Members of the House of Lords queued up to condemn the decision by the government to withdraw legal aid for clinical negligence victims this week at their first opportunity to debate the government bill ‘Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill (LASPO) which proposes to radically reform amongst other areas of civil litigation, personal injury.
Lord Pannick told fellow peers that the bill, which alters the availability of legal aid, does not recognise that access to justice is a vital constitutional principle. Lords Faulks added that access to justice is a critically important part of what it means to be British. The former Lord Chief Justice, Lord Woolf, joined peers in saying that when Lord Justice Jackson, the architect of the reforms into civil litigation being introduced by the government, never imagined there would be a reduction in legal aid.
