Response - Proposals for the reform of Legal Aid in England and Wales

By: Elizabeth O'Hara and Simon Pugh
Published: February 2011

Response - Proposals for the reform of Legal Aid in England and Wales

We do not agree with the Government’s contention that much of the work covered by social welfare law is “practical” rather than “legal” and therefore should not be funded by legal aid. The idea that problems only become legal at the point of court proceedings seems fundamentally to misunderstand the nature of specialist legal advice. Legal aid only funds legal work. In our view, if the government believes that legal aid funding is being spent on non-legal work, it should require the LSC to enforce the existing rules, not amend the scheme to remove legal work from scope.