Legal aid “deserts” have emerged as lawyers withdraw from services that are no longer financially viable, leaving many people unable to obtain access to justice, a parliamentary report says.
The report by the joint committee on human rights calls for an urgent review of how people can enforce their rights, for changes to the Legal Aid Agency’s exceptional case funding scheme and for more legal support for families at inquests.
The committee’s chair, Harriet Harman, said: “For rights to be effective they have to be capable of being enforced. At the moment we are seeing the erosion of all of those enforcement mechanisms because of a lack of access to justice and lack of understanding of the fundamental importance of human rights and the rule of law. The government must act urgently to address this.”
MPs and peers on the committee criticised reforms introduced by the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, which they said “made access to justice more difficult for many for whom it is simply unaffordable”.
The Ministry of Justice has been reviewing the effect of the act and has promised to report its findings before the end of the year.
“There are large areas of the country which are legal aid deserts as practitioners withdraw from providing legal aid services since they can no longer afford to do this work following reductions in legal aid funding by successive governments over the past three decades,” the JCHR report says.
The committee recommends that the financial eligibility criteria for legal aid should be reviewed, possibly to align it with the criteria for welfare benefits. Under the 2012 legislation, for example, all applicants for legal aid are subject to means testing regarding their capital assets.
The Legal Aid Agency’s exceptional case funding scheme was originally expected to help 7,000 people a year. Instead it supports only a few hundred.
Deborah Coles, the director of Inquest, which supports families at coroners’ courts, welcomed the report. She said it was unfair for bereaved families – who often struggled to access legal aid – not to be represented while state agencies involved in deaths were automatically represented at public expense. “Bereaved families have a vested interest in uncovering systemic failings, in the hope that future deaths can be prevented,” said Coles.
The president of the Law Society of England and Wales, Christina Blacklaws, said: “Legal aid is truly a lifeline for the vulnerable. We welcome the fact the committee took our evidence on board regarding the impact that changes to legal aid in 2012 have had on the ability of individuals to access justice, and the detrimental impact of the legal aid cuts on wider society.”
