Jon Robins questions Lord Sumption’s perceptions about the secondary importance of civil legal aid schemes
Lord Sumption was at it again at the Bar Council conference last month. Never one to feel overly constrained by judicial discretion and with retirement only days away, the Supreme Court justice had a few things to get off his chest.
The timing was interesting. Legal aid lawyers are currently waiting with bated breath (and zero confidence) for the government’s serially-delayed LASPO review. If they were hoping for a message of judicial solidarity from our top court, it wasn’t going to come from the judge ‘with the brain the size of Britain’ (to quote Alastair Campbell).
Instead, Lord Sumption (pictured) rather unhelpfully suggested that the Bar Council was largely wasting its time bothering to campaign for a comprehensive system of publicly-funded law. In particular, the judge drew a distinction between the criminal and civil legal aid schemes: the former being ‘fundamental’ and the latter being merely ‘discretionary’. For the latter, he explained: ‘Governments decide how much money is available and
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