Means testing for criminal defence work in the magistrates' court has excluded three-quarters of adults in working households from eligibility for legal aid, independent research found last month.


Economists at the New Policy Institute (NPI) said the new regime will restrict legal aid to people not working at all, or working part-time.



NPI director Peter Kenway questioned whether Parliament had intended to exclude 22 million people when the Criminal Defence Service Act 2006 was passed. He said: 'Parliament allowed itself to agree the principle without examining the details, because the detail was not there when the primary legislation went through. But, in situations like this, everything does depend on the detail. This is a very dangerous road, as it reduces legal aid to a service for the poor. And it is an old saw that services for the poor become poor services.'



Mr Kenway noted that the means test would even exclude a lone parent, working for the minimum wage, with a ten-year-old child.



Rob Brown, spokesman for the London Criminal Court Solicitors Association, said the 'disturbing' findings also called into question whether the government would be able to deliver the high volume of cases that is the lynchpin of Lord Carter's reforms of legal aid.



A Legal Services Commission spokesman said it disputed the figures.



Rachel Rothwell