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The end is nigh for the unpopular legal aid body, so why aren’t we celebrating?
Interesting article looking at the imminent demise of the Legal Services Commission, pondering whether this is something to be concerned about.
Better be careful what you wish for. For much of the Legal Services Commission’s 12-year life, legal aid lawyers have fired vitriol – some fair, much not – at the commission and its policy dithering, bureaucratic bungling and stinginess with the taxpayers’ money.
But now the end is in sight for the body that allocates legal aid and is everyone’s favourite bogeyman. The LSC is going to be subsumed into its parent department, the Ministry of Justice, in an effort to reduce government spending on legal aid. So is everyone celebrating its demise? No. Is it the worst possible result? Yes, quite possibly.
The justice minister, Jonathan Djanogly, also addressed the LAPG conference last week. He pointed out that a third of the MoJ savings were coming from the department:
“One aspect of the department’s savings is the abolition of the LSC. Once completed we anticipate that this alone will deliver around £8m savings per year to the department.”
Fair enough, it seems right for the commission to share the pain – but not at the expense of proper systems to ensure there is no political interference.
This is far from clear. Clause 11(5) says there must be a provision for review, but clause 11(6) says only that there may be provision for appeals. The human rights group Justice said this was the minimum required to prevent the lord chancellor being seen as a judge in his own cause and to avoid “the absurdity of the lord chancellor being sued for refusal of legal aid in a judicial review, which substantively is made against another minister or, even, himself”. It is not enough.
The end is nigh for the unpopular legal aid body, so why aren’t we celebrating?