The GMLC grew out of a protest against cuts to services offering free legal advice and representation. In recent years the right to legal aid has been subject to permanent assault by successive governments. As a result people have been left without advice and support when they need it most, putting them at the risk of poverty, homelessness and unemployment. On this page you can find out all the latest news from the struggle to restore legal aid.
In this election we are asking what commitments to Free Access to Justice candidates in all ten boroughs of Greater Manchester – Bolton, Bury, Manchester, Oldham, Rochdale, Salford, Stockport, Tameside, Trafford and Wigan – are willing to make. We have gathered these questions from our own members and supporters and will be making the results available. Come back to this website, follow…
On Friday afternoon we had the pleasure of welcoming Andy Burnham MP to the Greater Manchester Law Centre. Andy has long expressed his support for our campaign and has often emphasised his concern that people are “finding it harder and harder to get access to justice”. During our meeting Andy stressed how “face to face…
In the last few years, people have faced greater and greater hardship as a result of cuts in benefits, rising homelessness, uncertainties at work and escalating racism. Meanwhile legal aid, an essential part of the welfare state and the justice system, has been cut again and again. People facing these problems may be able to…
Charlotte Hughes paid a moving tribute to Caroline Sheridan, English social reformer and author, in a feature article in The People’s Daily Morning Star on the 12th April. Caroline Sheridan’s activism helped pave the way for legal rights for women – but these rights are now in danger thanks to Tory cuts to legal aid:…
Laws that cost too much to enforce are phoney laws. A civil right that people can’t afford to use is no right at all. And a society that turns justice into a luxury good is one no longer ruled by law, but by money and power. This week the highest court in the land will decide…
Four years on from LASPO, the wheels of justice are in urgent need of repair, writes Andrew Langdon QC. No hyperbole: policy-makers are fixated on the technological revolution and the Reform Programme and do not want to talk about fixing legal aid April is the fourth anniversary of the coming into force of the Legal Aid,…
Greater Manchester Law Centre has opened against the odds and is the third new centre to join the legal aid network post-LASPO. Barristers were integral to its success and John Nicholson outlines the journey – urging the Bar to join the wider campaign for law centres Ken Loach’s I Daniel Blake paints a clear picture of Britain…
Everyone with an interest in promoting access to justice should come along to the launch of a new report commissioned by PCS, at the House of Commons, on 22 February. An Alternative Vision for the Justice System was written by Professor Roger Seifert, professor of industrial relations at the University of Wolverhampton. He will be joined…
The Greater Manchester Law Centre opened its doors to the public this weekend becoming the third new centre to join the network post-LASPO. ‘Legal aid has been cut and cut again,’ commented John Nicholson, the law centre’s chair. ‘Now – when people are facing vicious benefit sanctions, homelessness, escalating racism, cuts in health and education…
Our patron, Lord Willy Bach, recently published an interim report on the current state of access to justice and some policy recommendations for the future.