Features
The Real Impact of Legal Aid Cuts
March 14, 2012 Nicola  |
As the legal aid sentencing bill goes through parliament, speakers at the University of Kent discuss the impact of this.
The legal aid sentencing bill is currently going through parliament. If it is voted through, access to free legal advice will be more more bureaucratic and difficult to come by. What will the new restrictions mean for the people who need legal help?
Ashish Poddar, legal adviser for StreetLaw, a Cardiff-based legal advice service, told The Fresh Outlook: “Legal aid is fundamental to individuals being able to enforce their rights and them having a right in law is not a right unless you have the means to enforce that right.
“We see it every week through our drop-in surgeries that people are coming in desperate for assistance because they are being denied legal aid,” he added.
It is estimated that around 75% of people requiring legal assistance, including those experiencing mental health issues and people from ethnic minorities, will not be eligible for legal aid.
On the weekend, Kent Critical Law Society held a conference discussing this issue. Pragna Patel, the founder of Southall Black Sisters, was a speaker at the conference. Southall Black Sisters is a not-for-profit organisation which fights for the rights of black and ethnic minority women in the UK. They have been campaigning against the changes to the bill.
Ms Patel described this “radical, wide ranging programme of reform” as “one of the most sweeping cuts to legal aid”.
“Legal Aid is a vital tool for protection – it’s a necessity, not a luxury,” Ms Patel told patrons at the conference.
Ms Patel explained that the government is attempting to justify the cuts to legal aid on the grounds that the service should target those who are most needy.
She argues that the new changes would affect vulnerable women such as those who have endured domestic violence, homelessness and abuse. Although legal aid is supposed to be in place in order to support these women, the eligibility criteria under the new proposals would be too high.
One example given is that in order to be eligible for legal aid in the case of domestic violence, you have to prove that you have suffered domestic violence within the past 12 months and have a court order for this. Ms Patel points out that this condition does not consider that domestic violence comes in many forms.
Of course, legal aid cuts do not just affect cases of domestic violence. Around 40% Southall Black Sisters’ cases have an “international dimension”; they involve women who have come to the UK via means such as kidnapping or a forced marriage, who speak little or no English. The lack of legal aid lawyers means that many affected women have had to represent themselves in court.
“I think that is unrealistic to expect those people, including minors, to represent themselves,” Ms Patel told the conference, before adding her concerns that the lack of legal help from the state was contributing to the “growth of demand for separate, religious tribunals”.
The acting head of Kent Law School, Professor Rosemary Hunter, told patrons that another argument for further cutting legal aid was that it would stop “fat-cat” lawyers from obtaining enormous profits from the system. This claim, she said, was false.
“The reality is that [many] legal aid lawyers are having to give up doing legal aid work because they earn tiny amounts of money… it’s been cut and cut and cut and isn’t economical,” she explained.
The provision of legal aid came in to existence as part of the welfare state which emerged in Britain after World War II. In 1990, under the “courts and legal services act section 58”, the funding of legal costs was privatised, and the new bill, if passed, will cut the service even further.
Per Laleng, a law lecturer at the University of Kent explained that the privatisation of legal aid meant that victims of commercial injuries now became commodities that you can buy and sell.
In 1995, it was ruled that those who lost the case had to pay the opponents’ costs. The government argued that this was unfair. They benefitted indirectly from a system which required them to pay less because when government institutions such as the NHS and MoD were sued, there was less for them to pay.
If the bill passes, many may only be eligible for legal aid in the case of mediation, something which is not suitable for every case. As well as this, even if a victim can obtain legal aid, the fact that the accused is not eligible can also present a problem. If, for example, the accused wished to represent themselves in a case of domestic violence, the fact that they are able to cross-examine the victim could lead to more distress.
The lack of legal aid could also lead to many people taking out a large loan in order to pay their legal fees. In this instance, the losing side could end up with a mountain of debt, but they would have no choice.
“Most lawyers are not going to work for free,” Mr Laleng noted.
Information about legal aid can be found at www.direct.gov.uk.
By Louisa Guise
[Image courtesy of garethjmsaunders]
