The Justice Alliance, set up in defence of legal aid, has marked the anniversary by publishing Legal Aid Matters. 70 contributors, including legal aid lawyers and individuals receiving legal aid, celebrate 70 cases in which legal aid made a difference. I write about the case of R v Limbuela ex parte Secretary of State for the Home Department.

In 2002, Blair’s Labour government had passed legislation which deprived asylum-seekers without children of any support whatsoever if the Home Office decided that they had not claimed asylum “as soon as reasonably practicable” after their arrival in Britain. As a result, asylum-seekers had no accommodation and no money. Some of them slept on the streets and begged. Some received a small amount of support and overnight accommodation from overstretched charities.

Three asylum-seekers, who had all made their asylum claims on the day of their arrivals but had been told that this was not “as soon as reasonably practicable,” and that they should have claimed hours earlier, challenged this Act with the benefit of legal aid. They argued that the restriction on providing support amounted to inhuman or degrading treatment, contrary to Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

The House of Lords agreed. They said that sleeping in the street on its own might not be inhuman or degrading treatment, but where someone has no resources, no alternative sources of support (not least because asylum-seekers were prohibited from working) and is denied shelter, food and the most basic necessities of life by the state, that amounts to inhuman or degrading treatment. The case is important partly because it meant that asylum-seekers would not, literally, be starving on the street. But also because it extends the concept of inhuman or degrading treatment into economic hardship.

Other cases assisted by legal aid, and celebrated by the Justice Alliance, extended the rights of women to resist domestic violence. When legal aid was previously available for divorce cases, that protected women from being cross examined by their violent partners. Now, women regularly face their unrepresented abuser in Court.

The infamous miscarriage of justice cases were all exposed using legal aid. The cases of the Guildford Four, the Maguire Seven, the Birmingham Six, the Tottenham Three and the M25 Three all took years of hard work and dedication by their lawyers, who would simply not have been able to pursue that work had they not been paid. Innocent people would have remained in prison, convicted of very serious crimes which they had not committed.

Legal aid helped to establish lesbian and gay rights well before Parliament legislated, establishing that long-term gay partners could succeed to a tenancy. Legal aid also funded sex discrimination cases, notably establishing that sacking a woman because she was pregnant was unlawful.

The most compelling cases are those reflecting the reality of everyday poverty or abuse. Jenny Beck, family lawyer, tells us about Shamina’s case where she had helped Shamina and her children escape from over 15 years of physical, sexual, psychological and financial abuse by her husband. She says “the remarkable issue in this case is that it is unremarkable.”

Tony Rice describes how he was facing eviction. His disability benefit had stopped, he had been unable to deal with the consequences and so rent remained unpaid. His lawyers, funded by legal aid, took 15 months to unravel the DWP’s decisions, restore disability benefit and repay the rent, so he was saved from eviction.

Many of these cases would no longer be funded by legal aid, as it was severely cut by the coalition government in 2012. It is not available for most employment, housing and family cases. The worst cut of all was withdrawing legal aid from welfare benefits advice, since those contesting DWP decisions cannot afford to pay for advice. Even where legal aid is still available, there is a very strict means test, so that most people will not qualify for legal aid (but still cannot afford litigation costs). And the Legal Aid Agency makes some very questionable decisions as to what cases deserve legal aid.

A recent Supreme Court case highlighted how the Legal Aid Agency can make wrong decisions, potentially depriving people of their rights. Ms Samuels was a private rented tenant receiving benefits. Her housing benefit was significantly less than her rent, leaving her to find an additional £151.49 per month towards her rent from her other benefits. She could not afford that, fell into rent arrears and was evicted.

When she asked Birmingham City Council for help, it decided that she could have afforded to pay £151.49 from her benefit and so there was no obligation to house her. She appealed eventually to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court decided that she had spent her benefits on reasonable living expenses for herself and her children and therefore could not have found the £151.49 extra per month. The council were under a duty to help her find accommodation. This is an important case establishing that councils cannot wash their hands of people who cannot afford to pay their rent from their benefits.

However, the Legal Aid Agency decided three times that Ms Samuels had no arguable case. Her lawyers took a chance. They did the work free, applying to the Supreme Court for permission to appeal. Even after the Supreme Court had granted permission, agreeing that Ms Samuels had an arguable case, the Legal Aid Agency still refused and had to be threatened with legal proceedings before legal aid was granted.

