Authors:LAG
Created:2016-12-01
Last updated:2023-09-18
Bach Commission on Access to Justice interim report published
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Administrator
The Fabian Society has published an interim report from the Commission on Access to Justice headed by former Labour legal aid minister Lord Bach. The commission has been meeting since January 2016 and its final report is due to be published next year.
The report, The crisis in the justice system in England and Wales (Fabian Society, November 2016), provides a critique of the system’s capacity to provide access to justice in many types of case. An analysis of the cuts across government in the report shows that the 34 per cent reduction in the Ministry of Justice budget from 2010/11 to 2015/16 is second only to that of the Department for Work and Pensions. The report suggests that the cuts in scope introduced by the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 have made worse what was already a steep decline in the proportion of the population who are entitled to help from legal aid. The failure of exceptional case funding, court closures and increases in tribunal fees are also cited as contributing to a reduction in access to justice.
Five strands are outlined for the commission’s future work:
Minimum standards: it will consider setting ‘minimum standards for access to justice to be enshrined clearly in law’.
Legal aid: among a number of policy options it will consider reforming the Legal Aid Agency, eligibility for legal aid and the gateway telephone service.
Public legal education and capability: the commission wants to prioritise the development of public legal education as it believes it is ‘cost-effective’.
Legal advice and integration: the commission believes ‘advice is uneven across the country’, which suggests that better integration of services is needed.
Technological innovation: an online portal, an innovation fund and alternative dispute resolution are suggested as the three main policy directions in this strand.
Responding to the report, LAG’s director, Steve Hynes, said it agrees with the commission’s focus on civil justice and its approach of seeking to set minimum standards for access to justice. However, he warned, ‘the difficult bit is yet to come, which is providing the policy detail to meet these standards’.1LAG’s policy manager, James Sandbach, is an adviser to the commission in a private capacity.
As part of its efforts to raise money to complete the second phase of the project, the Fabian Society has established a crowdfunding appeal at CrowdJustice.
 
1     LAG’s policy manager, James Sandbach, is an adviser to the commission in a private capacity. »