Legal aid bill is law - the fight back starts now

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Parent Category: Africa and The World

Category: Law & Justice

Created on Thursday, 03 May 2012 00:00

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Legal aid bill is law - the fight back starts now

Now the legal aid bill is law, how do we preserve access to justice?

Jon robins

There were parts of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act (Laspo) that were "not just bad but actually wicked", Lord Bach told his fellow peers last Tuesday. I met Bach who led the opposition savaging of the Bill straight after it finished its passage through parliament.

"We got it through," crowed Jonathan Djanogoly as we pass on the way to the Lords' canteen. It has to be said the legal aid minister was exhibiting the kind of body language that landed him in such hot water in the Commons last month. It has been close to 18 months since the government published its legal aid green paper; and the government has managed to get a hugely controversial bill, savaged by the Lords, on to the statute books pretty much intact.

Bach says the legislation puts "Britain back at least 25 years". Few would disagree that the former Labour justice secretary has lived up to his rather excellent Twitter handle (@Fightbach); but, frankly, the fight has only just started. Bach's singular focus on defending social welfare law should be commended. The legal aid bill was a sprawling legislative monster that threw together many competing interests. The danger was that the arguments around preserving "poverty law" would be drowned out by vested interests with deeper pockets and to a certain extent it has.

But the ideas behind social welfare law received a fair airing and much sympathy in the Lords, largely thanks to Bach. As the former criminal defence barrister put it, his fellow peers hated the bill.

The great sadness is that it made such little difference. Yes, important amendments were made but they were at the edges – and that is not to diminish the significance of the concessions around, for example, domestic violence. But the bottom line is that the proposals aim to remove £350m of £2.2bn legal aid scheme - and they do that (in large part) by scrapping social welfare law.

So the legal aid bill got royal assent this week. One battle ends and another more pressing one begins: how to preserve the idea of access to justice in a pretty devastated post-Laspo landscape. "Laspo becoming law is not just a cut, that would be manageable,' writes Julie Bishop on legalvoice.org.uk. "It is the removal of free advice across the spectrum of poverty law."

LegalVoice is a new online magazine aimed at all professionals committed to access to justice that has the support of most, if not all, the representative groups. And, yes, we are acutely aware of the irony of launching a legal aid magazine at a time when the government has introduced the biggest cuts to the scheme since it was set up as a vital part of the welfare state.

Legal aid is a safety net to which all citizens are entitled, argues Bishop. It is vital that the legal not-for-profit sector survives. It is not clear how. We hope the site will serve as a forum for an exchange of ideas, as well keeping legal aid practitioners up-to-date with all the changes coming their way. We are a not-for-profit organisation - our start-up costs have been met by City firms Allen & Overy, Clifford Chance and Freshfields.

I wrote recently in my Guardian blog about how law centres must adapt or die and, in particular, how Rochdale and Islington are responding by taking on private clients. It's not the only way. For example, Hackney Community Law Centre has been serving a deprived but vibrant community in East London for almost 40 years. (By the way, Hackney reports that it is took on 52% more cases over the last 12 months than it did in its previous year for housing, welfare benefits and debt.)

The centre has decided to "fight back" by raising its profile in the local Hackney community – "'popularising the concept of the law centre", as centre manager Sean Canning puts it. It makes a lot of sense. It plans to launch Community Law Shops, taking law to the community and making sure it has a visible presence in libraries and local colleges. We need to popularise the concept of "access to justice". The fight back starts now.

Jon Robins runs thejusticegap.com and edits legalvoice.org.uk

Source: The Guardian UK

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