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12 January 2012 - All Party Parliamentary Group on Legal Aid and launch of London Advice Report
You are warmly invited to the next meeting, on Thursday 12th January 2012 at 4pm in the Jubilee Room.
Legal Action Group (LAG) is launching a new report “London Advice Watch (LAW)” at a special meeting of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Legal Aid on Thursday 12th January in the Jubilee Room in the House of Commons at 4pm. LAG would particularly like to welcome London advice agencies and legal aid practitioners to the launch, as we would like to encourage them to ask their MP’s and any peers they might have links with to join them at the event. The meeting will be hosted by Yvonne Fovargue MP and speakers will include Tom Brake MP, the Liberal Democrat MP for Carshalton and Wallington in south London, Liberal Democrat peer Lord Carlile and Andy Slaughter MP, Labour MP and Shadow Justice Minister
Please email Poonam Gogna at LAG if you would like to attend the meeting. Her email address is .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
An opinion poll of Londoners formed part of the LAW project. The poll was carried out by GfK NOP and the questions were similar to the national polling research LAG commissioned last year.
In the national survey LAG found that 85% of people believed that advice should be free to all or to everyone on or below average income. 50% of people surveyed in London believed advice should be free to everyone. This was nine percentage points higher than in the national survey. Overall 88% of Londoners believed advice should be free to all or to everyone on or below the national average income.
As with the national survey, the London survey found that people in the lowest social groups are the most reluctant to use telephone advice services. This confirms LAG’s view that establishing a legal aid system that relies on the telephone for access is a guaranteed to exclude a large section of the people who qualify to use the service.
The second part of the research was based on interviews with advice providers and their umbrella organisations. It aims to give an overview of the services in the NfP sector which provide advice in London on social welfare law and the problems they face.
Perhaps not surprisingly the report concludes that the sector will be hard hit if the planned cuts in legal aid for SWL cases go ahead. Brent CABx stands to lose £275,000 in funding which pays for casework in housing, immigration, benefit and debt. Legal aid contracts are also not the only source of funding which is likely to be cut. Brent CABx will also lose project funding from the NHS for advice sessions in its local mental health secure unit.
A large source of funding under threat, are the grants from London Councils, a pan London body funded by the local authorities in London. They plan to cut the £1.1m they grant to the sector to £500,000 next year.
These cuts are coming at a time of increasing demand for advice services. The introduction of universal credit and the cap on housing benefit advice agencies believe will fuel the demand for advice. The London Debt Strategy group predict “a significant rise in the demand for debt advice from 2011 onwards” and the Children’s Society is warning that the cap on housing benefit will leave 80,000 children homeless.”