One of the themes emerging from this week’s extended look at the sweeping reform of legal aid currently going through Parliament is that lawyers in general struggle to mount effective campaigns for worthwhile shifts in public policy. In the case of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill, it was always going to be an uphill struggle.
Lawyers aren’t that popular on the Clapham omnibus and that kind of painfully complex reform is very difficult to energise debate with. This political reality is why legal aid, despite being a relatively tiny slice of social provision, has seen its budget already curtailed considerably during the last decade – its current £2.1bn level actually peaked in real terms 10% higher back in 2003-04. All this before the Government gears up to knock another £350m annually off the budget via a huge withdrawal of civil legal aid.
