The government’s legal aid cuts are aimed at lawyers, the justice secretary Kenneth Clarke said today, as he rejected the Law Society’s claims that they will harm access to justice for the disadvantaged.

Speaking on Radio 4’s Today programme, Clarke said: ‘We’re not taking legal aid away from women and children. We’re taking legal aid away from lawyers.’ He said that the Legal Aid Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill (LASPO), which returns to the House of Lords this afternoon, does not close anybody’s access to justice.

‘Access to justice will still be there. What this bill is all about is the amount of money we pay to lawyers,’ he said.

Clarke said that the courts are normally available only to the very rich or the very poor, and that mediation would be a better way to deal with many disputes rather than ‘expensive adversarial litigation’.

He accepted that he ‘still doesn’t know’ why so much is spent on the court system, but said that the government is working to improve it. ‘The system itself needs modernising. It’s run for the convenience of lawyers and for the convenience of lawyers,’ Clarke said.

‘The courts should be a public service to which ordinary people of ordinary means can have access on those rare occasions when he or she needs it.’ This could be achieved through no win, no fee arrangements instead of the ‘ludicrous amounts’ of taxpayers’ money spent on legal aid.

Clarke criticised the lobbying by the Law Society and other groups over legal aid funding, claiming that is has meant 'the taxpayer paying for a lot of legal representation'.

He also poured scorn on some lobbying against the LASPO bill, making reference to ‘all the emails bombarding the House of Lords saying the end is nigh unless they pass some very expensive amendments'.

In a lively exchange Clarke told the Law Society’s chief executive Desmond Hudson that he had nothing to fear from the bill, saying ‘the money will still flow in to the legal profession’.

Hudson reiterated the Society’s concerns that the bill will deny access to justice and will cost taxpayers more money than the cuts would save. The 4% of lawyers who do legal aid work earn around £25,000 a year, far less than they would if they did other types of work, he said. ‘No solicitor chooses to do legal aid to get rich. People who are doing legal aid are doing it out of a sense of vocation,’ he said.

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