The Ministry of Justice’s decision to grant legal aid to families bereaved by the 7/7 bombings has prompted calls for the ‘intrusive’ and ‘distressing’ means test forms to be simplified.
Last week justice secretary Jack Straw said that due to the ‘exceptional circumstances’, families who had lost loved ones in the 2005 bombings would get legal aid for representation at the inquest without having to complete the means test. No decision has been made on whether survivors will get the same treatment.
Following press reports that bombing victims found the means test forms intrusive, Roy Morgan, chairman of the Legal Aid Practitioners Group, said the forms were ‘too lengthy and time-consuming’, involved too much duplication, and should be simplified for all legal aid applicants, not just those who had lost relatives in the bombings.
He said: ‘It’s good that it’s been acknowledged that the means test form can be intrusive and distressing, but the same is true for all clients, particularly those with mental health problems or community care issues. Many of our clients find them humiliating and distressing. Filling them in is a huge ordeal.’
Clifford Tibber, partner at London firm Oury Clark who acts for 7/7 victims and their families, said: ‘The form is very long and intrusive. One of my clients said it was like a financial audit of her life, another said it made him feel like a criminal.’
The form requires applicants to list their valuable possessions including jewellery, paintings and antiques, and asks whether they spent £2,500 on any item in the past two years.
Mark Stobbs, director of legal policy at the Law Society, said the Society would like to see the ‘wholly justified compassion’ towards the 7/7 families extended to all those in a similar situation as of right, rather than as a result of a politician’s decision.
A Legal Services Commission spokesman said it was currently piloting a simplified electronic form.
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