Labour pulls out big guns in fight to restore legal aid

The leader of the opposition and shadow chancellor both made appearances at Labour's legal aid summit last night to reinvigorate the legal profession in their fight against restrictions on access to justice.

Lord Bach kicked off his party's review into legal aid by saying the time was right to challenge the government's controversial reforms as 'now, Labour has a leader that gets legal aid in a big way'.

The Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn MP, said the most vulnerable in society were paying the price for the legal aid cuts.

'Something needs to change,' said Corbyn. 'What is it about central government and the Ministry of Justice that doesn't understand what is going on?'

He continued: 'In the campaign we are mounting we need to do a number of things. First, recognise the size of the problem. Second, recognise the damage to the legal profession and particularly young lawyers.'

'We have reached a situation where we have so diminished the access to justice by the cuts to legal aid that McKenzie friends is the only avenue available to people. It is a bit like incorporating foodbanks into the welfare system; we incorporate McKenzie friends into the legal system.'

Corbyn also railed against the mainstream media's categorisation of legal aid representation as 'fat cat lawyers raking it in', describing such reporting as 'utter, total nonsense'.

'Any lawyer relying solely on legal aid as an income is going to be in a very difficult position,' he added.

'We are committed as a party to the widespread provision of legal aid to ensure that nobody goes unrepresented in our justice system. [Access to justice ] is a fundamental human right. Let's defend it.'

False economy

The shadow chancellor, John McDonnell MP, who served on the Commons Justice Select Committee with Corbyn in the last parliament, said he had taken a specific interest in legal aid.

'We were receiving evidence about the increase in numbers of litigants in person and the implications that was having on slowing down the court process and causing greater work for the clerks and judges. It was one of those false economies that was resulting in more expenditure,' he explained.

'This administration, over the last five years,' added McDonnell, 'is systematically dismantling the welfare state and every element that we put together under the Attlee government to form what we thought was a civilised society.'

'We try to explain to people that it is not just the NHS, council housing, local government and all these other services; access to justice is part and parcel of that welfare state,' he continued. 'For all those entitlements you've gained you have to have some mechanism of enforcing those entitlements and the rule of law to fall back upon.'

Labour's failings

Both Bach and his deputy, Karl Turner MP, the shadow solicitor general, admitted that Labour didn't offer enough on legal aid in the 2015 general election.

'I've made no secret, even to my own colleagues, that the Labour party's offer - certainly on criminal legal aid - at the last election was simply not good enough,' said Turner.

'The attack from the Tory-led coalition government on access to justice and criminal legal aid was savage. Our offer of not implementing two-tier and simply reviewing the second cut in criminal legal aid fees wasn't good enough.'

Turner continued: 'We now have a new team led by Jeremy Corbyn who is extremely passionate about access to justice and he wants to ensure we offer a robust policy and come up with an election winning strategy on these issues.'

Turner has been working behind the scenes to put together a commission to review legal aid. Though not able to disclose which experts have been chosen, Turner said he has 'three big hitters' ready to serve.

Though admitting Labour made mistakes on legal aid while in power, Bach said it shouldn't be too hard on itself as a party.

'One statistic that says it all is that at the end of 2009-10, after Labour were beaten at the general election, new social welfare matter starts were at an all-time high - 471,418,' he explained.

'By the end of 2013-14 - one year into LASPO - the figure was 52,703. That is a drop of nearly 90 per cent. That means that hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens have been denied advice and access to justice.'

'Our legal system, so outstanding in many ways, will be diminished until some of us will stop being proud of it,' he added.

Poverty issue?

Baroness Helena Kennedy QC, however, expressed concern that some still see legal aid as just a poverty issue.

'When we walk it back into welfare we get caught in a cycle which we don't address the higher aims of what justice is about. I would urge that we don't just make it about poverty. We should be saying that legal aid is about access to justice.

'We need to keep the argument alive that this is about justice and about allowing ordinary folk to have access to justice and to be represented.'

She added that as innovative as lawyers have become faced with the cuts, the profession should not be forced to 'crowd-fund justice'.

Labour plan to produce a draft report on the legal aid crisis by April next year and present a finished version at the Labour party conference in Liverpool in September 2016 that can then be used as a 'thoughtful and credible justice policy' by the party.

John van der Luit-Drummond is deputy editor for Solicitors Journal
john.vanderluit@solicitorsjournal.co.uk | @JvdLD