In the end, five Supreme Court judges unanimously decided that Ms Samuels had been right, and that councils should not penalise people who cannot afford to pay rent shortfalls from non-housing benefits. This was a decision that benefits a significant number of people, yet the Legal Aid Agency spent three years refusing to help.

Labour promises to revoke many of the coalition government’s cuts to legal aid: restoring legal aid to housing, welfare benefits and family cases. It also promises to usher in a “golden age of law centres,” prioritising legal aid funding towards early legal advice which tends to resolve legal problems early on. Early legal advice is cost-effective and prevents people having to go through the horrors of litigation.

Legal aid is a necessary plank of the welfare state. Decimated by the coalition, Labour needs to restore it in order to achieve access to justice.

Liz Davies is a legal aid barrister and an honorary vice-president of the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers. She writes this column in a personal capacity.

Land is the only commodity that can’t be physically transported when exchanged. Hence the myriad different forms of land ownership, and its often outrageous cost.

That outrageous cost underpins much of what is wrong with modern British society: the housing crisis, our lack of public amenities, the gulf between rich and poor, the privatisation of recreation and leisure services.

Two new reports propose innovative solutions, which the Labour Party should consider carefully as part of its plan for government.

Shelter’s Grounds for Change: The Case for Land Reform in Modern England is a collection of essays addressing land reform so as to bring down land prices and build the social housebuilding we desperately need.

One radical proposal shines through: abolish or drastically reduce “hope value.” When public authorities use compulsory purchase powers to buy land, they are required to pay not just the market value but also “hope value” reflecting the increased value of the land if planning permission for residential use were granted (even though there is no such permission).

The government estimates that the grant of residential planning permission increases the value of the land on the open market by around 108-120 times: a huge amount.

“Hope value” compensates the seller for the loss of that chance, with some reduction allowing for the possibility that planning permission might not be granted.

Removing or substantially capping hope value would allow local authorities to buy land themselves, build houses on it, open up green spaces or sell part of it to developers, thereby keeping the profit gained from residential planning permission in the public purse, to be spent on infrastructure.

Land for the Many: Changing the Way our Fundamental Asset is Used, Owned and Governed is a collective work by seven specialists, edited by George Monbiot and presented to the Labour Party for consideration.

It starts with transparency. Guy Shrubsole’s useful book and website Who Owns England? tells us that half of England is owned by just 1 per cent of the population.

The authors point out that to obtain accurate data from the Land Registry costs £3 per search, a trivial amount until you realise that 24 million titles are registered and so searching the whole database would cost £72 million.

That information should be freely available, along with details of any public subsidy given for land purchases and fully available S106 and CIL agreements (conditions attached to planning permission for developers to provide affordable homes or infrastructure) so that we know when developers break their promises.

Transparency is a good start, but the real goal is stabilisation of house and land prices. The report proposes a Common Ground Trust, to provide common and shared ownership between prospective buyers and the public sector, helping first-time buyers (unlike the government’s Help to Buy scheme which simply drove up house prices and where 42 per cent of recipients could have afforded to buy anyway).

An ambitious programme of social housing building and rent controls and security in tenure in the private rented sector would provide alternatives to home ownership, so help to curb house price inflation.

And progressive taxation could discourage the current financialisation of the housing market, whereby house price inflation is seen as providing an investment or an inheritance.

The report proposes increases in council tax on the most expensive homes, capital gains increases on second homes and investment properties, and a lifetime gifts tax so that those who inherit or receive over £125,000 from family wealth pay tax.

The report welcomes Labour’s existing plans for an English Sovereign Land Trust, so that development can be led by the public interest rather than private developers chasing maximum profits (which results in developers choosing to build expensive homes, rather than houses the local community needs, or keeping land empty so as to benefit from land price inflation).

It also suggests public development corporations, which would build on public land or purchase land without paying inflated “hope value.”

Public participation in planning could involve a jury system, randomly selected local people to participate in designing local and neighbourhood plans.

Finally, different forms of community ownership are welcomed: co-operatives, self-build groups and mutual schemes as well as local authority housebuilding.

I am not qualified to comment on its proposals for farming and forestry, particularly post-Brexit. But I most welcome the chapter on extending the commons.

We may have the right to roam, but it only applies to about 10 per cent of land in England and Wales, landowners can subvert it by neglecting public rights of way and 2026 is the cut-off point for registering rights of way.

