Supreme court judge warns legal aid cuts will hit poorest

Lady Hale says the government’s proposed cuts will have a ‘disproportionate’ effect on the most vulnerable in society The only female justice on the supreme court, Lady Hale, has highlighted the impact of the proposed cuts in legal aid, declaring that they would have a “disproportionate effect upon the poorest and most vulnerable in society”. Her comments came as solicitors warned that more than a third of law centres in England and Wales providing advice to the disadvantaged would be forced to close under the legal aid plans. On Wednesday the government will push the second reading of its legal aid and sentencing bill through the Commons only a week after the repeatedly-delayed legislation was first introduced into parliament. In his speech last week, the justice secretary, Ken Clarke, signalled that help might be given to law centres because so much of their funding would be withdrawn. Figures provided by Julie Bishop, director of the Law Centres Federation, show that of 52 centres in England and Wales at least 18 will have no alternative but to shut down because three-quarters of their income comes from legal aid that will no longer be available. Law centres help those who cannot afford to pay a solicitor to obtain legal advice and support in housing, welfare, medical negligence and many other areas that will soon no longer be eligible for legal aid. Last year, law centres helped 120,000 people, Bishop said. Soon, because of the government’s determination to slice £350m out of its annual £2.1bn legal aid budget, the number who can be helped will fall by two-thirds to 40,000. In an unusually forthright speech that appeared to address those concerns directly, Lady Hale voiced worries circulating in the broader legal community about problems of access to justice for the less well-off. “There is a well-known ironic saying,” she said in a speech to the Law Society on Monday evening, that “in England, justice is open to all – like the Ritz.” Legal aid was now being removed from “most civil and legal cases”, she noted. But providing legal advice at an early stage, she said, could often save greater costs for government agencies at a later stage when problems spiralled out of control. “These plans will, of course, have a disproportionate effect upon the poorest and most vulnerable in society.” British courts, she said, have had to defend right of access to the courts in the face of government insistence that the civil justice system should pay for itself. Her speech, which she entitled Equal Access to Justice in the Big Society, is – not least because of its timing – likely to be received as a direct challenge to one of the government’s major cost-cutting measures. It will intensify recent concerns, expressed over superinjunctions, about relations between parliament and the judiciary. Proposals in the government’s bill to introduce means-testing in police stations for those arrested to ascertain whether they are entitled to legal advice also came in for fierce criticism from the Law Society, the body that represents solicitors. Des Hudson, the organisation’s president, said: “We will go back to the excesses of the 1970s and run the risk of people being verballed [have false incriminating statements recorded] by police officers if there are no solicitors available to advise those who have been arrested.” Legal aid Brenda Hale UK supreme court Public sector cuts Owen Bowcott guardian.co.uk

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