Justice Alliance Subgroup: Fat Rat Film in schools
Hopefully by now you will have seen the Fat Rat Film “Legal Aid Team” which was launched in April 2015. For anyone that hasn’t seen it, Legal Aid Team is an “animated superhero adventure film pitting three audacious lawyers against the evil justice minister, Chris Grayling”.
The new Parliament may be about to rise for the summer but there has been just time enough for the first meeting of the All-Party Group (APG) on Legal Aid, which has been newly constituted with the former Director of Public Prosecutions Keir Starmer QC elected, unopposed, as chair.
YLAL is pleased to announce the publication of our latest report on social mobility and diversity in the legal aid sector: “One Step Forward, Two Steps Back”. The report is to be launched on 30 October 2013 at an event at the Keyworth Centre, London South Bank University. The event will run from 1830-2130. Our keynote speaker is Baroness Hale. The event will feature a debate with a panel of guests including Lucy Scott-Moncrieff – Director of Scott-Moncrieff & Associates Ltd and Chair of the Law Society's Equality and Diversity Committee; David Johnston – CEO of the Social Mobility Foundation; Chris Topping – Partner at Broudie, Jackson & Canter, Simao Paxi-Cato – YLAL and Invictus Chambers and James Wakefield – Director of the Council of the Inns of Court. The discussion will be chaired by journalist Raphael Rowe.
The legal aid bill has now left the Lords. It will be back in the House of Commons this coming Tuesday (17th April). There are only a few days left to save legal aid and we need you more than ever!
Unequal before the law publishes the findings of an independent Commission of Inquiry into legal aid, organised by the Young Legal Aid Lawyers and the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers. The Commission was led by Diana Holland, assistant general secretary of the trade union Unite, Evan Harris, former Liberal Democrat MP and the Reverend Professor Nicholas Sagovsky, until recently the canon of Westminster Abbey: three non-partisan and independent-minded experts, each with a long track record of promoting social justice in their communities.
YLAL has submitted a paper called Quality not Cost to the Ministry of Justice in the hope that quality will be at the heart of the new proposals for legal aid services.
