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Reaction to LAG report on fall in civil legal aid cases
LAG published the report Civil legal aid – the secret legal service? last month. The report found a much smaller take up of legal help cases in social welfare law (SWL) for the first quarter of the year 2013/14, than had been predicted by the government. The findings of the report are based on figures published by the Legal Aid Agency (LAA) after the introduction of the scope cuts under the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, which came into force from 1 April 2013.
Commenting on the report, Claire Blades, Legal Services Policy and Development Manager at Citizens Advice, said she believed that the reduction was caused by a combination of the scope cuts, the difficulty practitioners now had in identifying cases which qualified for legal aid and the problems clients might be experiencing in successfully navigating the new telephone-based gateway process to access expert advice on discrimination and debt matters.
‘I think that there is a problem about identification of clients who are eligible. The scope rules are so complex now that it is much harder for generalist services [such as those provided by Citizens Advice Bureaux] to accurately make a judgment. This is particularly the case in housing. In the past, referral agencies could make a sufficiently accurate assessment of eligibility to make effective referrals’, she said.
Claire Blades was also concerned that ‘public discussion about legal aid has inevitably focused on reductions rather than what remains in scope. I can’t help feeling that this has left an indelible impression that legal aid is no longer available’.
Vicky Ling, co-editor of the LAG legal aid handbook 2013/14, said that she was pleased that the report had highlighted the issue of the reduced take up of matter starts. She pointed out, though, that the 135 new welfare benefits cases that were commenced in April, May and June this year were not likely to be cases being run down from the previous scheme as the report suggested, but must be Upper Tribunal cases, and that there are ‘probably more than might have been expected’.