Government response on legal aid is a missed opportunity to tackle the justice gap

I am disappointed by the Government’s response to the Justice Committee’s report on access to justice. Despite the wealth of evidence and practical solutions available, its response does little to address the fundamental problems facing the legal aid and legal support system.

The Justice Committee has also expressed its disappointment, describing the Government’s response as at times ‘wilfully obtuse’ and ‘weak’. I share its concerns. This is another wasted opportunity to take meaningful action to help the millions of people with unmet legal need.

Millions of people live in legal aid deserts

According to a recent report by LexisNexis, analysis of local authority data found that 14.49 million people in England and Wales – 23.4% of the population – live in an area classed as a legal aid desert.
This includes 6.6 million people living in housing legal aid deserts, 4.2 million in family legal aid deserts, 3.6 million in crime legal aid deserts, 4.6 million in immigration legal aid deserts and 4.1 million in employment legal aid deserts.

The Parliamentary Justice Committee has now published its response to the Government’s response to its report on Access to Justice, published in July 2026.

I am disappointed by the Government’s unambitious and tepid response, particularly when there are so many tested solutions available.

A system under decades of pressure

I provided both oral evidence and written evidence to the Committee. Much of this was based on our NLS research report, Regulatory Leadership on Access to Justice.

I also put forward a range of tested solutions and opportunities for the Government, supported by three policy briefs included with my written submission. These were sent to the relevant government departments and set out how access to justice could be improved, drawing on evidence and international examples of success.

The proposals included stronger ethical regimes, improvements to publicly funded legal services and encouraging pro bono through the use of the Government's own levers.

Why have so many of us taken such care to provide evidence and solutions to the Committee? Because the legal support system is sinking under the strain of decades of chronic underfunding, poor architecture, fragmentation and a lack of strategic frameworks and operational vision from successive governments, Conservative and Labour alike.

The Government is ignoring the urgent need for an overhaul by kicking the can down the road.

Access to justice is not simply a market

One of the important points the Committee accepted in its report was that legal aid is not simply a market, and that a market response is no longer enough. This echoed the argument I made in my written submission.

As I stated:

‘Access to legal services and representation are more than just a “market”. It is this reductionist framing as a “market”, that has enabled over decades, the shrinking of the discussion to being about savings and expenditure, ignoring that access to justice is essential for “equality before the law”, a fundamental tenet of the rule of law, for a functioning democracy…

‘Seeing the current state of the legal services and representation as a “market” has seen a failure to strategically consider and understand the consequential implications of austerity… Each step has undermined people’s equality before the law (by reducing access of those in the community most in need), and the ability to ensure and enforce adherence to the law and human rights protections. This directly hinders the role access to justice has in broader efforts at reducing poverty and inequality…’

The legal support sector is crumbling after decades of high levels of need. The Justice Committee's proposed civil legal aid strategy (paragraph 14 of its response) has also received scant attention to the issues of recruitment, retention, the exodus of professionals, training, succession of expertise and regional shortages.

Legal problems are well established as being interconnected with other problems. Yet there are low levels of capability and joined-up service provision that is people-centred and addresses problems holistically.

My biggest disappointment is that the Government’s response ignores clear evidence of what an effective service looks like. It also fails to engage with the problems of the current market-based model, which creates a two-tier justice system: people who are poor and disadvantaged miss out, while those with the means can access legal expertise and the courts – although both groups fund the system.

The reason we have a legal system in the first place is because of a failure of the market. So why does the Government continue to insist that the current market-based approach provides the only solution?

The need for fundamental reform of the Legal Aid Agency

The Committee also accepted and echoed my criticism of the Legal Aid Agency (LAA), describing its approach as failing, ineffective, defective, costly and inefficient, at the expense of tested and enduring models of legal aid provision in other jurisdictions, such as Australia's mixed model for holistic support, which directly benefits communities and gets results.

The LAA has also faced criticism from the House of Commons Committee of Public Accounts, the National Audit Office and the Competition and Markets Authority over the past decade.

The Justice Committee concludes that the LAA's current approach actively undermines access to justice (Conclusion 147). It recommends a review and reform of its institutional arrangements (Recommendations 153 and 159).
In my written submission, and in my oral evidence, I argued:

‘The current Legal Aid Agency model is inherently flawed. No amount of further tinkering and injections of funds will work. Only necessary structural reform informed by the evidence will address it. Access to justice will remain a significant drain on the public purse, public confidence until the LAA flaws are addressed.’

Here again, the Government's response fudges the issue. In paragraph 21, the Justice Committee notes that, although the Government has promised to ‘rethink the wider design of the legal aid system’, this does not go far enough.

The Government (as the Justice Committee points out) has failed to articulate the ‘fundamental institutional changes required to deliver it’ or set out a programme of work, a decision, a timetable or an accountable body.

Although I am very pleased that the Government has made some decisions to provide more funding for legal support, this does not address the fundamental flaws in the system.

Tested solutions are being overlooked

Many of us have provided a mountain of evidence about successful models and service designs that work. The Government has not engaged with these in any meaningful way. Its response to the Justice Committee is largely rhetorical.

For example, what about alternative avenues for funding, such as using interest from clients' trust accounts to generate funding for civil access to justice needs? What about mixed models offering holistic provision, rather than complex and unnavigable contracted-out arrangements? And what about freeing up services to provide integrated legal support shaped and informed by current research into barriers and advice-seeking behaviours, while removing regulatory barriers to this kind of practice?

The Government's response largely obfuscates. This is deeply disappointing because the Justice Committee's report offers so much that could make a difference to people's lives.

The Government needs to return to the Committee's report and its examples of what could be achieved and set out a strategic and operational plan for action.
This must be underpinned by a clear aim to improve access to justice, not just through criminal law provision, which too often remains the core focus, but also through its poor cousin, civil law access, which affects the day-to-day lives of so many people.