News feature
LASPO Act review begins to take evidence
The Ministry of Justice’s (MoJ’s) review of the legislation it used to cut legal aid was a long time coming, and now here it is shrouded in mystery.
About the author
Richard Doughty is policy and public affairs manager at CILEx.
The Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders (LASPO) Act was passed, in 2012, as part of austerity measures to reduce public spending. It effectively reversed the approach taken by the Access to Justice Act 1999, changing the system from one which said that legal aid was available unless explicitly ‘excluded’, to one that only provided legal aid for matters explicitly ‘included’.
The LASPO Act also made more stringent eligibility criteria, and provided for exceptional case funding that, in the early years at least, was rarely ever given. This was the explicit intent of the legislation.
The consultation, in 2010, that paved the way for the LASPO Act stated the government’s aims as: ‘to discourage unnecessary and adversarial litigation at public expense; to target legal aid at those who need it most; to make significant savings to the cost of the scheme; and to deliver better overall value for money for the taxpayer’.¹ In the government’s eyes, the impact of the LASPO Act has been precisely what was intended.
Those who provided legal aid services before the LASPO Act’s implementation either changed their business model to focus on different areas of law, or they just closed altogether, leaving advice deserts in some areas. CILEx, along with many other organisations, campaigned vigorously to maintain legal aid, and have witnessed - with distress - the collapse in the number of people receiving support and the decimation of types of legal advice in certain geographic areas, particularly housing law.
In the intervening years, the calls for legal aid to be reinstated have been subdued only by the reality that the political climate made it not at all likely to make a difference. Arguably, this has not changed; however, the impact that cuts have had is compounding, and campaigners are looking to the recently announced ‘Post-Implementation Review of LASPO’ as a fleeting opportunity to make their case.²
Many are disappointed though, as, largely, the review is being conducted behind closed doors. The MoJ has convened four ‘consultative groups’, which will proffer relevant data and evidence in the fields of family, civil, criminal, and the advice sector - the membership of which the MoJ only disclosed to fellow attendees. While ostensibly there will be opportunities for concerned parties, including CILEx members, to give their evidence and experience, there are concerns about the lack of transparency and accountability in the review.
The review, which originally was announced to take place three to five years after implementation of the LASPO Act, has already slipped behind schedule. It was intended to report its findings this summer, but the report is now rumoured to be delayed until next year. Few expect the outcome radically to change the government’s policy on legal aid; however, most at least wish for the review to be conducted as if its outcome was not a foregone conclusion.
1 Proposals for the reform of legal aid in England and Wales, available at: https://tinyurl.com/yc4geuvo
2 For details visit: https://tinyurl.com/ybx66dt2