Government pushes ahead with its plans to restrict Legal Aid

Last week the Government finally announced its definitive plans regarding changes to Legal Aid, the public funding available to support access to legal advice and representation on a wide range of legal issues.

What has happened since Novemeber

On the 21^st of June the Ministry for Justice published the ‘Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill’ and on the same day published its response to the Legal Aid consultation that ran between November and February. Controversially, the Government has confirmed that it is fast-tracking the bill through parliament, thus reducing the opportunity to debate and scrutinise its contents.

In the run up to the publication of the bill most of the media’s attention became fixated on the proposals to increase prison sentence discounts for early guilty pleas. Mr. Clarke’s ill thought comments on perpetrators of rape took centre stage and were followed by the Prime Minister’s commitment to change course on the proposed sentencing discounts. The changes to legal aid became buried in this entire saga and never got the sort of exposure that such a drastic change deserved.

The consultation and reponses

The consultation on Legal Aid received 5,000 responses, most of them opposing the changes. The submissions provided ample evidence of the disastrous consequences of withdrawing Legal Aid from large swathes of employment, family, welfare and immigration advice. They argued that the effects of restricting Legal Aid could end up costing the state more than it would save in the long run and some submissions even proposed alternative plans to make the estimated savings of £350 million per year without the need to restrict access to Legal Aid.

But the Government has decided to press along with the changes with only minor amendments to the proposals. That means that in the future there will be no Legal Aid support for immigration with the exception of asylum, asylum support were claims include housing, and cases involving detention. There won't be Legal Aid available for most welfare, housing, employment and family cases either.

The MRN line on the Legal Aid cuts

MRN has argued that these changes will have a serious impact on large numbers of migrants and on the capacity of migrant organisations to provide effective support to many of their clients. For the former it will make it more difficult for those who cannot afford to pay for advice to navigate a complex and fast-changing immigration system. Paradoxically, as ILPA has noted, even though the Government has committed to retain Legal Aid for all cases where there is a risk of loss of liberty, a consequence of not having good advice on immigration will be that in some cases people end up in immigration detention.

The changes will also compromise the ability of migrant community organisations to support their clients as they see an increase in the numbers of people seeking their support at the same time that their ability to refer complex cases to specialists is greatly reduced.

In the end the Government’s obsession to create a leaner state and to wean people in need off from public funds has prevailed over the principle that everybody should have meaningful access to the justice system. And yet in the grand scheme of things the savings from Legal Aid will be minuscule.

Next week we will see a flurry of activity from interested parties, including the Sound off for Justice and Justice for All campaigns, to try to get the bill properly debated. However, the fast-tracking of the bill does not bode well in terms of hopes for a proper debate and scrutiny. We will continue to support the campaigns to retain Legal Advice but migrant community organisations can expect the reduction in the availability of affordable specialised legal advice to become accentuated and should begin to think about their response to this new landscape.