Legal aid strike? The press only have time for London Underground

It is hard not to notice the stark and, quite frankly, worrying contrast in responses to the announcements calling off the respective strike actions by tube drivers and criminal lawyers.

Whereas the former was greeted with cheers of jubilation bordering on the hysterical from strike weary commuters, the latter received merely surprise and a degree of consternation from some members of the Criminal Law Solicitors' Association (CLSA), the London Criminal Courts Solicitors' Association (LCCSA), and the Criminal Bar Association (CBA).

Though newspaper will have found this morning's column inches easy to fill after unions announced progress had been made in their dispute with London Underground's management, details of the 'goodwill gesture' to suspend the legal aid boycott after almost two months of action were less easy to find outside of the legal press.

Not that the news desks of some of the nation's most powerful media organisations are completely to blame. While the tube handles up to four million passenger journeys each day, or over 1.2 billion per year, a relatively small number of individuals, just 1.72 million, have passed through the criminal justice system in the last 12 months, ending March 2015. The public, by and large, remain disinterested in legal aid, despite the initial flurry of stories at the start of the boycott.

Although SJ has long advocated for a strong and sustained response to the second 8.75 per cent fee cut and two-tier contracts, the idea that the government would quickly and completely cave in the face of direct action from practitioners would have been naive, to say the least. A degree of negotiation was always needed, and savings should be implemented where possible, just not to the levels proposed by the former justice secretary, Chris Grayling.

Criticism, therefore, of the leadership of the two leading practitioner groups - the CLSA and LCCSA - seems harsh. They have managed to patch together a united front in the fight against the cuts, even with the competing interests from elements of the CBA and the Big Firms Group (BFG) at play. More impressively, they have managed to do what was simply impossible less than a year ago: get the Lord Chancellor into a room and discuss the burning issue.

Unlike his predecessor, and to his credit, Michael Gove has been willing to listen to those working at the coal face of the criminal justice system and allowed them to brief him on cost-saving ideas, even though those manning the press desk at the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) continued to do their best impression of the comical Iraqi information minister, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf.

Despite protestations that it was still 'business as usual', the creation of a dedicated telephone service to provide information to those seeking lawyers with the faintest of lifelines and the increasing number of high-profile cases that had to be adjourned would have been rib-tickling, if the stakes for access to justice and the rule of law were not so high.

But, credit where it is due, at least the civil servants at the MoJ did not resort to anything as desperate as their counterparts at the DWP when they posted 'fake claimant' testimonials to show the 'positive impact' of benefit sanctions. Then again, perhaps it is just too difficult to create a realistic and positive tale of being railroaded through the courts without a lawyer to look after your rights.

Direct action from legal aid practitioners is far from over. The CLSA and LCCSA are surveying their members to determine whether firms should withdraw bids for the controversial 'two-tier' contracts and, should continuing talks with the MoJ prove fruitless, a call to return to a nationwide boycott of legal aid seems likely.

Whether or not such a call to arms will be greeted with the same or even greater enthusiasm than the last will be up to the rank and file of criminal lawyers. Many solicitors and barristers have already sacrificed much in this struggle with the government. The longer this fight lasts, the more difficult it is to sustain.

John van der Luit-Drummond is deputy editor for Solicitors Journal