Legal aid, sentencing and punishment of offenders bill

Here’s a round-up of press in response to yesterday’s session.

Ken Clarke hit by Legal Aid protest - Telegraph - As he outlined the Government’s plans to reform the criminal justice system, Mr Clarke said Legal Aid would no longer be routinely available in cases including most private family law, clinical negligence, non-discrimination employment, and immigration.

The “Let Them Eat Cake!” party on College Green saw members of the public and MPs gather to cut up the cake to symbolise the “cutting of access to justice for large swathes of the British population”.

Ken Clarke announces £20m fund after criticism of legal aid cuts - Guardian - A £20m fund is to be created to help law centres and advice services threatened by the government’s plan to cut legal aid, the justice secretary has announced.

Asked about criticism of his policy this week from Lady Hale, the supreme court justice, Clarke accused her of having “misunderstood the effect of our proposals”, and suggested he would meet her.

Legal aid ‘made my son’s life bearable’ - BBC News - Campaigners against proposed changes to the legal aid system say it will result in a “far more unfair society” and they took their campaign to Parliament on Wednesday.

She says he would have a much lower quality of life if legal aid had not been available.

News focus: our analysis of the legal aid and sentencing bill - The Law Gazette - A close reading of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill has left many lawyers, campaign groups and politicians who support the legal aid system more worried than ever about future provision.

Even though the government decided to rush to a second reading of the bill just eight days after the first, this has been long enough to identify clauses and schedules that pose the greatest threat to the provision of justice.

FactCheck: the case for our luxury legal aid budget - Channel 4 - It is a little known fact, according to deputy head of law at Cardiff University, that spending on both civil and criminal legal aid in England and Wales has actually dropped in real terms since 2003-04.

“Legal aid spending is no longer criticised on the basis that it is out of control,” Professor Richard Moorhead told the Justice Committee in January. “The justification for legal aid costs has now shifted to comparing our system with others.”

Broken link removed and Second reading briefing for MPs, 29 June 2011 attached to post below.

Have your say

The Bill has now been sent to a Public Bill Committee for scrutiny and there is a call for written evidence.

Do you have relevant expertise and experience or a special interest in the Government’s Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill? If so, you can submit your views in writing to the House of Commons Public Bill Committee which is going to consider this Bill.

Guidance for submitting written evidence

* How to submit written evidence to the Public Bill Committee

Deadline for submissions

The Committee is able to receive written evidence from Wednesday 7 June, when the Bill passes the Second Reading Stage; and will stop receiving written evidence at the end of the Committee stage on Thursday 13 October. The sooner you send in your submission, the more time the Committee will have to take it into consideration. The Public Bill Committee is expected to meet for the first time on Tuesday 12 July.

Second reading of Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill, have your say

Went along to the Legal Action Group conference yesterday, where Jonathon Djanogly, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Ministry of Justice, was speaking, along with Sadiq Khan, Labour’s shadow.

Mr Djanogly stunned the audience with his level of insight into the legal aid scheme and the services that are funded - unfortunately, not entirely in a good way. He claimed that 90% of social security appeal tribunals are concerned with “procedural issues” and not with “legal advice”. He also persisted in claiming that benefits advice is mainly “general” advice and not “legal advice”, despite Richard Miller of the Law Society stating that there is “more pure law in welfare benefits than anything else I’ve ever done”.

Sadiq Khan gave a stirring speech about Labour’s opposition to cuts to social welfare law (SWL), as well as giving details of the Parliamentary process to follow - although Steve Johnson of Advice UK did remind delegates that Labour hadn’t been necessarily so supportive whilst in office and, indeed, had made pledges themselves to rein in the “legal aid gravy train” for example.

The Bill is to be debated 18 times in total in Committee, with 3 sessions scheduled to take place before Parliament goes into recess in the 3rd week of July. There will be expert witnesses called to give evidence at 2 of these sessions. MP’s return in September and the Committee sessions will resume through to October.

