The full extent of the ‘desertification’ of the legal advice sector was recently revealed at an event organised by the Legal Action Group (LAG) to mark the ten-year anniversary of the 2013 legal aid cuts under the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (LASPO 2012).
Dr Jo Wilding, a legal academic who has been researching their impact on immigration and asylum advice, reported that large tracts of England and Wales were now devoid of publicly-funded legal aid help, including the whole of Wales, ‘apart from the very south and one guy in North Wales’; the east of England ‘including Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk and Lincolnshire’; the South West below Bristol, ‘apart from two people in a windowless office in Plymouth’; Northumbria and Cumbria; and ‘most of the south coast’.
Shocking figures
Lord Willy Bach, the former shadow attorney general, revealed that there had been a
