Legal Aid

“I don’t believe that most people who find themselves in our criminal justice system are great connoisseurs of legal skills.” That’s the authentic voice of our masters – detached, ironic and contemptuous towards the peasants whose affairs they must control. To Chris Grayling, legal aid is a series of expenditures which need to be cut. As Nick Cohen points out, nowhere in the consultation document does the word ‘innocence’ appear. There is no sense that justice is a system which has evolved to protect the vulnerable, to ensure that there are principles of fairness to counterbalance government power, money or class prejudice. Some lawyers are complacent and filthy rich, but others are hard-working, rational and committed to the idea of justice, and their evidence suggests that these reforms will be a disaster.