The far-reaching impact of the legal aid cuts in 2013 has been revealed in a major new report by the Legal Action Group (LAG).
It finds that basic advice cases, known as civil legal help, have dropped by 75% since April 2013, when the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (LASPO) came into force. The LAG report suggests the number of cases is continuing to fall.
In the past year alone, there was an 18% reduction in the number of housing cases.
LASPO removed legal aid from housing matters (except where there was an imminent risk of homelessness) as well as private family, benefits, immigration (apart from asylum), debt and several other areas. A telephone gateway was established to help people with debt, special educational needs and discrimination cases. However, the LAG report, Justice in freefall, found that only about one in ten of 165,000 calls last year were referred on to specialists for help.
The report uncovers widespread gaps in provision, with one in four firms no longer doing civil legal aid work. Legal aid and other cuts have had an even greater impact on not for profit providers as these have declined by 50% in ten years. The report notes that not for profits lost 77% of their legal aid income after LASPO.
The result is that people with common civil legal problems such as difficulties claiming benefits have nowhere to turn.
The report, authored by Lucy Logan Green, research assistant, and James Sandbach, policy manager, at LAG, calls on the government “to use the recently announced review of the LASPO Act to rethink providing early advice in cases, as all too often help is only given when costly court based solutions are the only option.” Liz Truss, Justice Secretary, recently said the government will shortly confirm the timetable for its post-legislative review of LASPO.
Steve Hynes, director of LAG, says: “Most members of the public with a civil legal problem will never get anywhere near a court or tribunal without the sort of initial advice legal help paid for. LAG would suggest that, if the government is serious about access to justice it needs to put back capacity into the system so that these people can get early advice on their legal problems. Otherwise a situation will continue in which only a few people get help when they get to court and the many more thousands with civil legal problems are ignored by policy makers.”