It then passes onto the Lords - Khan was clear that it is extremely unlikely that there will be any kind of substantive changes to the Bill in the Commons, but he did say that amendments that are laid there but not debated, should be picked up by the Lords, and he thinks that there may be opportunities for significant concessions to be gained there. He said that in campaigning against the Bill, it is important to make both the moral, but also the economic arguments as to why the changes are wrong, as well as coming up with alternative solutions rather than simple outright opposition.

Linda Lee of the Law Society, in her speech, said that it was interesting in the Second Reading of the BIll to notice the way that the Coalitiion Whips and PPS’s were surrounding any backbench Coalition MP who spoke up against the Bill to essentially intimidate them into backing the Bill on the vote - the phrase she used was like watching “a virus being attacked by anti-biotics” I think.

Finally, for now, we were told that this month’s copy of Legal Action journal will contain a breakdown of the impacts of the cuts as they stand in each Parliamentary constituency, to try and help get some more local campaigning activity underway.- for example, we hears that £1million worth of SWL advice is going to be lost in Ealing, whilst £500,000 will be lost in Bolton.

Thanks to Patrick from ilegal for highlighting the fact that the response from the Legal Services Commission has finally been published.

Response to Green Paper ‘Proposals for the Reform of Legal Aid in England and Wales’ from Legal Services Commission Board

Of particular note are two aspects.

First, they make suggestions for alternative options for savings to be made around expert fees, QC’s remuneration and a tandem model of funding in public law, as well as other savings in high cost crime cases.

Second, in the annex of the response, they note that the viability of Not for Profit (NfP) bodies “may be particularly threatened by the changes proposed, that it would be “a retrograde step to move NfPs away from being held to a standard contract”, and finish by stating that “Government should look at the funding of NfP organisations collectively by the public sector to ensure these valuable advice agencies are maintained at an appropriate level”.

The provisional programme of witnesses for the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill Committee has been agreed by its Programming Sub-Committee. The Committee will hear oral evidence on Tuesday 12 July and Thursday 14 July and then consider the Bill every Tuesday and Thursday, excluding the recess, from that point concluding on Thursday 13 October.

The meetings are open to the public.

Tuesday 12 July 10.30am and 4.00pm in the Boothroyd Room Portcullis House

c10.30am until no later than 11.30am
Criminal Justice Alliance; Prison Reform Trust; and Howard League for Penal Reform

c11.30am until no later than 12.00pm
NAPO; and Prison Officers’ Association

c12.00pm until no later than 12.30pm
Commissioner for Victims’ and Witnesses; Victim Support

c12.30pm until no later than 1.00pm
Magistrates’ Association; and Council of HM Circuit Judges (TBC)

c4.00pm until no later than 5.00pm
The Law Society; The Bar Council; Family Mediation Council (TBC); and Leigh Day & Co Solicitors

c5.00pm until no later than 5.20pm
Director of Public Prosecutions

c5.20pm until no later than 5.40pm
Legal Services Commission

Thursday 14 July 09.00am and 1.00pm in the Boothroyd Room Portcullis House

c9.00am until no later than 9.40am
Rights of Women; and National Federation of Women’s Institutes

c9.40am until no later than 10.25am
G4S; Serco; and Sodexo (TBC)

c1.00pm until no later than 2.15pm
Shelter; Citizens Advice Bureau; Law Centres Federation; Advice Services Alliance; and R3

c2.15pm until no later than 3.00pm
Liberty; JUSTICE; and Legal Action Group

c3.00pm until no later than 3.45pm
NSPCC; Local Government Association (TBC); and Standing Committee for Youth Justice; Children’s Commissioner

c3.45pm until no later than 4.30pm
Association of British Insurers; Association of Personal Injury Lawyers; and Action Against Medical Accidents

Line by line scrutiny of the Bill (all in Committee Room 12, Palace of Westminster):

Tuesday 19 July at 10.30 am and 4.00 pm

Tuesday 6 September at 10.30 am and 4.00 pm

Thursday 8 September at 9.00 am and 1.00 pm

Tuesday 13 September at 10.30 am and 4.00 pm

Thursday 15 September at 9.00 am and 1.00 pm

Tuesday 11 October at 10.30 am and 4.00 pm

Thursday 13 October at 9.00 am and 1.00 pm

If the proposed programme is accepted by the Committee on Tuesday morning, the Committee must complete consideration of the Bill no later than 5.00 pm on Thursday 13 October.

