The government’s planned legal aid cuts will have a ‘serious adverse long-term effect’ on the justice system, a former president of the family division of the High Court has warned.

In a speech to the Society of Conservative Lawyers, Baroness Butler-Sloss said that the plans would force many people to represent themselves in court, and the ‘heightened tensions’ of litigants in person in family cases ‘will enormously complicate the task of the court’.

She said that competent family lawyers help ‘lubricate the system’ by agreeing on compromises for both sides – but that with no lawyers, cases will take longer.

Butler-Sloss said that highly experienced practitioners, especially barristers, are already leaving family law for better-paid work. She warned that this will create a smaller pool of family lawyers to appoint as judges, and in particular, a smaller pool of suitable women lawyers.

‘Of course, every budget has to be scrutinised, and substantial savings must be made,’ she said. ‘The administration of justice, and improving the court budget, have no right to be protected from the icy wind of cuts.

‘The issue is the extent to which the depth of these cuts will cause injustice to many victims, and have a serious adverse long-term effect on the ability of the courts to provide necessary services to the public.

‘I do wonder if the legal aid proposals will save sufficient money to balance the clear and obvious adverse impact on the administration of justice – and especially on the welfare of children.

‘There will be, with these proposals, a marked increase in litigants in person presenting their cases in the courts. In principle, in an ideal world, where all litigants were reasonable, well-educated, and able to set out their cases in a clear, coherent, organised way, lawyers would be a luxury.

‘I’m just wondering if anyone in the government has done a costing to the courts budget of the impact of two litigants in person fighting a case, without counsel.’

Commenting on the government’s plans to substitute mediation for court proceedings in many family cases, she said: ‘How on earth do we deal with the 5-10% of people who will not settle? These are people who, by definition, will be in a state of high emotional trauma, and have a deep-seated dislike, or indeed hatred, of the other parent.

‘All of these cases have an acrimonious, and some a corrosive element, which may make it impossible for conciliation to work. The heightened tensions will enormously complicate the task of the court – and I speak from bitter experience.’

Attorney general Dominic Grieve said: ‘The availability of legal aid is undoubtedly also a fuel for litigation – often of an unnecessary colour.’

He said that there was great difficulty in making 24% cuts across a government department. ‘Bizarrely, once we’ve been through all that pain, what we’re simply returning to is the level of expenditure that was in existence in 2008,’ he said.