A review of the impact of the legal aid cuts introduced in the LASPO legislation of 2013 is due to be completed by this time next year. Will it acknowledge the desperate effects on access to justice for thousands nationwide?
In the year after legal aid cuts were introduced, the number of civil cases accepted for public funding through legal aid fell by almost a half. The effects have clearly been wide-ranging.
For example, recent research, undertaken by Hogan Lovells in conjunction with the All-Party Parliamentary Committee on Pro Bono, has revealed that almost 90% of requests for advice from London MPs now relate to legal issues, specifically housing where access to legal aid to fight eviction has been cut. Finding specialist lawyers who will assist with housing issues under legal aid has become increasingly hard and over 40,000 households were evicted last year. People in rented accommodation are likely to be some of the poorest in society and, as such, also the least able to fund legal representation for themselves, leaving them vulnerable to discrimination and injustice.
The disabled are also suffering under the legal aid cuts. The survey of London MPs found that over 20% of questions raised related to disability and a quarter of the housing problems were disability-related also.
Providing further support for the impact on disabled people, the newly published report, ‘Being Disabled in Britain’, issued by the Equality and Human Rights Commission, has found that the number of employment tribunals for disability discrimination was 54% lower in 2015/16, after the LASPO changes, than in 2012/13 before the cuts, suggesting that disabled people are faced with an increasing challenge to access justice and find legal representation.
This is perhaps not surprising when the report also found that less than 50% of disabled adults are in work compared with nearly 80% of non-disabled adults. These are the people who need help to find legal representation and yet seem to be finding it denied them.
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