The government is planning to slash some £220 million from the criminal legal aid budget under proposals that would see organisations competing for legal aid contracts by offering the lowest price.
Sir Anthony Hooper, a retired Court of Appeal judge, spoke out on the subject of the cuts at the beginning of June stating that the idea of companies competing for the contracts by offering the lowest price would mean that defendants would no longer be able to choose their solicitor and that the proposals would destroy the UK’s ‘world renowned’ justice system because the quality of legal representation would be significantly reduced.
Speaking on BBC4's Today Programme, Sir Anthony said: “At the moment, solicitors compete on quality…In the new system, there will be no competition on quality because they will be randomly allocated…The government says it is replacing competition with something called Robust Quality Assurance – which, quite frankly, just sounds like gobbledygook.”
The Criminal Cases Review Commission has also warned of the potential failures of the new set of proposals, indicating that the new system could increase the possibilities of innocent people going to prison because of low quality legal representation.
The Commission, which investigates miscarriages of justice, said that the new proposals could mean that, for example, mentally ill suspects would be more likely to be convicted because they may not have access to lawyers with the experience to highlight fake confessions.
The drop in the quality of lawyers available as a result of these cuts could seriously impact the quality of legal representation received by those who can’t afford to pay the fees of a private solicitor.
Many have warned that this is likely to create an underclass of defendants who receive only substandard legal advice, often not from specialists, and are subsequently more likely to be convicted. The concept of local lawyers with local knowledge and easy access for clients will also be lost.
There are numerous examples of cases in which poor legal representation has led to wrongful prosecutions that have resulted in innocent defendants ending up in prison.
Justification for the cuts by the Ministry of Justice comes on the basis of £1 billion a year spent on criminal legal aid, which ‘should not be immune to cuts.’
However it has also been argued that the figures the Ministry of Justice seek to rely on are outdated, include VAT and fail to accept that savings exceeding £150 million have already been achieved.
Stephensons – along with many others in the legal sector – are strongly opposing these cuts, which will affect the fundamental right to choose your own solicitor.