Speak up

There was something very ugly about David Cameron's speech on the justice bill. Under the cloak of sentencing reform, he touched briefly on the shredding of the legal aid system. He smugly reeled out the old mantra that we have the most expensive legal aid system in the world, forgetting that we also have one of the most expensive armed forces in the world, one of the largest foreign aid budgets in the world and an unerring ability to interfere in any war that happens to be going on at considerable expense.

At one point he said 'there would be no point in having a green paper if you are not willing to listen to the responses'. He was of course talking about sentencing reforms and Ken Clarke's gaffe in relation to rape. He had forgotten (or perhaps did not even know) that of the 5,000 responses to the government's green paper on legal aid, at least 90 per cent are against the government's proposals.

There is no doubt that the reforms proposed by the new bill will have a catastrophic effect on legal aid in England. A large number of small practices, larger legal aid practices and law centres could easily go out of business. It is with this in mind that I keep on going back to the fact that these proposals were introduced not just by a right wing Conservative government but by Liberal Democrat partners who have kept a deafening silence on the issue.

At least the Legal Services Commission seemed excited by the proposals. Not known for their quickness of response they had news of the bill up within two hours of it being published. If only they could deal with legal aid applications within two hours and not the eight weeks that is now customary. There was an almost odious keenness to alert the profession to the fact that legal aid was simply not going to be there for large areas of practice in coming months.

Of course we are dealing here with a bill. It is not an Act. It has to go to its second reading and be dealt with in the Lords. Nevertheless, looking at the chamber when Clarke announced the bill on the 21st, it was painfully obvious that large swathes of the Labour benches were simply not occupied. The issue had not caught most politicians' imagination.

Turn off

So who is to blame for the fact that the green paper appears to have been translated in to a bill with very little amendment? What of the Law Society's Sound Off For Justice campaign? I hear that the campaign cost £300,000. For that we had some t-shirts, a rather odd looking website and a couple of taxis.

The logo for the campaign looked something like Darth Vader and I doubt whether anyone had a clue what it meant. I do not believe that the Sound Off For Justice Campaign connected with the man in the street. While I wore my badge proudly, people kept asking me what it was.

The Sound Off For Justice campaign has failed. The government has not listened to the campaign and nor has the public. It is not a campaign that has been taken to heart in the way the Ghurkas' was, or even those campaigning to keep forests public.

So why has that campaign been such an enormous failure? Was the campaign slogan Sound Off For Justice just too opaque? A lot of effort seems to have been put into a website that nobody was looking at. Should there have been bigger and better stunts? Or perhaps much more time and effort should have been put into the grassroots of the profession and those that actually do legal aid work; having them showcased on television programmes that people actually watch.

We should not lose sight of the fact that the profession is going to hurt very badly when legal aid is withdrawn. And what about the customers? In my practice's area, Kensington, the figures seem to show that 75 per cent of all legal aid funding will be withdrawn. In many areas the figures seem to be between 50 and 60 per cent. Might that have warranted more funding on the part of the Law Society? Should the Law Society have put a very significant chunk of money into a much bigger campaign that really struck a cord with the public?

I hope the campaign has not finished. There is talk of it continuing and perhaps becoming more vocal. There is also talk of possible litigation.

The proof of the pudding will of course be in the eating. Will the best legal aid system in the world be allowed to die away or will we manage to keep it?

Fortunately, my firm will survive as we do a large quantity of private work. So while a little nervous on 21 June, Cosmo has now relaxed chewing on a bone which I am pretending is David Cameron's leg.

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