of experts and potentially legal advice and representation, where the Legal Aid Agency refuses to do so.
     
  • The House of Commons Justice Select Committee heard that the family courts are unfair for the increasing numbers of unrepresented litigants coming before them as a result of legal aid cuts. The Justice Select Committee session can be viewed here.
     
  • The Telegraph reported on delays in the family courts caused by unrepresented litigants as a result of legal aid cuts. The BBC also reported that legal aid cuts have had damaging effects on children due to the rising number of estranged couples representing themselves in family court cases.
     
  • The government published its response to the Joint Committee on Human Rights report on the residence test for civil legal aid. You can read about the judgment of the Administrative Court in the successful judicial review challenge to the residence test brought by the Public Law Project in our summary here. An extended version of that piece, by YLAL committee member Oliver Carter, was published on the Justice Gap website here.