Click here to listen to Steve Hynes, Director of Legal Action Group, speaking at this weeks London Advice Conference, following his workshop of the legal aid bill.

Hi folks,

Sorry for delays in reporting progress, fractured some ribs last week in a bicycle shunt, but slowly getting back to fighting fit.

Anyway, the Bill Committee has started their evidence sessions, last week’s opener saw some quite hostile questioning of witnesses, I felt, as well as severely abbreviated amounts of time for witnesses to give evidence.

1st Sitting 12 July (including evidence from Criminal Justice Alliance, Prison Reform Trust, Howard League for Penal Reform, NAPO, Prison Officers’ Association, Commissioner for Victims and Witnesses, Victim Support, Magistrates’ Association, and Council of Her Majesty’s Circuit Judges)
2nd Sitting 12 July (including evidence from Law Society, Bar Council, Family Mediation Council, Leigh Day & Co Solicitors, Director of Public Prosecutions, and Legal Services Commission)
3rd Sitting 14 July (including evidence from Rights of Women, National Federation of Women’s Institutes, G4S, Serco, and Sodexo)
4th Sitting 14 July (including evidence from Shelter, Citizens Advice, the Law Centres Federation, the Advice Services Alliance, R3, Liberty, Justice, the Legal Action Group, the NSPCC, the Children’s Commissioner for England, the Local Government Association, the Standing Committee for Youth Justice, the Association of British Insurers, the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers, and Action Against Medical Accidents)
5th Sitting 19 July
6th Sitting 19 July

Interesting article in the Guardian from Richard Moorhead, exploring some of the reasons why he feels that the Government will get away with passing the Legal Aid bill largely as is.

He makes the point that, inherently, legal aid is not viewed by the “general public” as being anywhere near as important as education or health, and that it is difficult to secure distance from perceptions of “fat cat lawyers” (even though the latter will be largely untouched by these reforms anyway).

He also makes an interesting observation that “Indeed, as England and Wales loses its place as one of the world’s leading legal aid systems, the scandal is not whether we spend more than other countries but that so many countries spend so little.”

He finishes by exploring issues around the likely Article 6 challenges that could arise following the Bill being passed, which again I think are worth reading.

Lawyers are their own worst advocates

One in three of Britain’s law centres, where solicitors provide legal advice to poorer communities, face closure because of the squeeze on public spending.

They are being hit hard because of cuts both to the legal aid budget and to town hall grants, the Law Centres Federation warned last night. It forecast that at least 18 of the 56 offices could be forced to shut.

One in three law centres will fall victim to public spending cuts - The Independent

Please find attached the report of a roundtable event held at Westminster recently by JustRights to explore the impact of the legal aid bill on children and young people. The report is also available online here.

The event surfaced widespread concerns from leading children’s and young people’s organisations and MPs, as well as from organisations involved in providing legal advice to children and young people. There was a consensus that amendments are required to the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill to better protect vulnerable children and young people’s access to justice.

JustRights will be intensifying their campaign on this issue over the coming weeks. As well as lobbying parliamentarians, they will continue to work with organisations in the children’s, youth and legal sectors to build support for the campaign and will be publishing further evidence backing up their contention that investment in legal advice for children and young people represents good value for money.

