All Legal aid and access to justice articles – Page 103
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News
Commons whiplash inquiry finds for claimants
MPs today warn the government that its plans to cut the cost of whiplash claims will impair access to justice and leave the door open for claims management companies.
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NewsRetired appeal judge slams ‘substandard’ aid cuts
Government proposals to restrict legal aid for judicial review will turn the clock back 50 years and perpetrate ‘significant and damaging injustice'
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News
Happy birthday, legal aid
Lawyers are getting rather good at demonstrating noisily against government plans to ‘transform’ legal aid.
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News
Legal aid: ‘justice is ours’
Serious miscarriages of justice will go uncorrected if the government pushes through planned legal aid cuts, a demonstration outside London’s Old Bailey heard.
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Opinion
£10 too wealthy for legal aid
Today I received an application from an individual who was roughly £18 per month too wealthy to qualify for legal aid.
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Opinion
Legal aid: children suffer
Comments by Charles Falconer QC in The Times law section regarding a tightening of the process in criminal and family care cases are worthy of careful attention. On the face of it, removal of private law family legal aid is serving the same purpose, except that it has produced the ...
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NewsJudicial satire is deadly serious
Price-competitive tendering for judges. That is the subject of a spoof essay of application for the job of lord chief justice, penned by Court of Appeal judge Sir Alan Moses (‘aged 67½’), demonstrating the absurdity of the government’s planned legal aid reforms. The sitting judge read his work ‘What I ...
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News
'Little hope' for sole practitioners in criminal defence
There is ‘little hope for the future’ for sole practitioners and many small law firms under either the government’s or Law Society’s proposals for reshaping the criminal defence market, the Sole Practitioners Group has claimed. The group’s legal aid spokesperson, former chair Hilary Underwood, told the Gazette that under either ...
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Opinion
Legal aid proposals intended to strengthen the power of the state
No one can say that I have not done my bit for the profession
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News
Law Society alternative legal aid proposals
The Law Society last week published alternative proposals to the government’s Transforming Legal Aid plan, saying they would retain client choice, provide certainty and facilitate greater market efficiency. On contracting, the Society proposes: Rolling three-year contracts, awarded subject to an increasingly rigorous quality and capacity framework (QCF). Contracts will ...
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News
Criminal bar chair backs Law Society’s stance on legal aid
The chairman of the Criminal Bar Association has called for unity in the profession and attempted to quell ‘disquiet’ over the Law Society’s decision to share with the Ministry of Justice its proposals for an alternative to price-competitive tendering (PCT). In his weekly online comment, Michael Turner QC said that ...
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OpinionVulnerable people are most at risk from PCT
The legal profession has been up in arms over the proposed introduction of price-competitive tendering. But no one should be more concerned than individuals living with learning difficulties and disabilities such as autism, because they are the ones most at risk as a result of the changes. Criminal defence specialists ...
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Opinion
Duty freedom
I write with reference to the letter from Alexander McCulloch. It is incorrect to claim, as he does, that the current system deprives any person charged with a criminal offence of the ability to choose their own solicitor. The duty solicitor scheme certainly forwards a client to whoever is on ...
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Opinion
Client choice
No, Mr McCulloch. Manchester set up a voluntary court duty solicitor scheme at about the same time as Southampton. Birmingham came soon afterwards, building in particular on the Manchester template. I know this because I was involved. We then expanded it to include a police station scheme, and all of ...
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News
Birmingham Law Centre closes as cash runs out
Britain’s second city is without a law centre following the closure of Birmingham Law Centre last week. Cashflow problems and the anticipated fall in legal aid funding led the trustees to shut down the service, which is descended from bodies that have offered free legal advice for nearly a century. ...
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FeatureNew legal aid regulations
The latest criminal legal aid regime came into force on 1 April for all grants of legal aid made on or after that date. The old law will continue to apply for a considerable time in relation to cases where legal aid was granted before then. Because of changes to ...
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Opinion
Lib Dems fighting legal aid cuts
I was very disappointed to read about Ian Craine’s experience of trying to discuss proposed changes to legal aid with Liberal Democrat MPs. May I assure him that the Liberal Democrat Lawyers Association is lobbying hard over these proposals to try and persuade our MPs that they are misguided. So ...
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News
City lawyers join fight against legal aid cuts – finally
City law firms have joined the attack on the government’s legal aid cuts, warning that they ‘pose a potentially irreversible risk to the standards and reputation of English justice’. In a letter to the Law Society, the chairman of the City of London Law Society Alasdair Douglas criticised the ‘grossly ...
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News
Anger as MoJ accused of deleting legal aid consultation responses
The Ministry of Justice has claimed that an ‘email glitch’ is to blame for many barristers and solicitors receiving a message telling them that their response to the Transforming Legal Aid consultation has been ‘deleted unread’. The Gazette, together with the Law Society, Bar Council and other practitioner groups, have ...
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Opinion
PCT: choice words
I cannot let Alexander McCulloch’s letter pass without comment. His comparison of the old duty solicitor scheme with Grayling’s price-competitive tendering is invidious. I was a duty solicitor for many years; the scheme was never about restriction of choice. Both at the police station and at the magistrates’ court the ...