Lord Bach’s Access to Justice Commission has published its final report, available here. It is a detailed and thoughtful report, which should provoke further debate about the impact on access to justice – and particularly those who can’t get it – following the reforms of recent years. There is a lengthy list of recommendations, which fall into three main categories:
- The creation of a new statutory enforceable “right to justice” and the creation of a Justice Commission
- Reform of the legal aid scheme, including widening and simplifying the means test and contributions, increasing legal aid scope to restore most family, some immigration, and cases involving children, as well as reforms to judicial review, inquest and exceptional case funding, and replacing the LAA with an independent body and simplifying administration
- Wider and better public legal education and a universal advice and information portal.
Sir Henry Brooke, the retired Court of Appeal judge, was one of the commissioners. Since the publication of the report he has posted a series of blogs, well worth reading, looking at some of the background to the Commission’s recommendations.
Legal Aid Handbook 
We do not need a statute to guarantee our ‘right to justice’: it has been our right for probably over a millenium, and at least since 1215 see eg https://dbfamilylaw.wordpress.com/2017/09/25/the-right-to-justice-political-slogan-or-something-more-sinister/ . What we need is the right for those unable to afford it to have *access* to justice – ie LEGAL AID. Yes, the report is good on extending scope and making means testing more generous; though it doesn’t sort out the present cumbersome merits test. And please: not another quango. Who would a ‘justice commission’ ‘guide and monitor’. The judges? Surely appeal courts do that already?