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Courtesy Independent..............
Cuts to legal aid are an attack on working class, says '80s miners' lawyer
Government legal reforms will deny poorest in society justice, says leading UK lawyer
A leading civil-rights lawyer who helped striking miners successfully fight false accusations from
police during the infamous "Battle of Orgreave" has said it would now be much harder for them
to achieve justice under the Government's legal aid reforms.
Raju Bhatt, who has specialised in cases involving abuse of power or neglect of duty for more
than two decades and was named legal aid lawyer of the year last month, told The Independent
that the changes to legal aid could cause an "exponential rise in costs" for the Government -
and deny the poorest in society access to justice.
One of Mr Bhatt's first actions against the police was winning £425,000 damages from South
Yorkshire police for assault, false imprisonment and malicious prosecution on behalf of 39 miners
during the 1984-85 miner's strike.
But under the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (Laspo), Mr Bhatt
warns that it will now become far more difficult for those without money to get justice.
"Some of the first work that I had the privilege of doing was the miners' strike and their attempts
to bring Yorkshire police to account," he said. "Now, criminal defence practitioners have faced
the brunt of the devastation that has been wrought in the name of legal aid cutbacks, and so the
opportunity to bring the police to account through the civil courts might not have been open
to them at all."
Although the Government has backed down on plans to deny defendants the right to choose their
own solicitor in criminal cases, it still aims to slash £220m a year from the legal aid budget.
The cuts mean entire areas of civil law will no longer be eligible for legal aid, including divorces,
immigration where the person is not detained, some employment and education law, personal
injury and negligence, and debt, housing and benefit issues.