Lawyers fall silent in protest over reforms to legal aid

HUNDREDS of barristers, solicitors and legal staff held a minute’s silence outside court buildings in Yorkshire yesterday in protest at controversial legal aid reforms.

Demonstrations took place in Leeds, Halifax, Wakefield, York and Hull as part of nationwide protests to coincide with the closing of consultation on the Government’s plans to cut £220m from the £1.1bn criminal portion of the legal aid bill.

Under the Transforming Legal Aid proposals, defendants on legal aid will no longer be able to choose their solicitor and lawyers’ fees will be slashed.

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It is feared that the number of firms getting legal aid cases would fall from 1,600 to 400 nationally through a process of auction-style bidding for the work.

Lawyers say around 150 firms in Yorkshire will be reduced to just over 40, with jobs for solicitors just in West Yorkshire falling to 300 from the current 500-600.

Some 150 barristers in wigs and gowns joined solicitors and other legal staff outside court buildings in Leeds yesterday.

A spokesman for the Criminal Law Solicitors Association in West Yorkshire said: “If these proposals go through then justice for the common man is dead.

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“I know that the Government has had thousands of responses, hundreds and hundreds have gone out from West Yorkshire. I don’t know of any that are going to say anything positive.”

Justice Secretary Chris Grayling has defended the plans, saying he wanted to strike a balance between quality of advocacy and maintaining “a system that is affordable at a time of great financial stringency”.