A Bar Council report on Access to Justice in England and Wales in 2022 has condemned the “catastrophic” impact across the board of recent cuts to legal aid.
Poor access to legal aid creates a “snowball effect”, as explained by the Council:
“As fee rates become unsustainable for the legal services market and fewer people can access legal aid to pay for legal advice, there are challenges around the retention of experienced practitioners as solicitors’ firms close and barristers move to other areas of work.
Advice deserts are created where people in certain geographic areas do not have local access to legal aid providers.
Individuals are then forced to seek free advice, or represent themselves as litigants in person, or let their legal needs go unmet – which is not always possible and can result in those needs becoming more complex.”
The report also lays bare the impact the funding cuts of 24% between 2010 and 2019 – which go far beyond legal aid alone – have had on those working in the legal sector.
The Bar Council say in recent years they have observed legal aid barristers have “increasingly sought to diversify their practices away from legal aid work” amidst “intense pressure of workload and poor remuneration”.
This has led to connected issues such as wellbeing, retention of practitioners, and working culture that the Bar Council say “directly result from underfunding in the system”.
As well as this, the closure of 43% of courts in England and Wales since 2010 has had a “dramatic” impact on the principle of local justice, with 65% of parliamentary constituencies and 47% of local authority areas now without an active local court.
The report also notes wider considerations around resourcing of courts in terms of staff and facilities, and in listing practices. Barristers talk frequently of courts being understaffed, with poor procedures, and the staff that remain can at times be massively overburdened. Tales of “sick courts” are commonplace among legal professionals:
“In one of the main London courts, a lawyer had to hold a hearing under an umbrella as the court roof was leaking. In a court in the south east of England, sewage poured down the walls for months. At one Welsh court, they had only just managed to cure the infestation of fleas when the roof fell in.”
The Bar Council suggest all of this has “damaged the ability of some people to participate in their own court proceedings” – yet remote hearings are not always the solution:
“While remote hearings are welcomed in many circumstances, there are valuable practices and interactions in physical proceedings which cannot feature online.”
The Council continued:
“Some vulnerable clients, particularly those with intersecting needs such as learning difficulties, lack of access to technology, a lack of privacy when discussing sensitive issues, and those at risk of domestic abuse, can find that remote hearings do not meet their needs. The court can be unaware of these problems, partly as it is harder for legal professionals to identify vulnerabilities remotely. Family practitioners were particularly concerned about vulnerable participants in court proceedings.”
All of this, combined with “the present pace of change and the rhetoric around the rule of law and the role of lawyers”, means it is “a time to be scared”, according to one participant in a Bar Council workshop discussion group.
Another consequence of the lack of time for planning and reflection is a culture of “last-minute work and constant firefighting” – something that contributes towards a culture of bullying and toxic working conditions, with the Bar Council noting the family sector is one of the most affected.
The solution, says the Bar Council, is clear:
“It has felt in recent months as though the passive starving by the Government of the justice system through lack of finance has changed in tone to active hostility, which is a source of grievance to those currently working overtime to prop up the crumbling system.
[The solution is] long-term planning and resourcing of a system that is equipped to provide the legal redress to which people are entitled.”
Read the full report here: https://www.barcouncil.org.uk/uploads/assets/88a28ac3-5866-4d73-99ecb9b05c03c815/Bar-Council-Access-denied-November-2022.pdf
