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How Will the Proposed Cuts to Legal Aid Affect Those Who Will Need the Service in Years to Come?

Changes that are being proposed to the legal aid system will, according to many involved in the matter, have a devastating impact on the most vulnerable members of society in the UK. The Ministry of Justice has proposed sweeping cuts to the whole legal aid system and those areas affected will have a direct impact on people with no recourse to other funding to support their legal proceedings.

Free independent advice services will probably suffer, and councils will have to face many tough choices when it comes to implementing the cuts as the aim of the Ministry is to reduce the legal aid bill to the tune of £350 million per annum over the course of the next few years.
Free legal advice on issues such as welfare benefits, clinical negligence, and debt in the case of homes not in immediate jeopardy would stop if the proposed cuts were to be implemented in their entirety.

The Home Secretary has suggested that the cuts are intended, in part, to help discourage people from resorting to lawyers and the legal process whenever problems are encountered, and proposed a new civil and family scheme to prevent such abuse from continuing. But there is widespread fear that if the plans are put into effect unchanged the impact on poorer people who rely on legal aid for genuine cases will be devastating.

For those members of society on the lowest income levels, legal aid has always been there as an effective safety net, and there are a lot of legal aid-funded services such as specialist welfare rights advice services which would disappear if the plans came into force. Fewer experts will be available to provide advice and guidance in certain situations; for example, housing advice under the proposed new scheme will only become freely available at the point of eviction, which will be too late.

Many of the cuts will affect families facing issues such as non-violent domestic disputes, welfare, divorce and child access. In housing, only when a home is at immediate risk will free legal aid be forthcoming.

The Ministry of Justice is quick to point out that full legal aid will still be available where lives are at risk or where there are issues such as homelessness or violence, or the loss of liberty is at stake, and supports the idea of individuals being able to hold the state to account when it comes to serious matters through channels of judicial review.
The upshot of all this is that if the cuts to the legal aid system are made without any changes then in future those on the lower income levels will suffer both in terms of advice and access to justice through the courts. Solicitors such as Duncan Lewis will continue to help in any way they can, and legal aid solicitors in general will doubtless work on ways to offset the negative effects of any cuts by proposing schemes of their own, so that free advice and access to legal proceedings continue to be made available to the less advantaged members of society.