Discuss the problems with government funding and the concept of access to justice.

The introduction of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act (2012) introduced the most radical cuts to the legal aid system since the latter’s introduction in 1949. The 2012 Act created cuts to the legal aid budget totalling £350,000,000 per year, with entire areas of law being removed from the scope of legal aid, including; private family law, housing, welfare and clinical negligence. The issue with the introduction of these cost saving methods is that it is limiting the amount of people who have access to justice in the UK, especially when considering rising court and arbitrator costs. Ensuring access to justice is an integral part of the British constitution, and is a right protected through codified legislation, most noticeably through the Human Rights Act, and Article 6 of the Human Rights Convention ‘the right to a fair trial’. With a price quite literally being placed on justice, the question is does this interfere with our fundamental rights?Introduced by the Conservative/Liberal Democratic coalition government as a means to tackle high public spending and in belief that too many cases were reaching the courts that could have been settle before trial. These reforms have seriously hindered families in their right to justice. Although there are various groups which have been hit hard with the introduction of these cuts, including asylum seekers, women and those with disabilities the research into private family law has not been conducted in the same detail. Scotland has also suffered its own austerity and cuts to Legal Aid, but is not subject the 2012 Act, and thus will fall outside of the scope of this answer, however is an important point to also note.