Dear ColleaguesSome of you will have noticed the Government Green Paper which has just been published, and which proposes some £350 million in cuts to the civil legal aid budget (about 33%).
The issue is tremendously important. Over 500,000 people will lose a service, 1/3 of civil legal aid funding would be cut, and funding from (among others) most debt, all welfare benefits, all employment and about 40% of housing and 60% of immigration cases. Most ancillary relief cases would also cease receiving funding.
Recent surveys by the Law Centres Federation estimated that for every £1 spent on funding Law Centre work, up to £10 is made back in wider social benefits. These include savings such as increased payments or rent, managed debts and increased benefit uptake. By cutting this funding, the government will be increasing poverty and social exclusion by several orders of magnitude.
Last week the LCF, Unite and many others launched Justice 4 All, a campaign to stop the cuts. Please help by signing up as a supported to their website. They also have a facebook site which currently has more than 500 members.
I urge you to log onto the website and register. There is also a facebook site which currently has about 500 affiliates. If you are on facebook please register there too. Please ask your friends and family to sign up too.
The website can be found at http://www.justice-for-all.org.uk/
Yours sincerely
Nathaniel Mathews
Hackney Community Law Centre
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