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Bach for good

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08 December 2016 / Dr Jon Robins
Issue: 7726 / Categories: Opinion , Legal aid focus , Legal services
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Jon Robins examines the interim report of the Bach Commission on Access to Justice

Lord Willy Bach was by his own account a late convert to the cause of publicly funded social welfare law, but he has proved a doughty champion of the cause in recent years. “The LASPO (Legal Aid Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012) cuts have produced a crisis in the justice system and the poorest in our society can no longer receive the legal support they require,” the Labour peer said last week. The Bach Commission on Access to Justice published its interim report revealing a justice system (in its words) “creaking at the seams”.

I interviewed the Labour peer in April 2012 just minutes after LASPO completed its journey through Parliament. He described his Damascene conversion, when as a New Labour minister who “knew precious little” of the legal not for profit sector, he was given “a really hard time” as he attempted to make his exit from a Law Centre Federation AGM in Birmingham.

LASPO attack

Back in 2012, Lord Bach damned LASPO as “wicked”, “mean” and

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