Justice denied?

Secretary of State for Justice, Liz Truss, recently announced that the government would soon confirm the time-table for the post legislative review of the Legal Aid Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (LASPO). There has been growing pressure on ministers for some time to announce this (see “Back to the drawing board”, 166 NLJ 7698 13 May 2016, p 6). The Legal Action Group (LAG) hopes that the review will be used as an opportunity by the still relatively new team at the top of the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) to look at funding the provision of early advice in civil legal cases.

In recent months there has been a flurry of damming reports on the civil legal aid cuts. Perhaps the most notable of these has been the Amnesty report published in October. Amnesty is better know for its work in exposing injustice abroad, but expressed deep concerns in its report, The impact