By James Simons-
The Ministry of Justice says its delayed review of the impact of its controversial legal aid reforms is near completion.
The Ministry headed by Lucy Frazer publishing a table showing an alarming drop in the number of people who have been granted public funding in welfare benefits cases over the last decade.
The highly-awaited review of the impact of legal aid cuts was announced to be released in the New Year, the Ministry of Justice said in December 2017, but more than half way into the new year in 2019, no announcements have still been made. Campaigners including those from the Law Society concerned about the delay told The Eye Of Media.Com that the government ”need to get a grip” and ”address the matter swiftly and adequately” to ensure more people have access to fair trials. The Law Society which seeks to represent, promote and support all solicitors, have a committed stance to ensuring equal access to justice.
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Governed by respectable guiding principles, the Law society seeks to ensure equal access to justice, and that nobody is above the law. The review was first announced at the end of October 2017 to look at the effect of the cuts in legal aid for family, civil and criminal cases, including access to justice and knock-on costs. Terms of reference were published in March this year and the review findings were expected by the end of the year. Its changed date of announcement to the new year is causing concern that the month may run out without the matter being addressed.
The published statistics reveal there were 135,751 legal help matter starts and 51 civil representation granted certificates in 2008-09. The figures dropped to 443 legal help matter starts and nine civil representation granted certificates in 2017-18.
The decline is at its steepest around the time the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act (LASPO) was introduced in April 2013. There were 82,554 legal help matter starts in 2012-13, falling to 163 in 2013-14. This figure meanders up and down over the subsequent four years, but not by very much.
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Minutes for the latest meeting between the Legal Aid Agency and civil legal aid practitioners was chaired by the Law Society, published this week. They state that the ministry would like feedback about the format, detail, categorisation, timing, interpretation and other aspects of the report. The Law Society
worked in collaboration with the Law Centres Network and other organisations in pressurising the Ministry of Justice to do the appropriate thing and speed up the process of reforming the legal aid sector so that everyone can have equal access to legal aid.
Justice Minister, Frazer said the minister had spent several months conducting a wide-ranging review of the legal aid reforms, and had engaged with over 100 organisations and individuals. ‘Having finalised this engagement at the end of November, the review is now near completion and will be published shortly,’ she ended her response.
Nimrod Ben-Cnann, head of policy at the Law Centres Network, told the Gazette that remaining legal aid for benefits appeals ‘is just half of one per cent’ of what it was pre-LASPO: ‘It is barely there. Over years of major welfare reform, this legal aid cut has left tens of thousands of vulnerable people in the lurch when trying to secure their livelihood. Last year there were over 238,000 first-tier benefits appeals and legal aid helped with none – they’re no longer in scope – and with just 452 Upper Tribunal appeals across all of England and Wales.
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