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20 November 2010 / Steve Hynes
Issue: 7442 / Categories: Features , Legal aid focus
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Playing with fire

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The state should not underestimate the public’s belief in justice & fair play, says Steve Hynes

In the legal aid world we often prepare for the worse and hope things will turn out better than we feared. Unfortunately, the cuts announced on Monday are far worse than we feared.

Over half the cases undertaken under the civil legal aid scheme will wipe out at a stroke, if the government’s proposed amendments to scope go ahead. According to the Ministry of Justice’s own impact assessment half a million people will no-longer be able to obtain assistance with family, debt, employment, benefits, housing and other civil law cases.

Jonathan Djanogly, the minister responsible for legal aid, promised that this was not going to be a “salami slicing review”. It certainly isn’t. What we got instead is the decimation of the civil legal aid scheme reducing it back to a rump of cases that directly engage human rights, but leaving out those areas of law which ordinary members of the public are most likely to help

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