Legal aid campaigners urge action ahead of crunch Commons vote
Article published: Tuesday, April 3rd 2012
Human rights lawyers, local MPs and Manchester campaigners Access to Advice have called an urgent meeting to curb the “devastating impact” of the government’s Legal Aid Bill as it approaches its final stages in Parliament.
Access to Advice, a local pressure group formed in response to cuts to advice services and legal aid in Manchester, has called a meeting on Wednesday evening. The meeting will discuss ways to prevent the government from overturning amendments designed to blunt some of the impacts of a bill described as “an attack on the poorest” by Greater Manchester Immigration Aid Unit Director Denise McDowell.
So far the controversial Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill has suffered a record 11 defeats by peers of all parties in the House of Lords over clauses restricting access to legal aid for children, disabled people and victims of domestic violence.
The rejections are the highest number of amendments made in this Parliament since the government’s eight defeats over the passage of the controversial Welfare Reform Act. The government argues cuts are necessary to shave off £350 million by 2015 from legal aid expenses, and opponents expect it will attempt to overturn the amendments when MPs return to the Commons after the Easter recess.
Speakers at the meeting will include Greater Manchester MPs Kate Green and chair of the All Party Legal Aid Group Yvonne Fovargue, and members of the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers. Also speaking will be national pressure group Justice for All and representatives of local organisations and groups affected by legal aid cuts.
Justice for All are calling on supporters to pressure MPs before the bill returns to the Commons into not overturning the amendments made in the Lords. Key among amendments they wish to defend are protections for specialist welfare advice often used by disabled people, automatic entitlement for under 18s, overturning the “extremely restrictive” criteria for proof of violence for victims of abuse and retention of legal aid for medical expert reports in criminal negligence cases.
McDowell warned however that even with amendments the bill would still mean cuts “on a scale never experienced before” for people on low incomes for issues including housing, debt and immigration. While denouncing the whole bill for attacks on access to the law “at a time of rising poverty”, she said the legislation’s return to Parliament after Easter would be “the last opportunity to have any impact on it”.
Richard Goulding
The meeting will be held at the Friends Meeting House, Mount Street, Manchester city centre on Wednesday 4 April from 6.30pm
See Justice for All for more details on how to lobby your MP
More: Cuts, Manchester, News, Welfare
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