Access Denied: The state of the justice system in England and Wales in 2022

It continues: "Since 2010, we have seen a total of 239 courts shut permanently, criminal and civil legal aid budgets slashed, cases piling up in courts, and burnt-out barristers leaving the profession. Yet, while no one is under any illusion about the scale of the economic challenge we face this winter, there are signs of progress in some areas.

It was most welcome that the Ministry of Justice recently agreed to raise criminal legal aid fees by 15 per cent and announced that the new rate will apply to the vast majority of cases currently in the Crown Court. This change may go some way in stemming the number of practitioners leaving legal aid work. We also remain hopeful that the Government will announce work that builds on the Legal Aid Means Test Review – which ran from March to June this year – and that this could result in an extension of civil legal aid in some areas, perhaps focusing on early advice schemes.

Without doubt, what is needed is longterm planning from the Government and a commitment to fund the whole system to a level that allows for timely justice in all jurisdictions. Civil, criminal and family courts are saddled with troubling backlogs, all of which need urgent attention. The absence of adequate long-term planning and sufficient investment damages public respect for the justice system and the rule of law. Some court buildings are so poorly maintained that they pose health and safety concerns.

Everyone will have their own experiences, but we were particularly struck by a Welsh court that suffered from an infestation of fleas and one in the south-east of England that had sewage pouring down the walls for months. Many court users do not have cars. Yet, in lots of areas, particularly rural ones, public transport is absent or unreliable. One barrister told of a litigant who walked for two days to reach a family proceeding, while others described people who had taken three or four buses to get to court, sometimes with their children and often involving long waits in the dark. Cases are taking longer.

In civil and family, evidence shows a direct link between these delays and the damage done a decade ago when the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act (LASPO) 2012 became law. By vastly reducing the scope of civil legal aid, LASPO dramatically impeded the public’s access to justice and, in fact, did the opposite of what it set out to achieve. It seems likely that the flight from publicly funded work and, at least some of, the challenges of judicial recruitment are linked to poor working conditions and lack of support.

The rise in numbers of unrepresented litigants makes the working day more stressful. Combine all of this with the unwelcome tendency among politicians to launch uninformed and inaccurate verbal attacks on lawyers and it is hardly surprising that some choose to work in more lucrative and less stressful areas of law.

The Bar Council will continue to push for progress – highlighting evidence and solutions wherever possible – and we will carry on listening to the profession as we collectively strive for better access to justice. I am very grateful to those barristers who contributed to our Justice Week workshop on 22 June and provided some of the material that underpins this report. I am also hugely proud of the profession that has worked so tirelessly through the pandemic and since, as we all try to help the justice system recover from the effects of Covid-19 on top of a decade of neglect."

You can read the report here.