Post by nickd on Sept 5, 2011 0:24:49 GMT 1
We really should be emailing/tweeting this out to every Liberal MP folks, excellent article in the Guardian today!...
Liberal Democrats urged to defy plans to cut legal aid
Party's lawyers' association labels reforms a 'constitutional outrage' as Labour seeks to create split in coalition over bill
[Remember Legal Aid also funds many CAB & Law Centres to give essential social welfare advice such as housing, employment, welfare benefits, employment; - without it many CAB will be forced to close!!]
The Guardian, Monday 5 September 2011
"Kenneth Clarke, the justice secretary, wants to cut £350m from the legal aid budget "
Photograph: Andy Hall for the Guardian
Liberal Democrat MPs are coming under intensifying pressure to defy the coalition government over the bill cutting entitlement to legal aid and reforming compensation payments for victims.
The chairman of the Liberal Democrats Lawyers' Association (LDLA), Alistair Webster QC, has called the changes a "constitutional outrage" and a "litmus test of whether there's any point being in the coalition".
Labour opponents have tabled a series of amendments to the legal aid, sentencing and punishment of offenders (nicknamed Laspo) bill aimed at splitting Lib Dem MPs off from their Conservative coalition partners. MPs on the committee stage of the bill resume their examination of its complex clauses on Tuesday. There are several Lib Dem MPs on the committee.
The chairman of the Criminal Bar Association, Max Hill QC, who took up office this month, has at the same time launched a fierce attack on the proposals, telling the government: "You can destroy the publicly funded bar if you want, but you will want it back when it is too late to recover what you have lost.
"It is puerile to dismiss our arguments as little more than financial self-interest, when the criminal bar has for decades proven that it is efficient and exceptionally hard-working."
The justice secretary, Ken Clarke, wants to reduce "spiralling legal costs" by cutting £350m out of the legal aid budget and limiting no win, no fee – also known as contingency fee – agreements. The reform will force claimants to pay their lawyers' success fees out of any compensation payments – a change that will render many cases financially unattractive.
Labour has argued that restricting no win, no fee agreements and withdrawing entitlement to legal aid in areas such as housing, clinical negligence and benefits amounts to "dismantling an entire plank" of the welfare state. "We don't understand how the Lib Dems are standing by and letting this happen," one party official said.
The shadow justice minister, Andy Slaughter, who has put down many of the amendments to the Laspo bill, said: "We intend to force the Tories and Liberal Democrats to justify why they think it's right to restrict legal aid for children, the disabled [and] victims of medical negligence or bad decision-making by the state.
"The government seems to think that someone with, say, mental health problems or special educational needs can navigate the legal system without help. They're wrong and we're going to hold them to account."
One fear is the courts will become congested with more litigants in person pursuing cases without legal advice.
Other amendments seek to reverse cuts to legal aid for suing multinational companies, privacy claims and insolvency. Labour is threatening to prolong the committee stage late into the night by forcing each of more than 20 amendments to a vote.
On the bill's proposals to restrict no win, no fee agreements, Slaughter said it would make vast swaths of the law "unenforceable". He added: "Victims of wrongdoing by multinational companies, [cases] like Trafigura, phone hacking, pension mis-selling or asbestosis sufferers will find it impossible to get justice. It will create a culture of impunity for wrongdoers and those with no regard for the wellbeing of others."
Political pressure on the Lib Dems also comes from within the party. A fringe meeting of the LDLA scheduled for 18 September, the first day of the party conference in Birmingham, is entitled, How can the party's policies be fed into the governments programme? Tom Brake, a Lib Dem member reviewing the committee stage of the bill, will be one of the speakers.
At its spring conference this year, before the bill was published, the Lib Dems passed a motion rejecting plans to slice £350m out of the legal aid budget and calling for other means of saving money. Webster said: "Every single aspect of that motion has been ignored. At the fringe meeting we will be calling on the parliamentary party to accept our party policy."
See link for full article...
aggbot.com/link.php?id=14713954&r=tw&t=lib