Law centres will close, leaving ‘many thousands’ of the poor and marginalised without access to justice if the government’s legal aid cuts are implemented, peers have warned.
In a short debate this week, Labour’s former legal aid minister Lord Bach asked what assessment the government had made of the implications for law centres of legal aid cuts. Bach said that taking social welfare law out of the scope of legal aid would reduce by 86% the funding that law centres receive to provide advice or ‘legal help’.
This, he said, will ‘inevitably’ cause law centres to close and leave ‘many thousands of people, often the poor and marginalised’ without access to justice, which would end up costing taxpayers more due to unresolved escalating problems. Such an ‘absurd’ and ‘wrong’ move, would make the country ‘less just and less civilised’.
Justice minister Lord McNally rejected the ‘worst-case scenario’ presented by Bach. He said the government’s equality impact assessment indicated the likely costs and benefits of the reforms.
Responding to a question from Conservative peer Lord Mackay of Clashfern, McNally agreed that law centres were the most efficient and economical way of providing advice for those who are less well off.
He accepted that the reforms will have an impact on the not-for-profit sector, and said that in recognition of that the government had provided £107m in transitional funds and an additional £20m to help the sector restructure.
Commenting afterwards, the director of the Law Centres Federation, Julie Bishop, said the government seemed to regard the disproportionate impact of the cuts on the disadvantaged as ‘acceptable collateral damage’.
She said: ‘Law centres are disappointed that Lord McNally, yet again, did not address the question but simply referred critics to the Ministry of Justice impact assessments,’ which show that vulnerable groups will be disproportionately disadvantaged by the cuts.’
Bishop said the demand for social welfare law advice has been rising during the economic crisis, while the supply has been eroded. ‘Considering the UK’s current economic performance and predictions of its further deterioration, this is not the time to abandon people losing their jobs and homes through no fault of their own. Lord McNally must not pretend that this is not happening,’ she said.
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