St Valentine's day massacre for Legal Aid?

Government consultation on massive legal aid cuts closed at 12 pm St Valentine's Day, as Chancellor Ken Clarke received thousands of  e-Valentine cards asking him scrap his plans to cut legal aid.

On 31 January 90 lawyers, charity workers and union members met with clients to plan a fightback at Hackney Town Hall. Already in just 14 days 1,000 Hackney residents have signed petitions to save Legal Aid. 500,000 people will lose free legal advice for problems such as debt, housing, and family, which is half of the number who are receiving civil legal aid now.

Local resident and human rights barrister Liz Davis, chair of the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers said that since 1949 Legal Aid had been the fourth pillar of the welfare state, along with the NHS, free education and the benefits system. The cuts would cripple services that Hackney residents depend on.

A member of the public who was there with her disabled mother said that she was a refugee who had been helped by Legal Aid when they were both homeless. She now has a university degree and is working as a dietician with Council services to improve school meals. “I wanted to give something back” she said.

12 Courts will close over the next 2 years in London.

We put in a petition with 232 signatures by real people. People who put a mobile phone number and a post code, and a scrawl. 

7 Days to Save Legal Aid. Things I wished I'd said before it's gone.

I went to a meeting of court users. I'm a lawyer, that's my job. A professional in human misery I am.

Once a year your local court will meet with the people who use its services most often, and try to find out how best taxpayers money may be spent.

You would meet housing officers, civil servants, lawyers working for the Councils and other social landlords, legal aid solicitors and charity workers , as well a private firms. And Judges. All fighting each other but trying to agree.

One housing officer said that too much legal mail was directed to a building that was knocked down 10 years ago. Sadly the files with the information for stopping this might have been inside the building at the time. We scratch our heads a bit about that one. Mail will be arriving for years to come.

The Judges have a straw poll about legal bundles. It seems mostly double sided bundles are ok, but unless you can deliver your bundles in person using a lever arch means that the bundles get crunched in the post, and crunch the Judges' fingers. Not a good way to win your case.

15,000 jobs are cut from the Justice payroll. 4,000 staff will be cut from the Courts, and London will lose 12 Courts. Let's hope our big society's going to be a bit fairer.

I wish I could have said to the Judge's faces look, do ye think that cutting off all these basic legal services will improve people's lives? But it's not their fault as they don't hold the purse strings.

What I was thinking was 500,000 people will lose advice for common legal problems. I want to jump up and down and shout SAVE LEGAL AID!!!! But like a lawyer I hum and haw.

7 Days to Save Legal Aid. Things I wished I'd said before it was gone. Don't make my mistake.

The Broken Of Britain: Cuts List

The Broken Of Britain: Cuts List

Legal Aid Activists in Hackney Town Hall

100 Friends of Hackney Community Law Centre met on 31.1.11 to launch a local drive to halt Legal Aid Cuts and Court Closures.

Liz Davis, an experienced social welfare barrister and Chair of the Haldane Society reminded us that in 1949 when Legal Aid was created it was viewed as the fourth pillar of the welfare state, along with the NHS, education and a universal benefits system. At the time of its creation the Legal Aid system was capable of providing a service to 80% of the population (the other 20% being deemed to be sufficiently rich to pay for their own).

In recent years the proportion has fallen to 26%, and proposed cuts would mean that only those who were “virtually destitute” would receive a service if it still existed. Up to 50% of civil legal aid would be wiped out, and 500,000 people will lose a service

A young Somali woman who was present with her disabled mother spoke movingly from the floor, explaining how Legal Aid had saved them from being deported and led to them receiving refugee status. She had recently completed her degree and was working for her local council because she “wanted to put something back.”

A pensioner who used to work for the Court staff described a case concerning a woman who had been released from hospital to a police cell where she died. Her daughter was unable to obtain Legal Aid at the Inquest  when the police, NHS and various other agencies all had their own barristers. Thus she was not allowed to ask questions effectively.

Legal Aid cuts would fall disproportionately on women, children, the elderly and the disabled, in other words the most vulnerable. One young lawyer in a Legal Aid firm said that clients who received services were ordinary people stuck in extraordinary circumstances. Often a small amount of help when a family was facing a crisis turned its future around.

12 Courts are to close in London over 18 months, 4,000 jobs could be lost to Court and Tribunal staff, and 11,000 in the Prison and Probation services. This shutting down of the legal system does not look promising.

There are concerns that with substantially less lawyers able to help extraordinary individuals in sadly all too common and ordinary difficulties, the Big Society we are apparently working in will become meaner and smaller. 

100 people doesn't sound like very much, but each of these people knows 10 people who know these savage cuts are barmy. Ask those 10 people to sign up to http://www.justice-for-all.org.uk/Take-part/Love-legal-aid and pass on the message. 

3 Old Men

Dealing with piss stained old men and blind people can be disconcerting. Someone else should have to do with that. Perhaps a nurse or a social worker. For many this is a common reaction. For us in legal aid it can be another day at the office.'

Bruce is Australian and has been living here for 30 years. His father was born in County Down then emigrated. He's 80 now, and the house he lives in is falling to pieces around his ears.

Claude is legally blind and his kidney's packing up. He too has lived here off and on for 30 years, and has many children living in this country, who rarely visit him.