If you would like to find out more about the impact of the legal aid bill on children and young people, or how you could assist the JustRights campaign, do not hesitate to contact James Kenrick, Co-Chair of JustRights, .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address), tel: 020 8772 9900

Advice Services Alliance hosted a round table meeting last week, with representatives from Justice for All, Sound off for Justice, and various other interested parties, including members of Disabilty Benefits Consortium. The meeting was to find common ground for lobbying and campaign work going forwards, as well as trying to bring about greater coordination between work on the Legal Aid Bill and the Welfare Reform Bill, given the obvious overlaps.

I can’t provide much more detail at this stage, as this was very much an introductory meeting, but there were some good solid positive proposals for activity going forward and I will endeavour to keep you updated as things move on. The general feeling seems to be to push for concessions in the Lords, as it’s extremely unlikely that anything significant will take place in the Committee stages of the Commons. Also activity is planned for the Party conferences in September and October.

Two pieces of news regards the Legal Aid Bil (or LASPO as people are calling it).

One, there will be a meeting of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Legal Aid on Wednesday 7th September 4-5.30pm in Committee Room 15 in the Palace of Westminster.

There will be an update on the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill and a speaker on the mandatory telephone gateway proposal, which in itself will dramatically affect how the most vulnerable will be able to access services in future.

Two, attached is a Parliamentary briefing from Child Poverty Action Group, concerned with welfare benefits, disabled children and legal aid.

Good article exploring the history, role and value of the Law Centre movement in this country on Guardian website today, and the threats to their viability under LASPO.

The government plans to sever the link between legal aid and the kind of legal services needed by the poor and vulnerable by scrapping advice for social welfare law: advice on welfare benefits, employment, debt, most housing and immigration. Ministers might consider the origins of the law centre movement, which began more than 40 years ago to provide just such advice, and why it might have a place in “austerity Britain”, before they consign it to the dustbin of history.

“Nothing less than the introduction of a new public service to operate alongside, and supplement, the private profession would suffice to deal adequately with the problem of providing proper legal services to a section of the public who went short of them,” wrote Michael Zander QC, emeritus professor of law at the LSE, about law centres in 1978.

Law centres are more necessary than ever in ‘austerity Britain’

The Guardian reports that Liberal Democrat MPs are coming under intensifying pressure to defy the coalition government over the bill cutting entitlement to legal aid and reforming compensation payments for victims. The chairman of the Liberal Democrats Lawyers’ Association (LDLA), Alistair Webster QC, has called the changes a “constitutional outrage” and a “litmus test of whether there’s any point being in the coalition”.

Labour opponents have tabled a series of amendments to the legal aid, sentencing and punishment of offenders (nicknamed Laspo) bill aimed at splitting Lib Dem MPs off from their Conservative coalition partners. MPs on the committee stage of the bill resume their examination of its complex clauses on Tuesday 6 September, with several Lib Dem MPs on the committee.

Liberal Democrats urged to defy plans to cut legal aid

Attached is the Shelter briefing for the Committee, concerned mainly with housing issues of course, but also making some key points about housing benefit and the removal from scope of all welfare beneifts cases.

MOJ officials have said that that the ‘Mixed Case’ rule allows for an out of scope matter to be brought back into scope if it is otherwise impractical to run the case. However, this rule excludes precisely the kind of work which is most useful in resolving rent arrears cases: letters and calls to the housing benefit department to sort out an incorrectly paid claim or a claim which has not been paid at all. Nor does it cover backdating or appeals. The consequences of advisers not being able to carry out this work are that the courts will:

This will cause unnecessary distress for tenants, is inefficient as far as the courts are concerned and will result in greater costs to the taxpayer in the long run.

The Law Gazette report that Labour MPs have tabled an amendment to LASPO to return into the scope of legal aid the large areas of law that the government has sought to exclude, including welfare benefits, clinical negligence, disability, education and housing law.

They are also seeking to ensure that all cases brought on behalf of children are eligible for legal aid, suggesting that this move would only cost £10m.

