Cutting £350m from the legal aid budget is reckless and will have terrible consequences. More than 10 years of cuts have already eroded services and what will survive remains an open and depressing question.
If a disabled parent cannot access welfare benefit and housing advice, no one knows, as the person and the problem are invisible. There is no one to articulate the connection between a lack of advice and legal aid to the later visible costs of a child taken into care or a lost home.
Short sighted, stupid, discriminatory and outrageous; all these words are appropriate descriptions of Legal Aid policy.
On a cultural note, I recommend 'A Year in the Death of Ricardo Ries' by Jose Sarramago, a brilliant novel set in 1930's Portugal in the period of the rise of fascism, the political consequences of an earlier period of deflation.
