Bar Council supports MPs’ findings that legal aid decline is harming access to justice
The Bar Council has urged the Government to recognise legal aid as an essential public service alongside the NHS and education, backing a new parliamentary report warning that years of underfunding have put access to justice at risk.
Its intervention follows the publication of the Justice Select Committee’s Access to Justice: Legal Aid report, which concluded that the declining availability of legal aid and rising levels of self-representation are creating an “unacceptably high risk of miscarriages of justice” while undermining the efficient administration of the courts. The committee also called on ministers to restore legal aid as an effective, sustainable and accessible service for those who need it most.
For solicitors, the Bar Council’s response reinforces continuing pressure for greater investment across criminal, civil and family legal aid. The organisation argues that sustainable funding is needed to maintain practitioner capacity and ensure that eligible clients can continue to obtain representation, rather than relying on short-term funding measures.
Bar Council Chair Kirsty Brimelow KC said long-term investment was required across the criminal, civil and family justice system. She argued that legal aid should be regarded as an essential public service in the same way as the NHS and education.
She said the Justice Committee’s report demonstrated how decades of underfunding had placed both access to justice and the justice system itself in jeopardy. Referring to the committee’s findings, Brimelow said that access to justice could not exist in practice where people eligible for legal aid were unable to secure legal representation.
The Bar Council also highlighted the wider economic significance of legal services, noting that the sector contributed £42.6 billion to the UK economy in 2024. Brimelow said publicly funded courts were the “windows to our justice system” and warned that confidence in the justice system was being affected by their current condition.
She added that investment in legal aid should be viewed not only as an investment in justice but also as an investment in economic growth.
The Bar Council reiterated its call for adequate funding across criminal, civil and family legal aid to protect access to justice and retain practitioners working in publicly funded legal services. It warned that a continuing short-term approach to funding was damaging society and pointed to the ongoing backlog of cases as evidence of the wider impact.
The Justice Select Committee’s report concludes by urging the Government to prioritise restoring legal aid as a sustainable and accessible public service for those who rely on it, with the Bar Council endorsing that recommendation and calling for long-term investment rather than temporary funding measures.