The future for criminal legal aid lies with the factory firms of solicitors, says Anthony Burton
Almost 14 years ago this journal published an article “The demise of criminal legal aid” based on an address I gave at the International Bar Association's 25th Biennial Conference in Melbourne Australia (see 144 NLJ 6669, p 1,491). My paper included a rail against the systematic dismantling of the criminal legal aid scheme by the then lord chancellor, Lord Mackay. I argued that the criminal legal aid system had been the victim of a revolution zealously orchestrated by the lord chancellor, driving home Thatcherite policies leading to the destruction of the whole philosophical basis for legal aid. It transpires that he had barely scratched the surface. Tony Blair's lord chancellors succeeded in trumping their predecessors with cost-driven measures leading to a further erosion of choice and access to quality representation.
The legal aid scheme was set up 60 years ago in 1948 following the Lord Rushcliffe's Report of the Committee on Legal Aid and Legal Advice for Poor Persons in England and Wales 1944. Rushcliffe's intention and philosophical basis was
