Does lack of clarity in the legal aid scheme prevent access to justice, asks David Burrows
A new government, a new Justice Secretary: there is no likelihood of improvement to the legal aid scheme. But is it now time to reflect on the lack of clarity—for lawyer and lay-person alike—of the present scheme? In particular it is surely time to ask whether the present process for application for legal aid—for an applicant merely to be able to apply to the court or defend a claim—is fair given the complexity of the present statutory scheme? The question of the obscurity of the scheme for application for legal aid can be tested against two recent cases on applications for domestic violence and for county court (and thus family court) committal proceedings.
In Brown v London Borough of Haringey [2015] EWCA Civ 483, [2015] All ER (D) 126 (May) the Court of Appeal concluded, after a lengthy analysis of complex legal aid statutory and regulatory provisions, that applications for legal aid for committal proceedings in civil
