Which is more valuable to our country, a national care service along NHS principles or a properly functioning justice system? If the triple lock on pensions is to be loosened, to which of the two should the cash be allocated?
In an ideal world, of course, we wouldn’t have to choose. But it is interesting to note that in the recent debate over the triple lock and a national care service, no-one has even suggested that the newly-found money would be better spent on justice.
Why is that? Is it because justice has been degraded under successive governments – the quick turnover of Lord Chancellors, the appointment of people without demonstrable experience for the job, ensuring that the public takes no interest – or is it because, even if a political giant were appointed Lord Chancellor, justice would still fall lower in priority than defence or social security. Yet justice guarantees security and the rule of law; to put it at its most basic, if the courts and prisons stopped working overnight, violence and insecurity would spiral, and far more resources would need to be spent to contain them.
We may see matters through different eyes because we are lawyers. We have a conflict of interest in the importance we give to justice. If any of us were Prime Minister and had to make decisions over the whole range of national interests, would we continue to give such importance to justice? Would we not join with those who see a national care service as more important?
If we are not realistic, we will not develop the correct policy for the future. At the same Labour Party conference at which the national care service priority was launched, a long-lasting justice minister (two years!) made it clear that there would be no more money for legal aid:
‘Part of the essay question is how do we make the money we have got work harder? I wish I had an extra billion pounds but even then it probably would not touch the sides of the issues we have.’
There you have it: no more money, but in any case the amount of money needed is astronomical. A couple of the available solutions were canvassed, and it turned out that the scheme to divert interest on lawyers’ client accounts towards general justice projects was unsurprisingly given a positive welcome by the minister, while a levy on big firms’ profits was pushed towards the ‘too difficult’ box. The fact that lawyers have almost universally opposed the scheme on interest on clients’ accounts doesn’t seem to have pushed the government even an inch in our direction.
What do lawyers do when the government says it will no longer take our interests and values seriously enough to spend the necessary money to guarantee them? We have seen a bit of the public reaction from the recent early release of some prisoners; there was unhappiness from victims and their families, enough to ensure a tweaking of the scheme, but not enough to stop it. (How could it be stopped? The prisons are full and no new places are being built because of lack of money.)
If someone were to insist that we must save justice ourselves, we have all the arguments ready to oppose the suggestion: we already pay tax to the state and so shouldn’t have to pay twice for justice; doctors aren’t asked to guarantee the NHS, nor plumbers to pay for the sewage system, and so on. It seems that we are happy to watch the justice system sink below the waves because others refuse to take their proper responsibility and prefer other national emergencies over justice.
Yet the legal system is in a Dickensian state. As the Law Society’s recent International Data Insights report showed, one end of the profession is flourishing as never before. London is a world centre for international dispute resolution, the lawyers involved in that work paid handsomely, and English law used around the world. At the other end are the modern equivalent of Victorian children begging in rags. Do we not have a duty ourselves to take matters in hand, and not wait for the state to act, when it is clear that it will no longer do so?
Interestingly, the minister said that early treatment of problems saves on high spending further down the line, which is clearly true. Is that a way to focus our policy-making? In an extremely modest way, I am part of a national advice-giving service, and see clients weekly with legal problems at the start of their disputes. I am nearly always giving not legal advice, but practical counsel about whom to see next, what to say, how to cobble together a workable solution. Maybe we lawyers should be lobbying the minister in that direction?
Jonathan Goldsmith is Law Society Council member for EU & International, chair of the Law Society’s Policy & Regulatory Affairs Committee and a member of its board. All views expressed are personal and are not made in his capacity as a Law Society Council member, nor on behalf of the Law Society
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