MPs and Peers have highlighted the paucity of legal aid access in England and Wales and called for ‘urgent’ action to tackle the lack of legal advice available for people on low incomes.
The Joint Committee on Human Rights expressed ‘grave concerns for access to justice, the rule of law, and enforcement of human rights in the UK’, in a detailed report published this week, Enforcing human rights. They warned that large areas of the country have become ‘legal aid deserts’ as lawyers can no longer afford to provide these services to clients.
The committee, chaired by Harriet Harman MP, concludes that reductions to legal aid and reforms to the system have resulted in a situation where many people find it ‘simply unaffordable’ to enforce their human rights.
The government is currently reviewing LASPO (the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012), which cut legal aid from large areas of civil and family law in April 2013.
The committee recommended that a review of the ‘broader landscape of legal advice and support’ urgently be taken, and that the financial eligibility criteria for legal aid be reconsidered and brought in line with the criteria for welfare benefits. It noted that the criteria has become more restrictive since LASPO.
It called for more legal support for families at inquests, and for urgent reform of the Exceptional Case Funding Scheme which funds only a few hundred cases rather than the 7,000 per year it was expected to support.
Other recommendations included that a statutory duty to uphold the independence of the judiciary be incorporated into the Ministerial Code; and that the Equality and Human Rights Commission be able to take human rights cases as well as equality cases.
Harman said: ‘For rights to be effective they have to be capable of being enforced.’
