The President of the Supreme Court, Lord Neuberger, has expressed fears that the upcoming Legal Aid cuts will lead to people becoming frustrated at the fact that they cannot access legal advice, with the consequence being that those people take the law into their own hands!
From April this year, the Government is introducing significant Legal Aid cuts to civil and family law cases.
Currently, in terms of family law, Legal Aid covers matters such as divorce, residence and contact. However, the new rules will mean that Legal Aid is only available if there is an element of domestic violence or child abuse in a particular case. Otherwise, people will either have to pay privately for advice or act as litigants in person, neither of which are particularly appealing.
The head of Legal Aid at the Law Society supports Lord Neuberger’s concerns and comments saying that Lord Neuberger “has spelled out exactly what we’ve been saying for a very long time; there is clear evidence that the Government’s civil Legal Aid cuts will cause significant knock on costs within the Legal Aid budget, across the rest of the Ministry, and in other Government departments. They could easily cost the taxpayer more than they save…The Law Society has previously suggested alternative savings that would make a bigger contribution to reducing the deficit by making the civil justice system more efficient, but the Government chose to ignore this.
The biggest regret is that Lord Neuberger’s warning has generated so much attention, just weeks ahead of these legal aid cuts being implemented, whereas similar warnings, from many quarters before and during the Parliamentary process during which these cuts were introduced, went largely ignored by Government.”