Legal Aid Post

So we’ve now seen an unprecedented joint protest by both solicitors and barristers, in respect to the further cuts to legal aid planed by the Justice Secretary Chris Grayling. The planned reduction in legal aid fees (of 30%) will save the government £220m and the only people who will have to suffer for it is everyone who doesn’t have the money to pay for both a barrister and solicitor. I don’t want to get into specific rates for trainees solicitors and junior barristers, but suffice to say, if you’re not well off, the amount it costs constitutes a shedload.

But that’s ok, if you need to pay for defence in a criminal case, you can just dip into your trust fund or ask for a loan from mummy and daddy – oh sorry I momentarily slipped into Mr Grayling’s frame of thought there.

These proposals are impossible to fathom; the saving is very obvious, but the clear interference with the Human Rights Act 1998 and by extension Article 6 the European Convention on Human Rights (which guarantees a fair trial) is just as clear.

The fact that this doesn’t seem to have even slowed the government down, shows a shift in their perception of the public at large. When they began, they didn’t care about the people of Britain, but needed us to think that they did. Now, they care so little about us that they’ll openly gut our human rights in front of us and not even attempt to even look as though they’re doing something beneficial.