The Law Society has serious concerned over the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill.
Part 1 of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill will:
- Severely restrict the scope of civil legal aid, including the abolition of legal aid for the victims of clinical negligence and in most civil and family law cases.
- Potentially breach the UK's human rights obligations by providing for exceptional case funding that is unlikely to adequately ensure practical and effective protection of the right of access to the courts.
- Throw the courts system into chaos by substantially increasing the number of litigants in person who may be ill-equipped to navigate the legal system alone.
- Potentially jeopardise the fundamental right of legal advice in the police station. Clause 12 gives the lord chancellor the power to introduce a means and merits test for advice in custody, raising the possibility that miscarriages of justice may occur.
- Save considerably less than the government claims because of substantial knock-on costs to other departments. The Ministry of Justice has failed to undertake sufficient quantitative research into the potential extent of these additional costs.
Part 2 of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill will:
- Make conditional fee agreements (CFAs) virtually inaccessible to most people by reforming the success fee element so as to make such agreements uneconomical in lower value, higher risk, or higher complexity cases.
- Reduce the compensation received by successful parties via the same reform. This will cause hardship to thousands of genuine claimants, and many businesses with contractual claims will lose money even when they win the claim.
- Inhibit access to justice by making after-the-event (ATE) insurance too expensive for the majority of claimants. Such insurance is currently necessary in many cases for parties to be able to bring their claim by protecting them against financial ruin in the event that they lose.
- Deny access to justice for middle income families, individuals, businesses, and the victims of clinical negligence who will find it more difficult to make a claim for any wrong they have suffered.
- Introduce a flawed ban on referral fees in personal injury claims. The ban, as currently drafted, will result in unintended consequences that will have a serious impact on the day to day management, conduct and marketing of solcitors' businesses