PLP plans judicial review of civil legal aid cuts

The Public Law Project has warned the Ministry of Justice that the lack of data underpinning its planned civil legal aid cuts "would render the consultation unlawful".

In a letter to the MoJ, Martha Spurrier, barrister at the PLP, said the organisation had made a freedom of information request at the end of April to help it respond to the consultation 'Transforming legal aid'.

The proposals include the introduction of a residence test for civil legal aid, requiring clients to have been 'lawfully resident' in the UK for a period of at least 12 months.

Lawyers would no longer he paid for work carried out on judicial review applications, apart from the initial stages, unless the court grants permission.

On the plan to introduce a residence test for civil legal aid, Spurrier said statistics were needed on public funding of judicial reviews by non-nationals for the years 2007 to 2011.

On the restrictions to funding of judicial reviews, she said case progression statistics for judicial reviews were needed for 2008 to 2011, and details of the cost of the 515 cases in 2011/2012 that ended after permission was refused without a substantial benefit to the client and the 330 with a benefit.

Spurrier said that, bearing in mind that the consultation closes on 4 June, the information should be published "urgently and in any event within 14 days" and the deadline for responses should be extended.

"Without the information requested and an extended deadline, we do not believe that we (and other respondents to the consultation) will have been afforded a reasonable opportunity to respond in a meaningful way," she said.

"We are concerned that were the government to proceed with the consultation in that way, the resulting unfairness would render the consultation unlawful."

Spurrier added that the PLP would wait for the MoJ's response to the consultation, and if this was unsatisfactory, "take urgent advice on whether to make a challenge".

In a separate development, 90 QCs have written to The Daily Telegraph to protest against the cuts to public funding of judicial reviews.

Lord Pannick, Lord Goldsmith, Lord Lester and Baroness Kennedy, among others, said they were "gravely concerned" about the threat to access to justice from the cuts.

"These proposals will seriously undermine the rule of law," they said. "They are likely to drive conscientious and dedicated specialist public law practitioners and firms out of business.

"They will leave many of society's most vulnerable people without access to any specialist legal advice and representation.

"In practice, these changes will immunise government and other public authorities from effective legal challenge."