Labour’s access to justice commission will meet formally for the first time on Tuesday to try to ensure legal advice, information and representation become a “core public entitlement”.
The review, in cooperation with the Fabian Society, will be chaired by the shadow justice minister, Lord Bach. Its findings will feed back into the party’s policy review process. Successive governments, including past Labour administrations, have repeatedly cut back on the legal aid budget.
Earlier this month, the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, described legal aid as a “basic human right”. He did not specify any limits to its public availability.
The commission’s starting point will be that access to justice is an essential public service, equal in importance to healthcare or education. Its members include Tanni Grey-Thompson, the solicitor Raju Bhatt, the director of the Law Centres Network, Julie Bishop, the former president of the Law Society Lucy Scott-Moncrieff, and the former court of appeal judge Sir Henry Brooke.
The shadow justice secretary, Lord Falconer, said: “Beveridge [the Liberal economist] pioneered the welfare state to counteract what he called the five giant evils. The widespread injustice that sees many people unable to enforce basic rights is a 21st-century evil. Just as we all accept the need for public education and healthcare, we must accept the right of every citizen to access justice.”
Lord Bach said: “Access to legal help and representation is a cornerstone of the rule of law and the mark of a decent society, but the last government’s reforms have left too many people in the cold.”
The other commission members are criminal defence barrister Joanne Cecil; David Gilmore, the director of DG Legal; Nick Hanning, an employment and commercial litigation partner at Dutton Gregory LLP; Laura Janes, a legal director at the Howard League for Penal Reform; criminal barrister Andrew Keogh; Nicola Mackintosh QC of Mackintosh Law; Carol Storer, the director of the Legal Aid Practitioners Group and Bill Waddington, a director at Williamsons Solicitors.
