Legal Aid, Conditional Fees and Labour

Abstract

In the great reform agenda of the post-war Labour Government, legal aid and access to justice had a central role, with a reasonable claim to be one of the major delivery mechanisms of the welfare state — not as important as health, education or welfare benefits, but it had its place. The question of the right to a fair trial was exported to Europe through the work of British civil servants in developing the 1953 Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedom (later repatriated by Labour in the Human Rights Act 1998). While the Judicare system meant that both criminal and civil legal aid was delivered by the private sector, this is not fatal to the pretensions of access to justice to a place in the core delivery of the social welfare system. The crown jewel of the NHS — the general practitioner service — was similarly delivered by doctors in a contractual relationship with the state, running a private business, normally in premises they owned (and could sell at a profit) and receiving ‘cost rent’ to cover their mortgage payments.¹