Labour opponents accuse the government of using the ‘exceptional cases’ provision in the bill, which would allow for funding of cases otherwise excluded from legal aid, to attempt to silence opposition to its proposals to reduce the scope of publicly funded cases.

In reality, Labour sources said very few cases will be covered by the provision and, in any event, without representation people will be unable to demonstrate that they fall within the exceptional funding provisions.

Labour tables amendments to legal aid and costs reforms

Justice for All, in a coordinated piece of work with the Disability Benefits Consortium, has produced a briefing on disabled people and the proposed changes to legal aid removing welfare benefits from scope. The short briefing sets out how changes to legal aid will deny vital legal advice to 78,000 disabled people each year. Removing welfare benefits advice from the scope of legal aid at the same time as the welfare system undergoes radical reforms will leave people with nowhere to turn for help.

Please feel free to copy and pass on to any MP’s you may be in contact with. Thanks.

Legal aid changes hit disabled people hardest (pdf briefing)

Paul Treloar1 - 31 August 2011 02:16 PM

One, there will be a meeting of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Legal Aid on Wednesday 7th September 4-5.30pm in Committee Room 15 in the Palace of Westminster.

This meeting will now take place in Committee Room 6 this afternoon.

The Legal Action Group has worked out the consequences of the legal aid cuts by region in England and Wales. The spending cuts the Legal Action Group shows are worth £44m. The remaining £6m saving comes from cutting specific legal aid projects.

The data shown is not all the legal aid that regions will receive, more funding could come directly from the local council. Also different regions will provision legal aid differently, so some may use the citizens advice bureaux as a way to deliver aid, others will use private companies.

Liverpool - one of the poorest cities in country - is going to have legal aid funding cut by almost £2m. Of spending on aid from this source, this is the worse cut in the country.

For more information, see Legal aid cuts: who will be hit hardest?

Notes from yesterday’s APPG on Legal Aid meeting.

Yvonne Fovargue started the meeting by highlighting that the previous day’s Committee debate had been very protracted, running from 4pm until almost midnight. Despite the duration, there was only one government-sponsored amendment accepted, in relation to housing, with unlawful eviction and counter claims in possession claims being bought back into scope. This means that the whole of clause 8, schedule 1 has now been debated i.e. all of the scope changes.

Gail Emerson of Justice for All gave a quick update on the campaign, including that her and Will Horwitz have taken on seconded roles as campagn coordinators for 6 months, with Baring Foundation paying for this function. She noted that some specific lobbying is taking place in relation to housing and welfare benefits, as well as flagging up the activity that will be taking place at the party conferences. There are plans to try and get local activities underway, and it was suggested that more targetted work of local councillors, using the LAG data to demonstrate local impacts, is undertaken as a priority.

Andy Slaughter told the meeting that there were no meaningful speeches or interventions from Government MP’s on the Committee, as they have all been 3-line whipped due to the length of the debates to date. He expressed a view that the Bill is essentially being rail-roaded through the Commons, that the Government has failed to come up with any credible arguments for the proposals, as well as lacking any credible counter-arguments to the objections raised, and that there has been a complete lack of scrutiny of the impacts of the Bill.

Lord Bach mentioned that he has heard that the Second Reading of the Bill in the Lords may not now happen until the second week of December, which would mean that the Lords Committee stage wouldn’t take place until the New Year, which obviously has implications both for if/when the Bill becomes law, as well as implementation. He said that the time for pressure in the Lords is now, in preparation for the Bill passing into the Lords, particularly directed at cross-benchers who have more freedom, but also needing to target Lib-Dem peers as well. Lord Bach said that, in his opinion, he cannot believe that the Lords will allow the scrapping of legal aid for Upper Tribunals to go through, but that there is much work still to do around social welfare law and scope changes. Lord McNally will lead the Bill through the Lords for the Government.

Matthew Smerdon, of the Baring Foundation, highlghted some of their relevant current work, including funding for examining the impacts of legal aid cuts on non-advice organisations; Frontier Economics looking at how Government departments generate demand for advice, with a report expected in October; the Just Rights campaign about young people and legal aid; and the LAG survey on the views of the public about the importance of legal aid.

