A piece in yesterday’s Guardian. Extracts:
Time limits preventing victims of domestic violence from obtaining legal aid for court hearings will be scrapped from January, the Ministry of Justice has announced.
The heavily criticised restrictions, which have resulted in large numbers of women confronting abusive ex-partners without representation, will also be relaxed to accept evidence from victim support organisations. [J4MB emphasis – in plain English, radical feminist organizations such as Women’s Aid and Refuge.]
The changes deliver on signals that the system would be reformed given by the MoJ and revealed by the Guardian earlier this year.
Confirming the new guidelines for the Legal Aid Agency, the justice minister, Dominic Raab, said: “We have listened to victims’ groups and carefully reviewed the criteria for legal aid for victims of domestic abuse in family cases.
“These changes make sure that vulnerable women [J4MB emphasis] and children get legal support so their voice is properly heard in court.”
Legal aid has usually been available to victims of domestic violence and child abuse, or those deemed at risk, as long as they could provide evidence of abuse within the past five years.
Removal of the five-year limit and admission of fresh categories of evidence will help large numbers of women and some men [J4MB emphasis] who have been deprived of legal advice and representation in family court disputes over custody and contact with children…
Statements from domestic violence support organisations and housing support officers will in future be accepted as evidence of past abuse, [J4MB emphasis] as well as those from social services, [J4MB: Virulently anti-male organizations] law enforcement agencies and medical professionals.
Earlier this year the government announced a £17m fund to support 41 projects across the country to tackle violence against women and girls. [J4MB emphasis]
Steve Hynes, the director of the Legal Action Group who has campaigned against legal aid cuts, welcomed the change: “It’s taken a long time because of the general election and other delays. I’m very pleased they have made the announcement.
“They realised it’s a priority. It wasn’t working. Women [J4MB emphasis] who experienced domestic violence were not qualifying [for representation]. The amount of civil legal aid granted has fallen by 80% since Laspo was introduced.”…
Sophie Walker, the leader of the Women’s Equality party, said:“The Ministry of Justice’s decision to lift these damaging restrictions on legal aid is welcome – and long overdue.
“Too many women [J4MB emphasis] have been denied justice over the last seven years as a result of the government’s short-sighted cuts.”
Justice for Men & Boys 
It’s worth noting that when LASPO was introduced in April 2013, the time limit for alleged DV to trigger the gateway to legal aid was 2 years. It was only increased to 5 years in April last year (2016). Now it is to go altogether. I fail to see how the other changes make much difference because the gateway was always as wide as the Grand Canyon – and a letter from a refuge or a social worker was always enough. Since the refuge organisations declared policy is “always believe the (female) victim”, it staggers the mind how this is supposed to be evidence of anything.
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Agreed. Let’s say 10 years ago a wife attacked her husband, he retaliated, she went to a refuge with her kids, claimed he’d attacked her, it was all written down. In the meantime he got on with life, nobody wrote anything down. How could he possibly defend himself today? We’re going to see a tidal wave of vexatious claims from women, going back many years. The court system is already creaking under the weight of false sexual abuse allegations, now we’ll have even more false domestic abuse allegations, mostly funded by male taxpayers, while men are the real victims of these miscarriages of injustice.
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I have to agree. Clearly the new “no austerity” approach by government has put paid to the concern that LASPO had not delivered the savings it should have. In a sense it will not clog up courts because there is no reason to prove the Abuse or requirement that it go to court. All that is required is there is “evidence” and an accusation reported to one of the organisation types listed is quite sufficient to get the legal aid. So there has been no need whatsoever to have the accusations reported to police or go to court let alone be proven. There was evidence in a review a couple of years ago that in fact the accused may collude with this subterfuge too as the “success” of getting legal Aid reduces the costs to the litigants and of course the accusation is unlikely to be followed through by any form of investigation. Dominic Raab has done some sensible things in the past, I suspect he’s just doing the classic “being nice to women” thing, the process adding to an already perverse incentive to make accusations of Domestic Abuse. And of course chucking men under a bus in time honoured gynocentricism.
It won’t clog up the courts because this is unnecessary to the goal of getting public money to fund Family Court cases.
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‘Dominic Raab has done some sensible things in the past, I suspect he’s just doing the classic “being nice to women” thing … ‘
I suspect he’s just doing what he can to maintain his ‘career trajectory’ in an aggressively androphobic environment and a time of political uncertainty.
‘And of course chucking men under a bus in time honoured gynocentricism.‘
That’s always been how men maintain a ‘career trajectory’: by climbing on the backs of or sacrificing other men, usually by proclaiming a common cause in pursuit of some illusory objective.
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There needs to be a statute of limitations brought in for things like sex crime, DV, assault, slander etc etc. I know more stuff is recorded than fifty years ago, but the potential caseload base on this standard of “crime” is limitless.
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Why not just say legal aid is available to women but not to men and have done with it?
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Frankly that was the case seven years ago. By making legal aid only available if there was an accusation of DA this fuelled a rapid increase in such accusations, and a dramatic decline in “mediation” (even if the accusation was to get public money it hardly helps create an atmosphere of mutual respect). And of course dramatically reduced the expected savings that prompted all this. All in all one can’t help men have been trashed here more than if the situation hadn’t changed.
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‘Statements from domestic violence support organisations and housing support officers will in future be accepted as evidence of past abuse … as well as those from social services … law enforcement agencies and medical professionals.‘
Statements? What sort of ‘statements’?
Nevertheless, pressure cookers don’t explode until they’ve been screwed down so tightly and the heat turned up so high that further expansion is not possible, so a welcome development. I write that in the knowledge that my pathological and spiteful liar of an ex wife, who stole several thousands from me and was partly responsible for my falling into a position from which I have never recovered, may well make some unfounded and unprovable allegation should I ever come into money and she hear about it.
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‘Statements from domestic violence support organisations and housing support officers will in future be accepted as evidence of past abuse’
If they are witnesses to violence or other relevant matters than their testimony is evidence like any other witness. If they are giving an opinion after speaking to the accuser then it is just hearsay and the court should make its own mind up about the credibility of the accusations and accuser. That is the general role of courts. In this case however the term evidence is a misnomer as it is not weighed an evaluated in teh normal way but is simply accepted unquestioned as the qualifying criteria for legal aid. If someone wants ‘evidence’ for this purpose they will get it.
There shoudl be no legal aid in such cases. If there is real evidence of domestic violence then the police should prosecute which means no legal aid is required for the accuser and the accused will have legal aid to defend themselves against a serious charge. If it is an accusation brought up in family court then it should not get legal aid as it is an enormous incentive for false accusations which if they were a real concern shoudl be reported to the police and handled as a criminal matter.
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