Legal Services Consumer Panel ready to tell government legal aid “uncomfortable truths”
updated on 05 September 2018
The new chair of the Legal Services Consumer Panel, Sarah Chambers, has said that they are ready to tell the government some “uncomfortable truths” about legal aid.
The consumer panel was established in 2007 to provide independent advice to the Legal Services Board (LSB) about the interests of consumers of legal services in England and Wales investigates issues including legal aid.
As Legal Futures reports, the panel’s annual tracker showed last month a further decline in the use of legal aid, with a decrease in funding from 5% in 2017 to 2% in 2018. Over 60% of consumers surveyed said that legal advice is not affordable to the general public.
Chambers described these findings as “concerning” and said “it is clear that those with limited means are finding it ever harder to secure access to justice”.
The LSB has traditionally avoided commenting on government legal aid policy, but the Legal Services Consumer Panel has expressed its intentions to “provide the evidence and let the evidence speak for itself.” As Chambers says, “The evidence shows that legal aid is reducing and the tracker survey shows that a lot of people who have had a problem don’t get it addressed because they can’t find a way to do it […] we will point out what might sometimes be inconvenient facts.”
