On 21 February 2024, we at Young Legal Aid Lawyers found ourselves in a familiar situation. It was the day of the deadline for responses to the call for evidence for the Review of Civil Legal Aid, and we had poured all effort (and then some) into our submission.

In our response, we went back into our archives, pointing out to the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) that the crisis that we are in now was entirely predictable. Among other things, we highlighted the ‘foundational myth’ of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, addressed the retention and recruitment crisis, and reiterated our calls for an urgent and long-term uplift in fees. We are proud of what we put together and, given the ‘deluge’ of evidence received by the MoJ, took some strength in knowing that we were not alone in laying bare the scale of the crisis.

The government’s immediate response to that exercise was all too predictable: despite being presented with a mountain of evidence speaking to the urgency of the crisis, the MoJ kicked the review into the long grass.

Where do we go from here? We are still hopeful (perhaps naively so) that the body of evidence submitted to the Review of Civil Legal Aid will, at some point, come good. However, we remain acutely aware that substantive legal aid reform is not on the political agenda and we doubt that a government-initiated review will get it there.

That’s why, over the past few months, we’ve been working with Migrants Organise on the second iteration of a campaign called Take Your MP to Work. We first ran it in 2019, then working closely with Legal Aid Practitioners Group. We want to build on the success of the last campaign and this time want to highlight both the endeavours of legal aid lawyers and the vital work done by support organisations in our communities.

As the name suggests, Take Your MP to Work is all about bringing MPs (and prospective MPs) to the front line of legal aid and advice. We’ve designed the campaign to make it as easy as possible for people to take part, with a participant toolkit, template emails and tweets, how-to guides, and materials needed for the visit itself.

Information about how to get involved is available on our website. We’ll be hosting drop-in sessions to help participants reach out to their MPs and plan their visits. Our ambition is for a wave of visits to legal aid firms, Law Centres and other advice organisations to take place throughout June and July 2024.

It being election season, we’re guaranteed to see an uptick in politicians parading around in hi-vis jackets and hard hats touring building sites, or with their sleeves up walking through local clinics. They do these things to show ‘they’re interested’. In that same vein, we want to see them fielding calls from constituents in need, wrestling with the Client and Cost Management System, and visiting crumbling courtrooms.

As many submissions to the Review of Civil Legal Aid show, there is no shortage of evidence that funding legal aid is not only a prerequisite for ensuring access to justice and the protection of our fundamental rights, but is also a fiscally responsible intervention that provides downstream benefits for the state.

We want to bring that evidence to life by showing MPs and prospective parliamentary candidates the present state of legal aid: the work that legal aid lawyers and advice and support workers are doing on a shoestring, what legal aid reform would mean for their constituents, and the impact that the legal aid crisis is already having. The campaign will not only help identify current and future MPs who will act as our allies in future parliaments, but will also reinforce the local community links capable of sustaining the energy that we’ll need in the months and years to come.

We recognise that it’s increasingly difficult to feel hope in the possibility that positive, transformative change can be achieved through our political representatives and institutions at this moment in time, but simply giving up on them undermines the power that we hold as workers and communities. In bringing current and potential MPs to the front line, we aim to give legal aid lawyers and advice workers, particularly those who don’t hold positions of authority in their firms or organisations, a platform through which to show the power of legal aid work, the current realities of the system, and the urgent reform that is needed.