Lord Neuberger warns UK has ‘serious problem’ with access to justice

The UK has a ‘serious problem’ with access to justice, the president of the Supreme Court has said.

In a welcome address to the Australian Bar Association in London, Lord Neuberger said legal advice must be “sensibly affordable to ordinary people and businesses” and that access to justice “is a practical, not a hypothetical, requirement”.

He added that without it, “society will eventually start to fragment”, before noting that there is a “serious risk that the rule of law is first taken for granted, is next consequently ignored, and is then lost”.

The top judge also pointed out the irony of eroding access and representation rights “at a time when we have never been more concerned to ensure that all citizens enjoy rights”.

He said: “In this country, it is less than seventy years that we signed up to the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, less than 65 years since we subscribed to the European Convention on Human Rights, and less than twenty years that we effectively made the Convention part of our domestic law.”

Read the full address here.