Report comment

Please fill in the form to report an unsuitable comment. Please state which comment is of concern and why. It will be sent to our moderator for review.

Comment

Anon@08:11. I agree with the sentiment, but I think you'll find that the first sign of rot began under the John Major government, when they introduced (albeit on a limited basis) Franchising. However, legal aid was still widespread, you still had the Green Form system, and the rates even increased each year!

After that came the biggest decimation of the system, with the introduction of Civil Contracting, the Legal Services Commission, freeze on pay rates, standard fees, much tight franchising thereby locking more and more firms out of the system altogether, and taking vast areas of work out of scope. This was all under the Labour government.

And finally Chris Gr**ling (sorry for the profanity) gave the terminal blow to the already dying system, by taking family law out of scope. The man's a complete and total **** but he was only following the line already started many years before, and encouraged and emboldened by a pathetic law society and host of moronic quangos who enabled and permitted this to be sold to the public.

After all, why care about legal aid for greedy money grabbing solicitors if the Legal Services Consumer Panel, the Legal Ombudsman, the Legal Services Board, the Legal Aid Agency, the Law Society, the SRA and the Digestives On the Table in Solicitors Staff Room Consultative Council (OK I perhaps made one of those up) all agree that solicitors are all overcharging thieves driving their Bentleys up to court just to rip money off the poor consumer who would be much better off with mediation or as a litigant in person?

Gordon Exall's blog linked to some excellent Buzzfeed articles about the effects of this. Again, not picked up by any mainstream media (I'd never read a Buzzfeed article in my life before last night).

Couple of other points. A children's guardian's role is not to adjudicate between the parties - that's the role of the judge. Secondly, if you grant exceptional case funding where serious allegations are made, you are just going to get every party making serious allegations to get funding which helps no-one.

I seem to remember something about a child's welfare being the paramount consideration. Why should children lose out (as it is invariably the children who suffer rather than the parents) simply because their parents can't resolve their differences? Why should children be potentially exposed to abuse or damaging behaviour that a parent is unable to prove in court; or on the flip side, be prevented from having a relationship with a parent based on false allegations that the parent is unable to disprove?

But hey ho, putting a tick box on a form saying "have you been to mediation", having a digital court, and paying for a well meaning retired lady volunteer to hold your hand and tell you what "bundle" means as part of the Personal Support Unit will sort it all out!

Your details

Cancel