Our publications - 2022

More affordable justice: proposals to reform the legal aid means tests and implications for living standards This report analyses the extent to which the Ministry of Justice's review of the legal aid means test improves the extent to which low income households are able to afford access to justice without having to sacrifice minimum living standards. Commissioned by the Law Society, it informs their response to the review. The report finds that the proposals greatly improve access to justice by raising the income thresholds at which legal aid is available. However, it identifies two significant problems that could undermine this progress, and makes recommendations about how to remedy them. The most important difficulty is that, just at the time inflation has increased to 40-year highs, the proposals fail to uprate regularly the living allowances used in the means test to ensure that they keep up with living costs. Without such upratings, the benefits of the proposed reforms will quickly be lost. The second problem is that the relative income needs of lone parent families are being underestimated by the proposed system, but a simple adjustment in weightings for lone parent families would make the new system far more equitable. Hirsch, D. (2022) More affordable justice: proposals to reform the legal aid means tests and implications for living standards 天堂视频: Centre for Research in Social Policy