Legal aid cuts backfire

The impact of cuts to legal aid was laid bare this week when a Ministry of Justice report concluded they have had the opposite effect to that intended.

What is legal aid?

Legal aid was introduced in 1949 by the Labour government, along with the NHS and welfare reforms. However, “it never gained the level of public affection that the health service achieved, partly because few people anticipated having to go to court”, says The Guardian.

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Around one fifth of the MoJ’s entire budget, or £1.6bn a year, is currently spent on legal aid.

Why was it cut?

The last Labour government began making cuts before 2010. In 2012, the Coalition government cut public spending on legal aid by £450m a year through the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act (Laspo).

The current Justice Secretary, James Liddington, has said the cost-cutting reforms, “were founded on delivering better value for money for taxpayers by reducing the cost of the scheme and discouraging unnecessary and adversarial litigation, while ensuring that legal aid continues to be available for the highest priority cases, for example where life or liberty is at stake, where someone faces the loss of their home, in domestic violence cases, or where their children may be taken into care”.

What has the effect been?

The figures released this week reveal a 99.5% collapse in the number of people receiving state help in benefits cases.

Just 440 claimants were given assistance in the last financial year – down from 83,000 in 2012-13, before almost £1bn was swiped from the legal aid budget. Many of those were denied help to pursue cases where they were refused disability living allowance or employment support and allowance.

Critics of Laspo - who have included senior judges, human rights bodies and opposition parties - say the family courts in particular have been swamped by unrepresented litigants and savings in one area have resulted in increased costs elsewhere.

Buzzfeed says this was always likely to happen, “since legal aid-funded lawyers frequently pointed divorcing couples towards mediation [and] without the initial free legal advice to recommend a more amicable settlement, people are instead turning to court with no legal help at all”.

On Wednesday, the Prime Minister was asked by MPs why the families of 11 men who died during the Shoreham Air Show have been told they will not receive any legal aid.

Will anything be done?

The figures, released on the DoJ website on Monday evening at a time when they would receive little coverage from the media, “are certain to increase pressure on Theresa May to rethink the controversial cuts, introduced by David Cameron”, says The Independent.

A report by the former justice minister Lord Bach, backed by Labour, last month recommended spending an additional £400m to restore access to a more generous system of legal aid, “to the delight of wealthy QCs”, says The Sun.