In 2011 an organisation called Rights of Women (RoW), which provides free legal advice to vulnerable women, produced a report called “The Value of Legal Aid” (pdf). They spoke to legal aid lawyers, Violence Against Women professionals, and female victims of domestic violence who had received legal aid. One woman they spoke to revealed the six-year fight she had protecting her children from “a controlling and abusive ex-husband” who was ultimately imprisoned as a child abuser. She would have found it “impossible” to fund her legal bills without legal aid, she said. Another respondent told the story of Lucy*, a disabled woman who was told she had to move out of her Housing Association property because they wanted to pull it down. She was shown three properties, none of which were suitable because of her disability. But despite medical evidence proving Lucy could not live in the properties she had been shown, the Housing Association said that she was making herself “intentionally homeless”. This would mean the Housing Association had no responsibility to house her. Without legal aid and the help of her Violence Against Women worker, Lucy could not have forced the Housing Association to find her the property in which she is now living.
The report makes clear the important role legal aid plays in ensuring the vulnerable have the access to justice to which they are entitled to under the law. It was prepared to remind the government of their duties, as the Legal Aid Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill (LASPO) passed through Parliament. But when I speak to Emma Scott, director of RoW, she tells me that although they managed to soften the impact of LASPO, there remain fundamental issues with the Bill. One glaring issue is the discrepancy between LASPO’s own definition of domestic violence, and the evidence required for victims to access legal aid. While LASPO accepts that abuse can be, for example, psychological or financial as well as physical (and evidence points to “coercive control” being an early sign of a relationship that could prove fatal), the only evidence that is acceptable under LASPO is much harder to obtain for women who have experienced non-physical abuse.
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