As International Women’s Day is coming up on 8 March, GMLC campaign volunteer Mary Horobin looks at the Women’s Budget Group’s 2023 report on gender gaps in access to justice, considering how cuts to free legal advice and representation have hit women the hardest – and how reforms and changes could improve women’s lives.
Legal aid provides government funding for legal advice and representation to those who cannot afford it. However, drastic cuts to services and limitations on who is eligible to receive legal aid have followed the Legal Aid Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (LASPO). Less than 20% of the general public are currently eligible to receive legal aid funding. These eligibility limitations and cuts to legal aid services disproportionately affect those on lower incomes, people from black and minority ethnic backgrounds, and women. This article will specifically focus on the effect legal aid cuts have had on women, who account for 60% of civil legal aid clients, and who often experience the largest crises in living standards due to factors such as earning less on average, and disproportionately shouldering childcare responsibilities.
In July 2023 the UK Women’s Budget Group released a report on ‘Gender Gaps in Access to Civil Legal Justice’ based on roundtable discussions and a survey responded to by 115 organisations/services. The report is accessible here. Below, I summarise the report’s key findings and look at what needs to be done by policy makers and legal services going forward to address imbalances and redesign policies to tackle inequality.
Key points from ‘Gender Gaps in Access to Civil Legal Justice’ report
Impact of reduced legal aid scope:
- LASPO has limited access to legal aid in the areas of employment, housing, private family law, and immigration/asylum. These areas have all been identified as key areas for which women seek advice and representation.
- Employment issues women seek legal aid for include equal pay and employers refusing flexible working requests, particularly post-pregnancy, and other maternity/pregnancy related discrimination. Sectors disproportionately staffed by women, such as care work, also generally pay lower salaries than male-dominated sectors. This pay disparity further causes women to require legal aid more regularly than men.
- In housing, women are habitually the recipients of no-fault eviction notices and face homelessness. These issues are in scope for legal aid but problems that lead to them – such as rent rises – can no longer be funded by legal aid, meaning issues cannot be addressed early, when it would be most useful.
- Often, access to legal aid support is denied in private family law because women cannot provide sufficient financial paperwork. Legal aid help is often sought in this area of law due to issues which overwhelmingly affect women more than men: domestic abuse, child maintenance, and lack of support for carers of disabled children and adults.
- Lastly, immigration legal aid funding cuts have left migrant women exposed to exploitation and harm. 30% of survey respondents listed trafficking/domestic violence as the key reason for migrant women seeking legal aid. The report also raises grave concerns regarding the no recourse to public funds rule, which predominantly affects migrant women, denying them access to, for example, welfare benefits and homelessness assistance, amongst other things. Many legal advice centres were also reported to have no information available in other languages and no provisions for translators.
‘Advice deserts.’
- Cuts to legal aid and local councils and authorities have meant the closure of half the UK’s law centres and advice services. In many areas, especially outside of cities, there are worryingly few legal aid providers/services and there is no funding for travel to support centres.
Legal aid as a ‘lifeline’
- 85% of the survey respondents in the report said vulnerable women are unable to access civil legal aid as a direct consequence of LASPO.
- Many women asylum seekers are victims of human trafficking, survivors of domestic abuse and sexual assaults, in desperate need of support, and the cuts to services leave them with no recourse to justice.
- The survey identifies financial cuts to legal aid, including closures of law centres and advice providers, as leading to more and more people, primarily women, being at ‘crisis point’. This leaves more women representing themselves in court, a difficult task that carries financial risk.
What can be done to increase women’s access to legal aid?
Suggestions from the Women’s Budget Group report:
‘More resources’, ‘early intervention’ and ‘improving accessibility’ are the major factors identified in the report as necessary for improving access to civil legal aid. For example, support services for victims of gender-based violence must be readily available and start much earlier than the legal process. There needs to be a seamlessly connected referral process so that women in urgent need of legal support can access the services they need. Longer time limits at the employment tribunals should also be allowed, particularly for pregnant women and new mothers, as it is very difficult to get claims in within 3 months for people with caring duties.
Additional suggestions:
Policy makers must act on the reports and research of groups to ensure intervention at the earliest possible stage. Recent reports include: the UK Women’s Budget Group’s report discussed above; the Justice Committee’s report on the future of legal aid, which called for a complete overhaul of the system to allow for greater accessibility and broader eligibility; The TUC’s report which found that women end their working lives with less pension than men; and reports such as The Guardian’s which have found that women are the most affected by benefit caps.
There must be efforts to address the fact that vulnerable women and, in general, 46% of the British public do not understand the legal aid system and the fundamental rights they have to access justice. In educational and legislative efforts, policy makers must consider the perspectives of different groups and the ways in which services could be made accessible for them. They must consider the needs of individuals at multiple intersections of oppression (due to racialisation, poverty, disability, being single mothers/carers etc).
Campaigning for access to justice
In early 2024, GMLC held an exhibition highlighting stories of people who have had to navigate the failing civil justice system over the last 10 years – the majority of our interviewees were women, many facing issues raised in this report. Lisa, for example, couldn’t find free representation so she had to take an employment case around unfair dismissal herself. She said:
“I think when you represent yourself you eat, sleep and breathe it. There wasn’t a day that went by that it wasn’t in my thoughts. It seeps into every aspect [of life]. I remember taking the kids out for some lunch to a little farm shop with my parents and I thought everything was done and then I got a call midday from their solicitors saying ‘this hasn’t come over, what are you doing about this?’, and it through me into absolute panic again. And I remember saying ‘I’m really sorry kids, I’ve got to get home, I need to get back to the computer at home’. So, I think if you have somebody who can take that pressure off and deal with things for you it would definitely make a difference.”
You can read Lisa’s story and those of our other interviewees here.
You can join GMLC’s campaigning for access to justice by following us on social media and sharing our work, becoming a member, giving a one-off donation or affiliating your group or trade union branch. For more information, please see the ‘Get Involved’ section above.
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Image credit: Giulia Forsythe, ‘International Women’s Day’, Flickr, 2017
