- Conference
- 2016 National Women's Conference
- Date
- 14 October 2015
- Decision
- Carried
Conference will be aware that the changes to legal aid introduced in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, which requires women to provide evidence of their domestic abuse through providing evidence of domestic violence in the previous two years. Evidence can consist of a conviction, police caution, protective injunction, letter from a health professional, residence in a refuge and other categories of information. The evidence has to relate to the last two years and is an arbitrary time limit having serious impacts on those seeking legal redress through the Legal Aid Scheme.
The Justice Select Committee of Parliament has warned that a third of victims of domestic violence cannot provide the evidence required to obtain legal aid, and this has harmed access to justice for some litigants. The Report from the Committee highlighted that women often find it hard to prove they have been abused or attacked. A survey by the Rights of Women organisation found that 39% of women who were victims of domestic violence had none of the forms of evidence required to qualify for legal aid.
The evidence shows that women in crisis are being failed by the present unnecessary bureaucratic hurdles that the legislation and the Legal Aid Agency makes them go through. They are being denied the support they so urgently require. In some cases women are being subjected to the horrendous experience of facing the courts without legal support, only to be cross-examined directly by their abuser. This is directly due to the cuts to legal aid. Women and their children are being denied the legal justice which is their right. Without legal support, women and their families simply cannot navigate the complex legal processes which have life-changing consequences for them. If they fail to fulfil the evidence requirements women cannot access either advice or assistance under the legal aid scheme.
Conference instructs the National Women’s Committee to campaign:
• For the Legal Aid Agency to have discretion to grant legal aid to a victim of domestic violence who does not fit within the current legislative criteria for legal aid in domestic abuse cases;
• The two year time limit for evidential proof of domestic abuse to be removed from the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, given the lasting impact that domestic abuse can have on the recipient.