Lord Bach said it is important in the Lords to get across to peers that social welfare law is not just a matter for the “lawyer-peers” but a matter for society and therefore, of interest to peers with a non-legal background as well.

Richard Miller of the Law Society highlighted some imminent LSRC research that shows that telephone advice actually takes callers longer than face-to-face, and isn’t as cost effective as has been claimed.

A community care lawyer Nicola Mackintosh then gave an overview of the proposals around the telephone gateway. Community care advice is one of the proposed pilot areas of law for the gateway, as well as debt, discrimination and SEN, before a wider roll-uot across all areas of SWL. It appears that all potential clients would be required to use the telephone gateway in the first instance, which is supposed to diagnose whether there is a legal problem, whether it is within scope and whether that person qualifies within the means test. The operator would then take the decision about whether to refer onto face-to-face or specialist telephone advice.

Of particular concern were that this approach intrinisically limits access from the outset, particularly for clients with mental health problems, learning difficulties, communication problems to do with speech, hearing or language and so on. Also worried about unqualified call handlers being expected to make assessments without needing any legal qualifications or experience. It was also highlighted that the predicted savings from this approach are between £1-2 million, which seems a small amount for such a potentially problematic change, even before considering Richard’s point on actual spending.

Thanks Paul, really good to be kept updated on this

Children and young people in the UK will be hit hard by the government’s plans to cut the legal aid budget by £350million, according to findings from a new report.

Figures from the ‘Not Seen and Not Heard’ report reveal the government’s planned legal aid cuts will remove direct free legal aid advice and support services for 6,000 under 18 year olds and 69,000 young people aged between 18-24, who need advice on employment, education, homelessness, welfare and debt issues. In addition, tens of thousands of children will be affected when their parents lose access to legal aid.

The report is launched by Sound Off For Justice and JustRights, the campaign for access to advice for young people. Analysis reveals over one-third (36%) of the UK population classified as homeless in March 2011 were aged between 16-24. This is coupled with the latest unemployment figures from the Department of Work & Pensions showing over one-fifth (21%) of 16-24 year olds are currently out of work.

Here’s a link to the Sound Off for Justice story, I can’t locate an actual copy of the report at the moment.

LAG blog on Justice for All fringe meeting at Lib Dem conference yesterday -

Liberal Democrat ‘Disquiet’ over Legal Aid Cuts

As the LASPO Bill pauses in its trundle through Committee stages of the Commons (next session due on 11.10.11), much activity has been taking place at the party conferences on lobbying around LASPO.

A copy of the JustRights/Sound Off For Justice report mentioned above is now available Not Seen And Not Heard Report: how children and young people will lose out from cuts to civil legal aid (pdf file). We understand that Julie Bishop, LCF CEO, is speaking at a fringe event today at the Conservative Party conference.

Meanwhile, Justice for All held a fringe meeting at the Labour Party conference, with the Law Society Labour pledge continued opposition to legal aid cuts and also pushed a motion at the Lib Dem conference condemning legal aid cuts Lib Dem’s condemn welfare benefit legal aid cuts

I have also attached a copy of the Law Centre’s Federation briefing for party conferences.

To coincide with the run up to Commons report stage of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill, Justice for All has launched an online tool which automatically generates and dispatches an email to your MP once you enter your postcode -

http://act.justice-for-all.org.uk/lobby/12

Disability Law Service has applied for permission to start judicial review proceedings in relation to the removal of civil legal aid funding for welfare benefits cases.

Their argument is that the Secretary of State’s decision to cut civil legal aid funding for welfare benefits is irrational, and that the consultation carried out by the Secretary of State was unlawful. Disability Law Service is also challenging the removal of Wills.

