When we elect our government one
of the things we entrust them with is the strings to the public purse. The problem
with money is that it is a finite resource – you can’t spend as much money as
you would like on everything, you have to prioritise. This is what our
politicians do on our behalf. Now, Britain’s economy has entered a double dip in
the first quarter of 2012 so instead of being on our way out of the recession we
have actually regressed and are in greater financial difficulty than we were in
the last quarter of 2011. All eyes are even more firmly fixed on the coalition on
making us money. What’s the most obvious way of making money? I’m no economist
but I would say a safe bet is concentrating resources on investments, and
cutting funds to areas which offer no prospect of returns. Legal aid is one such
area which can offer no returns. It is essentially a hand out to those in need
of access to the legal system to address a complaint. And so, unsurprisingly
the current government saw the pre existing legal aid as a bit of an
inconvenience in the current economic climate. They decided that really, it was
time that it just went away. And if life and democracy was purely about
economics and getting rid of any inconveniences that hinder economic growth
that would be fine. But sadly, politics is about more than money and economics
- it’s also about principles. And this is something the Tories seem to have
completely forgotten when they decided to completely eradicate legal aid in the
UK.
The proposals which have just gone
through Parliament make it official – the legal aid budget is now pratically
non-existent. All in all the government plans to save a massive £350 billion
from its legal aid cuts. This will mean that more people who have been wronged
by a private party or the government itself could be denied access to the legal
process. Why do I think that this a terrible thing? Because it strikes to the
very heart of what we consider the purpose of the law to be. Part of the
justification for allowing the law to impose obligations on each individual is
that there is a reciprocal benefit incurred from the public at large complying
with the law. In other words, you follow the law, in part, because the
integrity of the law protects you as well. It stops you from doing a variety of
things, but in return you yourself are protected by the assurance that if
someone breaks the law to your detriment, the legal system will intervene to
remedy the situation. But this assurance becomes meaningless if in practice you
cannot access the legal system because of financial barriers. The poorest, most
vulnerable and those most in need of protection will not be given funding to
make a complaint. As well as undermining one of the key theoretical functions
of the law, on a practical level these reforms will also do great damage. Those
already on the margins of society will feel further excluded as the legal
system could be seen as recourse only for the wealthy and elite. The cuts have
been attacked for being particularly reckless in regard to women who have been
subject to domestic abuse. The Telegraph reported recently that an Equality
Impact Assessment found 361,200 women will lose their access to legal aid for
cases involving debt, education, family, housing, public law and welfare
benefit cases. That is a huge number of losses for just one specific group of
legal aid beneficiaries to account for. You
can see that it is not outrageous in any way to claim that these cuts will mean
the death of legal aid.
The main problem is that our
attention as voters is often not focused on issues like this. People do not prioritise
legal aid as a key party policy until it actually affects them. Then the individual
involved will become interested in the legal system and the remedy it could
afford them. However, the general public is more interested in things which they
know will definitely affect them. How much the government decides to tax us
will definitely affect each one of us. So we are all very interested in how
much someone in our income will be taxed - hence the attention focused on
George Osbourne’s most recent budget. Legal aid on the other hand is something
which will ever come close to directly benefiting everyone. In fact, in
practice, the cuts will only affect a very small section of society. But the
point is that in theory it could affect
a larger cross section of society and this is why symbolically the cuts to
legal aid leave true democracy on shaky ground. For a democracy is only true
and real when effectively includes and provides protection for all of its
citizens, and the legal aid cuts leave gaping holes.
This is why it is important that
more people understand how important the role of an effective legal system is
to a modern democracy. Those who are able to write and condemn this shameless
corner cutting should. It is critically important that we get people to think
about what kind of society they want to be a part of, as opposed to focusing
purely on immediate fixes. Don’t get me wrong, the economy is a mess and the
government must recover funds from somewhere. But vast and reckless cuts to the
legal aid cannot and should not be tolerated, less we lose our democratic
integrity entirely.
