There were no areas of Government spending that were unaffected by the recent cutbacks through the coalition, this definitely included the provision of legal aid.

About 11 years ago, we already saw how personal injury claims were withdrawn from legal aid and this had a massive knock on effect on the number of companies cropping up to deal with this field. The Government has now gone even further in this regard and there is a strong possibility that these no win no fee companies may become a thing of the past in the future as legislation is being planned to curtail their activities.

There will always have to be certain areas of law that must be covered under legal aid. As much as the Government would like to cut back on legal matters such as criminal representation and employment law advice, the citizens of this country must always have a right to free assistance in this regard, if they are unable to afford it themselves.

The very fact that the Government has cut back on the right to legal aid has meant that our legal system has become increasingly elitist in who can access justice in the first instance. This is something that our society always tried to avoid in the past, indeed it was one of the primary reasons for the establishment of legal aid originally, but now we appear to be returning to that same outdated era.

As far as any more cutbacks are concerned, this and future governments are going to need to tread very carefully in this regard. If justice can only be accessed by those that have the means to fund it, that is absolutely no justice at all!