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Turning the tide
Abit like good comedy, calling general elections used to all come down to timing; a prime minister could wait until the political winds were blowing fair before going to the country. However, one of the welcome reforms of the present coalition government was to give up this power. The Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 has determined the date of the next general election and so, assuming that there is no meltdown in the coalition (for example, a no-confidence vote could force the election before the fixed-term ends), the date of the election will be 5 May 2015. So, with 12 months to go, what are the legal issues that are likely to figure in the general election campaign and how do we raise the profile of our concerns around access to justice policy?
The results of the local council elections in England and Northern Ireland and the European elections being held this month might well have some bearing on setting the agenda for the general election campaign. Large gains for the UK Independence Party (UKIP) will lead to the main political parties, particularly the Conservatives, trying to win back voters from UKIP. As part of this strategy, it is more than likely that the Conservatives will campaign on a platform of offering a referendum on the UK’s relationship with the European Union (EU) and link this with a commitment to repeal the Human Rights Act (HRA) 1998.
Even if the country voted to remain in the EU, a Conservative administration might still look to, in some way, water down the UK’s obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights (‘the convention’). This would land a Conservative government in a constitutional and legal quagmire, as EU membership is conditional on being a signatory to the convention. To get around this problem, it might look to offer some reconfigured HRA in a UK bill of rights, something which was considered but dropped by the last Labour government.
Related to the perceived threat from UKIP, the main political parties might offer further law reform in an attempt to restrict immigration. The political problems with this, we believe, are threefold. First, despite the rhetoric, the impact of changes to immigration law on net migration is limited and, second, the indications are that the UK economy is highly dependent on migrants for their skills and knowledge. The third point we would make is to emphasise the injustices that successive ‘reforms’ to immigration are causing already. As part of our campaigning work in the run-up to the general election, LAG will publish the report Chasing status, which highlights the human stories behind the complexities of immigration law.
Turning to access to justice policy, over the past four years LAG, like many organisations, has found itself becoming increasingly critical of the coalition government’s undermining of the rule of law. This is best illustrated by the administration’s brazen attempt to curtail the executive’s accountability to the courts by trying to restrict the use of judicial review.
As Legal Action readers would expect, much of LAG’s work before the general election will focus on access to justice. Part of our strategy to influence the political parties is the Low Commission, which will shift gear from an inquiry into the future of advice and legal support to a campaign to persuade the political parties to adopt its recommendations. These include the establishment of a £100m National Advice and Legal Support Fund to provide frontline legal advice services in social welfare law.
We are deeply concerned about the decimation of the civil legal aid system and the lack of take up of services that remain in scope. Much of our campaigning work will focus on trying to restore to the scope of civil legal aid what we see as essential cases: for example, advice on refugee family reunion and benefit advice, especially in relation to housing. LAG believes that the Justice Committee’s inquiry into the impact of changes to civil legal aid under the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 is an opportunity both to investigate the impact of the civil legal scope changes on clients and to provide a platform to argue for the restoration of areas of law to public funding (see page 6 of this issue).
Over the next year, Legal Action readers will be the first to receive information on a series of research projects which have been initiated by LAG to help to build the argument for greater resources to assist people facing civil legal problems. We also hope that Legal Action readers and supporters will play their part in raising the profile of access to justice issues. We must grasp the opportunity that the general election campaign gives us to turn the tide against the erosion of legal rights and access to justice.