Ole was an accountant in Lagos, who came to London and married, and fathered children. The relationship broke down. Shortly afterwards he had a massive stroke.

All have a common legal problems, for all have no papers or have exceeded their leave to remain.

All lived in horrible conditions. Bathtubs filled with piss? No problem. Kitchens like a bomb site? What else. Stairs falling to pieces, basements filled with junk, I went and looked. No water, no electricity. It all stacked up. These places were worse than third world slums.

As a decent society we have doctors, social workers and housing officers to assist the infirm and the disabled. Unfortunately these three old men have allowed their immigration status to lapse decades ago, and although two have paid tax and national insurance, and one had an English grandfather, they are not entitled to any benefits, housing or, in Claude's case, renal dialysis that he was on the point of receiving.

What they do have at present is a right to receive free legal advice helping them to apply for leave to remain in the country, which may also be their right, or which might be granted on discretionary compassionate grounds. However under government proposals this right to advice will be removed, on the grounds that the procedures are transparent and simple. This of an immigration ministry compared recently by a senior Judge to a poorly run whelk stall.

Readers may have varying levels of tolerance in the abstract for foreigners who come here and then find themselves in a mess for whatever reason. But surely we can agree that when three people who between them have lived here almost a century need help, we should give it to them.

I explain to Claude that the reason he won't have a lawyer any more is that the system is so easy to deal with. His sightless eyes bulge in outrage. “That's rubbish!” he bellows, and signs our petition. 

 

Wrong-headed, Wicked or Dumb?

We attended the all party parliamentary inquiry on Legal Aid today. The theme was, what impact will Legal Aid cuts have on MP's dealing with a constituent in a surgery?

Up to 60% of the basic maths in the impact assessment of cuts may be flawed. This is not promising.

CAB research on welfare benefits advice shows £1 spent in LA saves £8.80. Yet £22 million in cuts will deprive 13,000 people of a service, and stop test cases. That's one way of saving money, I suppose.

Cuts in immigration are fair because applications are "simple" - yet the House of Lords describes the legal process applied by the Home Office as "applying policy to dogma that Kafka would have recognised." As another Judge put it “I would ask rhetorically, is this any way to run a whelk stall?”

75,000 people will loses debt advice at a time when the Money Advice Trust thinks that the need for services caused by the recession has not even peaked.

There are only two possible ways to describe the Government's proposals; wrong headed or wicked.

Wrong headed, because any MP who stopped to think about the impact of these cuts would realise that they were hurried and foolish. Wicked because any MP who takes stock and votes for them anyway is doing something wrong.

Plain dumb, because when we close down all the voters are going to come to you, and set up camp in your surgeries.

On the Dole- Catch 22

I don't deal solely in miserabilism, funnily enough. The reason I joined up to the 4^th service (behind the NHS, the schools, and the benefits system) was a sense of optimism and  adventure. A sense that with the small assistance of my brain, and our common courage, we might achieve something for those who have fallen into a trap.

Maria is a smart Polish kid who's lived here 15 years. She has a kid now, is married, pays taxes. Her daughter is in school. When she turned up at the stall in Dalston market where she'd worked for 5 years she found it closed and her boss bankrupt.

The next day her husband, who has settled status but no job, moved out. Men!

The Benefits Agency advised her to claim Income Support as a single mother, who shouldn't have to work, then refused her because she stopped signing on.  She claimed Job Seekers Allowance and signed on, and was refused because the job she had been doing had never been registered with the Home Office. Catch 22 at its finest.

Child Benefit was refused. Tax Credits were refused. Housing Benefit was refused. She faced eviction, but she contacted us and we fought back.

We got her her Child Benefit, her Tax Credits, her Housing Benefit, and appealed the withdrawal of JSA. It took over a year for her appeal to be listed, but this month we represented her and she finally won. It turned out that the Department of Work and Pensions has been using an out of date version of a statutory instrument on Eastern European nationals – known as the Accession 8.

Charla has had health problems and can't get the Social to call her back. She's been on Employment Support Allowance- a disability related benefit, but at an interview with an official she did badly, and her benefit was withdrawn. Her doctor doesn't think she's fit to work, but a non medically qualified official thinks otherwise.

Charla appeals, and the rules say she should get her benefit until the appeal is heard by an independent panel that includes a doctor. But her payments stop, and for three weeks she has nothing.

Charla is allowed to apply for a Crisis Loan in this situation- in effect an advance on her benefits. But if she manages to get though to the busy call centre she is told that she will be called back, then no-one calls. Or maybe they do, but her phone has run out of power or credit- as she has no money.

She comes in to the Law Centre, we phoned and she gets some money for the week end. Her ESA is reinstated pending appeal.

Legal Aid cuts would make this work impossible, because the government line is that claimants can get all the advice they might want or need from public officials- yes, those same functionaries who have refused them. Failing that the courts and tribunals- yes, those same agencies who put up signs informing members of the public that staff are not qualified to give legal advice. It seems that the system runs so well that there is no need for lawyers.

I ask them why they felt it necessary to come and see us. “Nobody listened to me until I got a solicitor” says Charla. Maria is even more dismissive. “They treat you like an animal until you get a solicitor”, she says.

So walking down the stairs from the tribunal the rain has lifted, the sun is shining, and Maria has her benefits. She's smiling.

“I wish I had a solicitor” says a guy coming out behind us.