PROPOSALS to improve access to legal aid risk being undermined due to government failures to take the cost-of-living crisis into account, the Law Society warned today. 

In March, the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) announced reforms to legal aid means tests with the aim of making millions more people eligible to access the support. 

The proposed changes were announced after research found that stringent legal aid means tests were preventing families living in poverty from accessing justice. 

New research commissioned by the Law Society of England and Wales and carried out by Professor Donald Hirsch at Loughborough University confirms that the proposals will greatly reduce the number of people on low-incomes denied legal aid. 

But in contrast to MoJ claims, the changes will put the legal sector on a “sustainable footing for years to come,” Prof Hirsch claims, and that planned improvements will “vanish in a few years” unless thresholds are linked to inflation. 

“The MoJ proposes using 2019 expenditure benchmarks through to 2026, but with the cost-of-living crisis these are already out of date and prices are expected to have risen by a breathtaking 20 per cent by 2026,” Law Society president Stephanie Boyce explained. 
 
“Progressively more people would be left unable to seek justice if this is not addressed.”

The legal body said that while it supports the changes, there must “be more frequent and systematic inflation uprating than proposed — particularly in the present period of high inflation.”

An MoJ spokesperson said: “Millions more people will have access to legal aid thanks to our proposed reforms to the means test. 

“While we continue to monitor the impact of inflation, we will consider the report’s findings alongside responses to our consultation.”