They contend that the consultation carried out by the Secretary of State did not fully consider the effect the proposed cuts would have on disabled people; the Secretary of State irrationally asserts that the negative impact of a loss of benefits for the disabled will be only financial, with no other subsequent social or personal impact. They say that this clearly calls into question the validity of the consultation’s Equality Impact Assessments; to have due regard to the needs of those with disabilities as defined by the Equality Act 2010.

DLS Issues Legal Challenge Against the Government over the Legal Aid Bill

Meanwhile, in a story on this challenge, the Law Gazette reports that the Ministry of Justice also faces challenges: to the removal of legal aid for clinical negligence, brought by charity Action Against Medical Accidents; to plans for a mandatory telephone gateway to the civil legal aid scheme, brought by the Public Law Project; and to the removal of committal fees, brought by the Law Society.

MoJ faces further challenge over legal aid

Justice for All say that over 1,000 people have already written to their MP but time is running out before the crucial debate in Parliament next week.

So if you haven’t already, please write to your MP and ask friends and colleagues to do the same. Next week is the last chance MPs have to debate the Bill before it moves to the House of Lords, so it’s vital we make our voices heard now.

The Legal Aid Bill has now finished in Committee Stage, which means there is little time left for MPs to debate it. Next Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday is set aside for Report Stage, which is their last chance to change the Bill before it moves into the House of Lords.

Much of the time will be spent on sentencing proposals. In the Lords, the Bill will be carefully looked at, as many peers are experts in this area, so a lobbying strategy is already underway and you should hear more about this next week. There also continues to be coordination of lobbying between Justice for All and Disability Benefits Consortium, to aim to maximise spread, impact and reach of campaign activity.

Catherine Baksi of the Law Gazette just tweeted to say that Commons report stage & 3rd reading of #LASPO delayed to 31st Oct, 1st and 2nd Nov, not sure of her source as Parliament website still has next week’s date scheduled.

For those of you who don’t know about Twitter, clink this link and you should get a glimpse….Tweet

Interesting blog from London School of Economics that suggests that the legal aid reforms may leave welfare, employment and health disputes unresolved and actually increase the demand for court and tribunal hearings.

There is a risk that some of the reforms will act together to increase demand for tribunal hearings, particularly among those who would currently be eligible for legal aid, for a variety of related reasons. In our study of data from the Civil and Social Justice Survey, cases from people who are poor enough to qualify for legal aid but instead received help from other services (e.g. local authority advice services, Jobcentre Plus, Trades Unions) were more likely to reach court or tribunal than wealthier people using the same types of service. But they were also more likely to go to court or tribunal than similarly poor people who consulted independent expert legal services (Citizens Advice Bureaux, law centres and law firms) i.e. service that are eligible for a legal aid contract.

What does this mean? The implication is that if legal aid is cut, poorer people who currently consult expert services will need to turn to alternate services whose track record in avoiding court or tribunal is worse than that of the independent professional legal services. This may even be replicated among wealthier clients who privately pay for independent legal services, where agencies and practices rely on legal aid funding to survive.

Legal aid reforms may leave welfare, employment and health disputes unresolved and actually increase the demand for court and tribunal hearings

Also in the news today is an alliance of organisations representing the rights and needs of women, children, families and victims of domestic abuse and/or are engaged in the administration of family justice. They have published a Manifesto for Family Justice, ahead of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders (LASPO) Bill moving into Report Stage in the House of Commons.

The alliance, which comprises the Association of Lawyers for Children, the Bar Council, CAADA, the Children’s Commissioner, the Family Law Bar Association, Gingerbread, Liberty, the National Federation of Women’s Institutes, Resolution and Women’s Aid, has called upon the Government to:

•  Protect vulnerable women and children
•  Listen to the experienced practitioners who work in family justice and who understand that mediation, whilst beneficial in many cases, will not resolve many others, and
•  Consider with care whether the decision to remove legal aid from private family law cases will save the Government money or, in fact, cost more and lead to poor outcomes.

A Manifesto for Family Justice