‘I genuinely believe “access to justice” is the hallmark of a civilised society.’ It was with those uplifting words that the then Lord Chancellor, Kenneth Clarke, introduced the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill in the House of Commons in 2011.

This book is about ‘access to justice’, what it means and what its absence means for our justice system and for those caught in it. The phrase has been used and abused by politicians of all colours, but never quite so strikingly as when invoked by Kenneth Clarke, perhaps the most enlightened minister to hold the ancient title of Lord Chancellor in the last decade (2010–12). There have been seven Lord Chancellors since 2010.

The Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, or LASPO, was to represent the most radical package of reforms to the legal aid scheme since our system of publicly funded legal advice was established as a fundamental building block in the architecture of the post-Second World War welfare state. The reforms came into force in April 2013.

As our book demonstrates, the LASPO reforms were ‘radical’ in a wholly negative and destructive sense. The Coalition government's flagship legislation was predicated on one idea above all others: to cut £350 million a year from a total £2.1 billion budget. Such swingeing cuts took place as the Coalition government imposed its ‘austerity’ policies in the United Kingdom (UK).

* * *

Over a 12-month period, starting in October 2018, we interviewed people across England and Wales about their experiences of the justice system. One idea behind our book is to reframe the debate about access to justice. There is a tendency to conflate ‘access to justice’ with ‘legal aid’.

The labels ‘legal aid’ and ‘access to justice’ are tricky. Our book is not just about legal aid because (i) post-LASPO, there is not much left; (ii) often the people we spoke to were the ones who had fallen through the gap and had no lawyers and no publicly funded legal help; and (iii) the phrase doesn't resonate with the public, who suspect that ‘legal aid’ is all about lawyers’ fees and professional self-interest. The phrase ‘access to justice’ isn't quite right either, because the people that we spoke to, more often than not, were being denied justice.

We spoke to people in law centres, Citizens Advice Bureaux and community advice agencies.