The story of legal aid

On this page:

How it came about
The legal aid timeline
Recent developments

How it came about

William Beveridge’s 1942 report ‘Social Insurance and Allied Services’ recommended fighting five ‘giant evils’: want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness.

This led to the four pillars of the welfare state:

the National Health Service
universal housing
state security (benefits)
universal education.

The importance of access to justice and the right to legal representation was recognised by the Rushcliffe Committee in 1945. Its recommendations led to the setting up of the first legal aid scheme.

Legal aid was looked after by The Law Society, the professional body that regulates and represents solicitors. The Legal Aid Board was set up in 1986 to process applications from solicitors for legal aid and pay the bills they sent in.

The Access to Justice Act 1999 created the LSC and replaced the Legal Aid Board on 1 April 2000.

The legal aid timeline

1994: the introduction of franchising, the first quality assurance for legal aid providers
legal aid door opened to Not for Profit (NfP) agencies: this supported services such as welfare benefits and debt traditionally left to the voluntary sector
October 1997: Lord Chancellor (Lord Irvine) describes the future of the Community Legal Service (CLS) asking the Legal Aid Board to prepare proposals for providing all civil advice and assistance under contracts
July 1999: the Access to Justice Act 1999 put a reformed scheme into place that promoted and developed services that could be delivered within a controlled budget and targeted according to need
it also replaced the Legal Aid Board with the LSC and gave us the power to develop and maintain the CLS and the CDS
1 April 2000: launch of the Quality Mark meant only contract holders could carry out civil legal aid work - contract awards are dependent on meeting our quality standards
1 April 2001: the CDS now delivers criminal legal aid to ensure that people suspected or accused of a crime have access to advice, assistance and representation.

Recent developments

Legal aid has come under increasing public and political scrutiny. Our system is the most comprehensive scheme anywhere in the world and certainly the best funded.

The government cannot keep increasing the money spent on legal aid. To make sure that legal aid is kept for those who need it most we are transforming the system.

Latest developments include:

in 2006 a new Ministerial post dedicated to the reform of legal aid was created
Lord Carter of Coles published his independent review of legal aid procurement in July 2006
read more about the future for legal aid on the How legal aid is changing page.

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Last updated: 04 December 2007