England: Top lawyers protest at ‘human misery’ of Legal Aid cuts

In an open letter to the Guardian, the signatories – who include former appeal court judges, a chief inspector of prisons and a reviewer of terrorism legislation – have condemned cuts made by the coalition government for depriving “hundreds of thousands of people” access to justice.

The letter warns that without recourse to the courts, “inequalities take on a more dangerous edge which threaten the legitimacy of not just the justice system but our democracy”.

The plea of the 138 professionals, who represent a broad alliance of those working within the courts, reflects a collective anxiety that the issue of legal aid has not been raised adequately during the election campaign.

The Ministry of Justice is one of the departments expected to suffer further cuts whichever party or coalition comes to power after 7 May, with its spending unlikely to be ringfenced.

Annual expenditure on civil and criminal justice, which stood at £2bn a year in 2010 – equivalent to “the cost of running the NHS for a fortnight” – has now dropped to £1.5bn, the letter says. The number of debt cases supported by legal aid fell from 81,792 to 2,423 over a one-year period.

It sates, “Funding in family law cases dropped by 60% causing a predicted rise in unrepresented defendants, a trend now also starting to be seen in the criminal courts.

“With cuts and debilitating restructuring comes the spectre of advice deserts, widespread miscarriages of justice, hundreds of thousands denied redress and the draining of the talent pool of future lawyers and judges as young people increasingly choose a career away from civil and criminal law.”

The retired appeal court judges who have signed the letter are Sir Anthony Hooper, Sir Stephen Sedley, visiting professor at Oxford University, and Sir Alan Moses, who now heads the Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso). Another ex-judge, Barrington Black, has added his support.

The letter was organised by solicitors Rhona Friedman of the Justice Alliance and Zoe Gascoyne of the Criminal Law Solicitors’ Association.Ian Lawrence, general secretary of the probation union Napo, as well as a large number of psychiatrists and clinical psychologists who work in the courts have also added their names.

The letter concludes: “We call upon the next government to abandon the highly controversial restructuring of criminal defence, restore legal help to the many currently without redress and to establish a royal commission to investigate the current crisis regarding the diminution of access to justice.”

Robin Murray of the Criminal Law Solicitors’ Association, who has also signed the letter, told The Guardian: “YouGov polling shows that 89% of the public believe access to justice, underpinned by legal aid, is a fundamental right. The legal experts and opinion formers who have added their signatures to the letter recognise this and know that if the current reforms are kept in place equality before the law will become a distant memory.”