Legal aid lawyers have joined judges in hitting out at cuts to the legal aid budget - but have also backed the Legal Services Commission (LSC) in arguing that the public funding budget is not being wasted on unmeritorious cases.

Unveiling its response to the civil legal aid part of the Carter review this week, the judiciary said the system was at risk of compromising access to justice because money was being spent on hopeless asylum cases at the expense of urgent family and other civil law cases.


'There can be no doubt that our civil legal aid system has been brought to its knees in the last 20 years because successive government initiatives in the fields of criminal justice, family justice, and justice for asylum seekers did not take account of the legal aid costs of those initiatives,' it said.


The submission pointed out that the LSC was funding appeal cases that succeeded in just 3% of asylum claims, with three-quarters of judicial review cases also failing.


But the LSC called for more information about what made a case 'hopeless'. 'We do not accept the judiciary's view that legal aid is given too readily in "hopeless" cases and would welcome further input from them together with details of any cases they considered "hopeless" so that we may make further enquires,' a spokesman said.


Richard Miller, director of the Legal Aid Practitioners Group, said: 'I share the LSC's surprise at the claims that unmeritorious cases are reaching the courts. Having said that, the underlying point made by the judges that the civil legal aid system is the weakest it has been for years and getting worse, is undoubtedly right.'


The Young Legal Aid Lawyers group also attacked public funding cuts. Founder Laura Janes said: 'More money can, and must, be made available for legal aid from central funds. The legal aid system is extremely under-funded in view of the massive increase in regulation and criminal legislation.'