Member News
Lord Bach discusses how the cut in the legal aid budget will effectively decimate social welfare legal advice.
My question to the government is timely. Two weeks ago the Ministry of Justice published a green paper on reform of legal aid, starting a 12-week consultation period on their proposals. These amount to cutting the legal aid budget (which is at present around two billion pounds per year) by about £350m. (Some commentators believe the true cut is nearer to half a billion pounds.)
HMG proposes to cut civil legal aid by £279m, about one third of total civil legal aid spend. Over half a million people will no longer be in scope or meet the new lower eligibility test. This represents a 50 per cent cut in civil legal aid services to the public. Some of this is in the area of private family law, but the balance some £100m, is to be saved by taking out of scope massive amounts of social welfare law, particularly legal advice. All welfare benefit law is to go, all employment law and all education law as well. Practically all debt advice and a large part of crucial housing law is to be outside legal aid.
Perhaps the most startling figure is that 68 per cent of civil legal help, which gives initial help and advice on legal problems, is to be cut! This would be bad enough if times were good; at a time of difficult economic circumstances, it is shocking, callous and counterproductive. Why counterproductive? Because there is clear evidence that if early legal advice in these areas is not available, then the eventual cost to the public purse can be massively more expensive. Peoples’ problems, often multifaceted, can get worse with the result that families can split up, debt and housing problems can spin out of control, and there may be, in some cases, a descent into crime.
Labour agrees savings must be made. We had started on that process in government. However, we would not have chosen cuts that effectively decimate social welfare legal advice. There are alternatives that we set out before the general election, but HMG has ignored them. Unfortunately, the coalition government seems intent on destroying an advice system that has the capacity to change lives for the better.
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