Graphs at a glance: Are swingeing cuts to legal aid needed because the cost is ballooning out of control? Actually the Legal Aid bill has been falling for years.

The wealthy live more opulently than the poor. But generally speaking the expensively dressed wealthy don't themselves benefit from the tatty outfits of their less well heeled fellow citizens. Indeed, when they are able the wealthy take the trouble to dress their servants very well. 

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Old bangers breaking down on the road don't really make the man in his £50k motor car feel better. Broken down crocks just cause traffic jams to infuriate rich and poor alike. 

Few people take active pleasure in the poverty of others. They enjoy the inequality in the form of their own comfort, and just ignore the discomfort of the rest.

This is true with clothes and jewelry and houses and cars. It is true with private education and health. The wealthy buy their privileges. The principal benefit to the wealthy few of the poor services meted out to the majority is low taxes.

But this is not true of justice. Justice denied to one is justice escaped by another. The withdrawal of legal aid will mean those who can't afford to pay for their justice will not be able to afford to pursue those who can. According to a BBC report:

"The government is removing funding from entire areas of civil law. They include:

• Private family law, such as divorce and custody battles
• Personal injury and some clinical negligence cases
• Some employment and education law
• Immigration where the person is not detained
• Some debt, housing and benefit issues"

The BBC's list does not include the cuts for criminal cases, which are in addition to the above.

To justify pulling legal aid, we are told a host of fibs about how it is 'ballooning' out of control. So we looked around, and found some data in a report by the parliamentary select committee responsible for Justice:

1) Has the Legal Aid cost been ballooning? No: it has been falling since 2004:

2) Is this because the number of cases has been falling? No, they have been rising. In spite of rising number of cases since 2004, the costs have NOT been rising:

3) Is the legal aid money pouring into the pin-striped pockets of legal fat-cats? No: according to the Law Society president Lucy Scott-Moncrieff the average earnings of a legal aid lawyer are £25,000 per year.



4) Are the cuts in legal aid cutting waste and inefficiency? No: the Ministry of Justice itself admits they are simply saving money by cutting our rights to justice:

"In seeking to learn how best to reduce costs from other jurisdictions, Ms Albon [Director for Civil, Family and Legal Aid Policy at the Ministry of Justice] admitted that the Ministry of Justice had found it "difficult to find some other area, look at it and think they are providing a much better and cheaper service than us. Mostly, when they are spending a lot less, it is because they are buying a lot less."[41]"

The withdrawal of Legal Aid will provide more than just lower taxes for the wealthy. It will benefit big people and organisations who would rather not face little people as equals in the eyes of the Law.