Can judges turn the tide of injustice?

If the legal profession has learnt just one thing over the last six years, it is that the government cares little for it or its opinions.

Legal aid practitioners are ignored and described as 'fat cats'; the champions of human rights accused of being 'liberal activist do-gooders', intent on making the country subservient to Strasbourg; and personal injury lawyers castigated as 'ambulance chasing' vultures, feeding off the UK's compensation culture.

Even the government's law officers have not been immune to being disregarded within the inner sanctum of the cabinet, as Dominic Grieve QC MP discovered last year in feeling the full weight of a stiff broom as he was pushed out of immediate eye line.

The only time the nation's lawyers receive any positive attention is when it is politically expedient to do so. Chris Grayling's Magna Carta jamboree, the Global Law Summit, is a prime example. Though the event was billed as a celebration of all that was wonderful - and profitable - about the UK's legal system, it came as the current access to justice crisis began to fully crystallise.

Though the present Lord Chancellor has engaged with lawyers, the outcome remains the same. Michael Gove's response to criminal practitioner groups - that he would suspend a second 8.75 per cent fee cut, but only if they stayed off the picket lines - is akin to employing a negative reinforcement technique against the profession.

But if Gove's ultimatum to solicitors was the equivalent of smacking a naughty dog on the nose with a rolled up newspaper and threatening to lock it outside in a kennel, then his transparent manipulation of the Bar is more like Pavlovian conditioning in style.

It may seem churlish to criticise the justice secretary in the same week he is being widely applauded for ending - in part at least - the government's unconscionable dalliance with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. However, let us not forget that while he has trumpeted 'human rights concerns', he was installed at the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) with the specific brief of scrapping the Human Rights Act.

Now, the only section of the profession left of which the government may take notice is the judiciary. In what was described as a 'radical intervention' to become more 'politically engaged', the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, said judges must take 'proactive steps' to secure adequate funding for the justice system.

As Catherine Baksi wrote earlier this year, the protocol that dictates judges should avoid commenting on policy has kept 'all but the most outspoken or nearing retirement' quiet on the impact of government reforms. Yet, research published in January found a third of all salaried judges were considering quitting the bench over poor pay and pensions, increased workloads, and low morale.

Since then, the introduction of Grayling's punitive criminal court charge has led to the mass resignation of over 50 magistrates and the suspension of another for trying to pay an asylum seeker's fine. Even Lord Thomas has admitted that rises in criminal and civil court fees risk 'imperilling a core principle of Magna Carta'.

The latest intervention comes with the publication of a damning critique from 12 retired judges - including two ex-lords chief justice, five retired Court of Appeal judges, and four former law lords - over the government's response to the refugee crisis.

Describing the government's (lack of) action as 'deeply inadequate' in a full page advertisement in The Times, judicial luminaries such as Sir Alan Moses and Sir Henry Brooke said the UK had 'lost its way' as a nation of safe haven for refugees.

Though the government may pay little attention to the other 300 plus signatories - which include 105 QCs, 30 law firm partners, and 128 barristers - there remains hope it will take notice of the revered legal minds that helped shape the common law while current members of the cabinet were busy studying for their PPE finals.

If the prime minister is willing to listen, then maybe there is hope that judicial intervention can bring about change at the MoJ, just as Lord Thomas hopes it will. But if David Cameron is willing to ignore the likes of Lords Woolf, Phillips, and Walker, then perhaps there is no chance of turning back the present tide of injustice at all.

John van der Luit-Drummond is deputy editor for Solicitors Journal