Big majority backs free legal advice

More than eight out of 10 people believe civil legal advice should be free for people on average earnings or below. This conviction is consistent across all social classes, a nationwide opinion poll has found, raising fresh questions over the government’s mandate for swingeing legal aid cuts.

Civil legal aid is expected to bear the brunt of 350m in savings to the total budget for legal aid signalled in the recent comprehensive spending review. Eligibility levels for civil legal aid, which are just above means-tested benefit levels, fall ‘well short’ of the public’s expectations, the survey found.

With local authorities also facing deep cuts, the funding squeeze is likely to be exacerbated by the fact that advice on social welfare law is not a statutory responsibility of councils, other than in homelessness applications.

The representative survey of 1,000 adults was commissioned by independent charity the Legal Action Group (LAG) and carried out last month by market researcher GfK NOP. Some 84% of respondents said advice on civil law problems relating to matters such as money, benefits, employment and housing should either be free to everyone or free to those on or below average earnings. Just one in 10 believes such services should only be available to those on benefits.

There exists ‘a strong culture of fair play’ in respect of legal rights across social classes, said LAG: ‘People believe the state should pay for legal advice to help people when things go wrong.’ Indeed, a slightly larger proportion (39%) of people in social class AB believed that everyone should be entitled to free advice regardless of how much it costs than in social class DE (37%). ‘Their expectation seems to be, even if a problem is not likely to affect them, there should be state-funded services to give legal advice to people who do experience common civil law problems,’ said LAG.

Speaking at a Westminster Legal Policy Forum event last Monday, justice minister Jonathan Djanogly (pictured) said proposals for legal aid reform would be published ‘very soon’.

The reforms should not be ‘piecemeal’, he stressed, and should be designed so the system helps those most in need.

Hinting that family legal aid is in the line of fire, he added: ‘I find that too often in modern society people are too willing to hand over to the state the resolution of their personal problems. I believe that legal advice should be directed to where there is a matter of genuine legal concern, or personal liberty or security is at stake.’

He said court should be the ‘last resort’ and that the Ministry of Justice has been looking into the further potential of alternative dispute resolution, and in particular mediation.