Law experts urge Hackney Council to join campaign to fight legal aid cuts

Photo: Hackney Citizen

Many people may in future not be able to get access to justice, as legal aid is being cut. Hackney Council is being urged to become the first local authority to back a campaign against government proposals to drastically reduce the financial support offered to those fighting for their rights in the courts.

The proposed cuts, put forward in a white paper by Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke in November, are likely to have a devastating and disproportionate impact on Hackney’s most vulnerable, according to a bevy of local legal services.

At a meeting (of the council’s community safety and social inclusion scrutiny commission on Monday 14 February) discussing the cuts’ implications, Steve Hynes, Director of the Legal Action Group (LAG) suggested the council would send a strong message in joining the Justice for All campaign, currently backed by Hackney Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB) and Hackney Community Law Centre (HCLC). He said, “It is not good enough for councils to pick up the pieces of reckless government decisions”, calling on Whitehall to hold a “proper impact assessment”. LAG is a national lobbying group for access to justice.

Members of the council’s scrutiny panel heard that changes to legal aid would leave CAB and HCLC without at least half their current funding, and heavy or total restrictions on their ability to offer legal advice on debt, welfare, housing, family, education and immigration matters. The Law Centre may have to close while the Citizens’ Advice Bureau faces severe cutbacks to infrastructure and service provision. The panel also heard of the likely reduced scope for centres to effectively train future local volunteers.

Government suggestions for alternatives to the current system of legal advice and representation include a legal hotline and greater mediation outside the civil courts. Speaking to the Citizen, HCLC’s Nathaniel Morris questioned how this mediation would work, saying it would be “ridiculous to expect many vulnerable people to navigate complex legal applications and paperwork on their own”.

Echoing these objections, Cllr Ian Rathbone said the proposals were evidence that “David Cameron’s idea of a Big Society is a sham”.

A consultation period into the proposals ended on the 14 February, with submissions from CAB and Cllr Jonathan McShane.