Legal aid is a tiny, albeit vital, backwater of our public services which has critical importance in our democratic society, yet fails to resonate beyond a small community of lawyers and advisers. Not for nothing was it recently described as the ‘most friendless wing of the welfare state’.

If legal aid enters the pre-election political discourse, then coverage tends to range from the cynical to the depressingly ill-informed. We saw this in the ‘complete outrage’ over the MPs’ expense claims. Even MPs allegedly fiddling their expenses deserve proper representation.

The ‘access to justice’ debate needs to reconnect urgently with the public otherwise it is a soft target for cuts. That was one of the ideas behind a new book, Closing the Justice Gap: new thinking on an old problem, a collection of essays featuring the likes of Michael Mansfield QC, Geoffrey Bindman, Roger Smith of Justice, Steve Hynes of the Legal Action Group (LAG) and Laura Janes of Young Legal Aid Lawyers (YLAL).

Our contributors were charged with the task of coming up with ‘radical, innovative and exciting ways to improve and reform access to justice’. ‘My God, they’re needed,’ said Channel 4’s Jon Snow, who chaired a recent debate to launch the book and to celebrate five years of YLAL. Our essayists were set ground rules (‘… absolutely no point scoring, no complaining about the fees…’). ‘How on earth can we have an evening based on these rules with a government minister present?’ asked Snow, as he introduced legal aid minister Lord Bach and shadow justice minister Henry Bellingham.

Lord Bach, while acknowledging the inevitability of cuts, insisted to 130 legal aid lawyers that spending on civil legal aid should at least be preserved. ‘What should we do with the limited resources that we’ve got?’ he asked. ‘I come up with one clear answer: spend much more on civil legal aid and a good deal less on criminal legal aid.’

Fizzing with ideas?So what about our promised ‘new thinking’? Bellingham pledged a Tory government ‘fizzing with ideas’. Some were given an airing in the LAG’s Justice Gap book published last year (legal expenses insurance, a contingent legal aid fund (CLAF), pooling interest on client accounts, polluter pays, and so on).

Fair enough. There is no monopoly on good ideas and, as noted by Hynes, Labour will probably nick them back if they win. The point I’d make is that those ideas, when floated by LAG, came with serious caveats and some are arguably getting past their sell-by date. And I am contractually obliged to point out that our co-organisers YLAL don’t endorse all or any of the proposals.

But there are new ideas that might excite and divide. I would flag up Smith’s 10-point plan to reform what he calls ‘poverty law’ (‘guaranteed to offend all vested interests’, he promises), and LAG’s vision of a Legal Aid Direct helpline, ‘free for all’ along the lines of NHS Direct and funded by insurers raking it in on referral fees.

Crispin Passmore, former architect of the Community Legal Advice Centres initiative and now head of strategy at the Legal Services Board, is an advocate for the revitalising possibilities of competition under the Legal Services Act. Passmore finds surprising common ground with Bindman – both float the idea of a levy on lawyers (£100 a lawyer would raise £15m a year, reckons Passmore). Bindman wants a levy on the richest City firms.

Bindman also advances what he calls ‘the ethical case’ for every solicitor to support legal aid. In 1949 ‘the price paid by the legal profession for avoiding the imposition of a National Legal Service’ was a commitment to manage legal aid.

‘Lawyers whose clients can afford to pay for their services have largely turned their backs on it,’ he observes.

Anyhow, lots to think about…

Jon Robinsis co-author of The Justice Gap and director of the legal research company Jures. You can download Closing the Justice Gap