‘Legal aid deserts’ can be found everywhere in Scotland, charity boss tells MSPs

Scotland has a “desperate” shortage of lawyers doing civil cases on legal aid, MSPs have been told.

Scottish Women’s Aid chief executive Dr Marsha Scott told how staff working for her organisation can have to make 50 or 60 calls to try to find legal representation for abused women.

Amid concerns that parts of Scotland are now “legal aid deserts” – where people cannot find a legal aid lawyer to help them – Holyrood’s Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee has launched an inquiry.

Dr Scott told the MSPs: “It is a desert. It is a desert all over Scotland in a lot of places, but the folks are dying of thirst up in the more rural areas.”

She added the problem of “legal aid deserts” was “particularly acute in the highland and island communities” but added that such areas “can be found everywhere in Scotland”.

She spoke out about the problems as she told MSPs that “the model for legal aid in Scotland is not fit for purpose for domestic abuse”.

Speaking about the legal aid system, Dr Scott said: “It chops women’s and children’s lives up into little bits and it helps with some and it doesn’t help with others.

“It is probably the biggest violation to their human right (of) access to justice that I can think of.”

Dr Scott said that there was “a lack of solicitors, a lack of access”, but also said that means-testing those who have suffered abuse to determine if they qualify for legal aid was a “farce” and was “probably a violation of their human rights”.

Scottish Women’s Aid insists that means-testing for domestic abuse victims “further disadvantages” them, with the organisation calling for legal services to be “provided free for all women, children and young people experiencing domestic abuse”.

Dr Scott insisted: “The system is just not designed appropriately for domestic abuse.”

She told the MSPs: “We have brought people into the Parliament to talk to ministers, we have done a number of things to try and make sure people are understanding how desperate the situation is.”

Arguing that the “whole system needs reform”, she added: “We are no closer to that reform now than we were eight years ago, and I am deeply concerned about that.”

Her comments came as a former housing lawyer said the “stark reality” was that all but the most urgent of legal aid cases, involving those facing eviction or having their home repossessed, have to be “placed on the back burner”.

Fiona McPhail spent more than 10 years as a lawyer but is now a lecturer in social justice at the University of Glasgow.

While she said that people needed legal advice for a variety of housing problems, she added: “The stark reality now is that the majority of those cases that are deemed to be not as urgent as the eviction, the mortgage repossession or the homeless client, they are placed on the back burner.”

Ms McPhail said: “There is a huge shortage of housing lawyers able to advise and represent tenants, homeowners, homeless people, people in housing crisis in this country.

“And those that are not in that priority category, of facing an eviction hearing or on the streets, are much further away to getting through the doors and accessing the specialist legal advice that they need.”