The UK government has proposed extensive reforms to the legal aid system–one of the most expensive in the world–in an attempt to cut £220m from the annual £1bn bill.
Under the plans, price competitive tendering will be introduced to award legal aid contracts to the lowest bidder; legal aid recipients will no longer be able to choose their own solicitor. Concerns have been raised that this will reduce the quality of legal representation and that, because the contracts will be awarded on a fixed-fee basis regardless of whether the defendant pleas guilty or not guilty, legal aid recipients could be pressurised into entering a guilty plea as these cases are typically quicker, and therefore cheaper, to resolve.
Aid will only be available to those who have been living in the UK for at least a year, leading some opponents to claim that this will leave recently-arrived victims of human trafficking without legal protection.
In response to such criticisms, the government opened a public consultation and held a parliamentary debate on Thursday, at which David Lammy MP, a former barrister, spoke against the reforms. Here, Mr Lammy responds to claims made last week by Tom McNally, Minister of State for Justice.
Few MPs from the government benches were willing to stick their head above the parapet to defend their government’s legal aid reforms in last Thursday’s debate. The justice secretary didn’t even bother to turn up. It was left to his parliamentary under secretary, Jeremy Wright, to hold the line on a set of proposals that are opposed by the chair of the Supreme Court, the Bar Council, the Law Society, the Church of England, most charities and even the government’s own Attorney General. So it was brave of Lord McNally, the Liberal Democrat peer and Minister of State for Justice, to go into bat for the Coalition’s reforms in a blog for the Huffington Post.
The central thrust of his argument is that legal aid in Britain has “grown into a system that it was never meant to be”. But what greater aberration from the original intentions can he envisage than severely restricting aid for ordinary citizens looking to challenge the decisions of the state? And who can have full faith in the judicial process when your lawyer is picked by the same body that is prosecuting you?
Lord McNally acknowledges the opposition to these major departures from the spirit of legal aid, referring to it as mere “disquiet” and “protest,” but responds only by advising lawyers to “innovate, diversify and seize the opportunities that are there.” No doubt current practitioners of the law will have plenty to rebut the vacuous managerialism with which he marinades his words of wisdom. But more troubling is the noticeable lack of counsel for the rest of us.
After all, it is normal citizens who are now being asked to bear the cost. When the state wants to evict you from your home to build a motorway, the trained lawyer may miss out on a fee, but it will be you without a house if you cannot afford to gamble on the outcome of a judicial review. When your local children’s services carry out an intrusive and damaging inquiry into your parenting because of a tenuous allegation that turns out to be malicious and false, you will be the one forking out to investigate this staggering local authority overreach. McNally and the government have deliberately framed opposition to these reforms as concerning only lawyers (and their fees) to disguise the fact it is ordinary citizens that will suffer the most.
This entire episode is indicative of a governing clique so removed from ordinary life that they cannot appreciate just how many people come to rely on legal aid even though they may never expect to. This is why the provision of funding to access the judicial system is considered a pillar of a civilised society and modern democracy. Yet for a relative pittance (the Ministry of Justice estimates that it will save £200m annually but others give good reasons to doubt it will save anything at all), those in power want to kick our country back to the dark ages when access to justice was restricted to only those who could afford it. This is just another example of a Tory-led government that knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Under the plans, price competitive tendering will be introduced to award legal aid contracts to the lowest bidder; legal aid recipients will no longer be able to choose their own solicitor. Concerns have been raised that this will reduce the quality of legal representation and that, because the contracts will be awarded on a fixed-fee basis regardless of whether the defendant pleas guilty or not guilty, legal aid recipients could be pressurised into entering a guilty plea as these cases are typically quicker, and therefore cheaper, to resolve.
Aid will only be available to those who have been living in the UK for at least a year, leading some opponents to claim that this will leave recently-arrived victims of human trafficking without legal protection.
In response to such criticisms, the government opened a public consultation and held a parliamentary debate on Thursday, at which David Lammy MP, a former barrister, spoke against the reforms. Here, Mr Lammy responds to claims made last week by Tom McNally, Minister of State for Justice.
Few MPs from the government benches were willing to stick their head above the parapet to defend their government’s legal aid reforms in last Thursday’s debate. The justice secretary didn’t even bother to turn up. It was left to his parliamentary under secretary, Jeremy Wright, to hold the line on a set of proposals that are opposed by the chair of the Supreme Court, the Bar Council, the Law Society, the Church of England, most charities and even the government’s own Attorney General. So it was brave of Lord McNally, the Liberal Democrat peer and Minister of State for Justice, to go into bat for the Coalition’s reforms in a blog for the Huffington Post.
The central thrust of his argument is that legal aid in Britain has “grown into a system that it was never meant to be”. But what greater aberration from the original intentions can he envisage than severely restricting aid for ordinary citizens looking to challenge the decisions of the state? And who can have full faith in the judicial process when your lawyer is picked by the same body that is prosecuting you?
Lord McNally acknowledges the opposition to these major departures from the spirit of legal aid, referring to it as mere “disquiet” and “protest,” but responds only by advising lawyers to “innovate, diversify and seize the opportunities that are there.” No doubt current practitioners of the law will have plenty to rebut the vacuous managerialism with which he marinades his words of wisdom. But more troubling is the noticeable lack of counsel for the rest of us.
After all, it is normal citizens who are now being asked to bear the cost. When the state wants to evict you from your home to build a motorway, the trained lawyer may miss out on a fee, but it will be you without a house if you cannot afford to gamble on the outcome of a judicial review. When your local children’s services carry out an intrusive and damaging inquiry into your parenting because of a tenuous allegation that turns out to be malicious and false, you will be the one forking out to investigate this staggering local authority overreach. McNally and the government have deliberately framed opposition to these reforms as concerning only lawyers (and their fees) to disguise the fact it is ordinary citizens that will suffer the most.
This entire episode is indicative of a governing clique so removed from ordinary life that they cannot appreciate just how many people come to rely on legal aid even though they may never expect to. This is why the provision of funding to access the judicial system is considered a pillar of a civilised society and modern democracy. Yet for a relative pittance (the Ministry of Justice estimates that it will save £200m annually but others give good reasons to doubt it will save anything at all), those in power want to kick our country back to the dark ages when access to justice was restricted to only those who could afford it. This is just another example of a Tory-led government that knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
