The LASPO wrecking ball: ten years on

The full extent of the ‘desertification’ of the legal advice sector was recently revealed at an event organised by the Legal Action Group (LAG) to mark the ten-year anniversary of the 2013 legal aid cuts under the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (LASPO 2012).

Dr Jo Wilding, a legal academic who has been researching their impact on immigration and asylum advice, reported that large tracts of England and Wales were now devoid of publicly-funded legal aid help, including the whole of Wales, ‘apart from the very south and one guy in North Wales’; the east of England ‘including Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk and Lincolnshire’; the South West below Bristol, ‘apart from two people in a windowless office in Plymouth’; Northumbria and Cumbria; and ‘most of the south coast’.

Shocking figures

Lord Willy Bach, the former