Something incredible happened 75 years ago today. The Legal Aid and Advice Act 1949 received royal assent, paving the way for the establishment of the legal aid scheme. The scheme was described by the AG at the time as a ‘charter of the little man to the British courts of justice […] without regard to the question of their wealth or ability to pay’. An Act which sought to make justice available to all.

Much of what is written today about legal aid is negative. Those delivering the service quite rightly bemoan the restrictions imposed by successive governments – to the scope of the scheme, to who can access the service and to the derisory fees that don’t cover the cost of delivery. Some say the system is broken and needs to be replaced.

Many in government and the press publicly attack the scheme as a waste of taxpayers’ money and a service provided to the ‘undeserving’. Politicians label legal aid lawyers as fat cats or activists. They do so because they don’t like to be challenged and because it paves the way for cutting the service. The media is awash with misleading stories about those who get thousands of pounds for their defence or to sue the state.

But on this day, 75 years on from its creation, let’s step back from the arguments about who deserves legal aid and how those in power have undermined it. Let’s look at what legal aid actually achieves so we can begin to understand what role it plays in society and what it could achieve with more support.

Provisional spending figures for 2023-24 show that a billion pounds was spent on criminal legal aid and a further billion spent on civil legal aid (family, housing, immigration, mental health etc.). This sounds like a huge amount of money, but it is less than 20% of the justice budget, 4% of what’s spent on defence, 2% on education and 1% on health and social care.

But more important than the big numbers that are so often misused, what does this public money achieve? Criminal legal aid funding ensured that over 650,000 people received advice in police stations, a further 270,000 were represented in the magistrates court and over 16,000 prisoners received support. It also funded advice and representation in more than 80,000 crown court cases. Just think about those numbers for a moment (and yes, we know some people will appear more than once in these stats). But boiled down to its essentials, the criminal legal aid scheme ensured that fair trials took place, that prosecutions were safe and those who were innocent had a lawyer at their side to make their case. Legal aid ensured the system could function or, many will say, inadequate legal aid funding is why the system is in a state of dysfunction.

In civil, the scheme achieved some staggering results: over 100,000 received advice and representation in family law, including protection for tens of thousands of survivors of domestic abuse. Over 40,000 received help with immigration issues and 35,000 got the support they need with mental health issues. Thousands more received help challenging social care decisions, the provision of support for children with special education needs, challenging actions by the police and other state bodies, while over 30,000 were prevented from becoming homeless or had help to repair their home.

Granted these numbers are a pale comparison on the situation before the coalition government introduced LASPO in 2013, and before restrictions imposed by previous governments. And so much more needs to be done to expand the legal aid scheme so that more people can get help with a wider range of legal problems. And the scheme must be a viable enterprise for those hardy lawyers who have stuck with it in recent years and so that more lawyers take up the baton. But that doesn’t mean that we should dismiss the achievements of those currently working so hard for their clients and their communities. And all of this incredible work happens despite the fees available to civil legal aid lawyers not increasing for 28 years (and actually being cut in that time).

And what would the cost have been to the State if these legal services did not exist? The cost to ordinary people trying to get by? The cost to other public services such as health, prisons, education and welfare that see first-hand the consequences of unresolved legal issues? The cost to communities of debt, unemployment, poor housing, truancy, violence and disorder? The cost to the fabric of society when people lose faith in institutions when power and unlawful behaviour goes unchecked?

The legal aid system is not broken beyond repair. It is eminently reparable. This is almost entirely down to the unwavering commitment of those who have delivered the scheme in recent years despite all the obstacles and stressors. To say the whole system should be scrapped and replaced is an insult to the hard work and efforts of those solicitors, caseworkers, barristers, CILEx fellows, costs lawyers and support staff who have made legal aid work.

Let us all stop denigrating legal aid and start changing the public discourse about the value of this incredible public service. If the public starts to understand the truly transformative power of legal aid, they won’t allow politicians to dismantle it further. And they will insist that the system is restored and thereby capable of realising its true potential. A system that improves and even saves lives.

How do we restore the legal aid system? We have three simple asks:

  • Increase fees in line with inflation to make the scheme commercially viable
  • Expand scope so that lawyers can provide effective, holistic services
  • Reduce the bureaucracy that currently chokes the system and creates cost, waste and risk

We know that the government has inherited a fiscal mess, but can it really afford not to invest in a system that underpins every other area of public policy and ensures that citizens don’t just have theoretical rights, but have enforceable, meaningful rights?

75 years on, those who introduced legal aid probably wouldn’t recognise the current system. They constructed a physical infrastructure to promote and protect the principles that everyone should be equal before the law and that the law should apply equally to all. They would almost certainly agree that we have strayed far from the path, but that does not mean that we are totally lost. Political will, courage and vision is now required. With a relatively small level of public investment, the current government could generate almost incalculable public benefit.

So on this anniversary of the founding of the legal aid scheme let us celebrate what is still being achieved day-in, day-out by legal aid heroes at the coalface, whilst renewing our unwavering calls for a system that truly makes justice available to all.