In towns and cities, too much apparently public space is actually privately owned. The owners permit the public to walk across their squares or admire their fountains, but can also bar us and accuse us of trespass.

In 2011, the Occupy Movement had planned to occupy Paternoster Square, opposite the London Stock Exchange, but were thwarted as the square is privately owned, and the owners obtained an injunction.

Instead Occupy camped next door in St Paul’s churchyard. We should have an assumed right of public access across all uncultivated land and waterways except for gardens and certain exceptions (perhaps to protect sensitive wildlife sites), and in urban and suburban spaces.

Recognising today’s common good, the report proposes that councils should be required to provide parks and other green spaces and that waiting times for allotments should be no more than one year. A recommendation that will please Jeremy Corbyn.

Land for the Many is radical, but complementary to Labour’s existing policies: on social housebuilding, reforming the planning system for the public good, the green industrial revolution, sharing out the tax burden, so that those who inherit or receive unearned wealth pay their fair share, at a similar marginal rate to income tax, and measures to clamp down on tax avoidance.

We just need a Labour government — sooner rather than later — to to implement it.

Liz Davies is a housing rights barrister, a member of Southampton Test Labour Party and an honorary vice-president of the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers. She writes this column in a personal capacity.

SOUTHAMPTON May Day celebrations were hosted jointly by Unite Community and Extinction Rebellion.

Extinction Rebellion is to be commended for keeping the climate emergency on the front pages. Occupying and greening public spaces, such as Waterloo Bridge, is in the best direct action tradition.

I’m more sceptical about disrupting public transport in the name of climate change, or protesting outside Jeremy Corbyn’s house when they recognise that he is the best hope to get us out of climate emergency. But all movements make mistakes.

The May Day event was in the best traditions of the day; the labour movement and the environmental movement working together and learning from each other.

Extinction Rebellion is not solely a movement of the young, but it is very much led by them. And of course the School Strike 4 Climate is, by definition, a young person’s movement. Indeed that’s the very point: if we don’t solve the climate emergency and halt global warning, their lives are at risk.

I was pleased to hear Extinction Rebellion saying at the May Day event that they are “standing on the shoulders of giants.”

It denotes a certain humility and recognition of history. The phrase was most famously used by Isaac Newton, and currently inscribed on our £2 coin in his honour. But Newton himself was quoting from medieval scholars and classical imagery.

The phrase is most commonly used in the scientific community to acknowledge that scientific breakthroughs build on previous discoveries. But it has a proud history within the labour movement as well.

Corbyn, speaking to the Scottish Labour Conference in Dundee in March 2018, used it to commemorate “those women trade unionists working in the jute industry in the 19th and 20th centuries.”

We say it regularly to acknowledge those who built the trade union movement, often at great sacrifice and surviving hardship and persecution; those who built the Labour Party and our welfare state; those who put their bodies on the line for women’s suffrage, civil rights and liberation movements; and those who fought for independence against colonialism and national self-determination.

When it comes to climate justice, we stand on the shoulders of scientists and of political activists. The scientific consensus that there is such a thing as climate change, that human activity is the cause and that we are at risk of destroying our planet is now clear, denied only by a few cranks.

The issue now is political action. We are inspired by individual acts of witness, such as Greta Thunberg’s quiet, determined refusal to attend school on Fridays, which quickly spread to the global school strike. We are inspired by mass collective protest, such as that by Extinction Rebellion or, as I write this, Greenpeace’s activists shutting down BP.

The great achievement is that mainstream politicians now accept that there is an emergency. The Labour Party took the initiative to ask Parliament to declare a climate emergency, gaining cross-party support.

Councils across the country have been innovative: the mayor of London aims for London to be a zero-carbon city by 2050, which would both reduce fossil fuel usage and tackle air pollution and fuel poverty.

In Southampton, Labour’s proposed Green City Charter was delayed by the Tories, despite claiming to campaign on climate change. Bristol City Council aims for zero carbon by 2030.

And councils are beginning to adopt the Preston model of procuring services from the local community: thinking globally and acting locally.

We can’t shy away from the class impact of climate change. On one level, it affects everyone. The rich can’t buy their way out of the consequences of the planet dying. And even if they live in gated communities, pay for expensive water and air conditioning, they can’t escape the effects of air pollution.

But while we still have water, the rich will pay for their supplies and will rail against the millions of environmental refugees leaving resource-depleted regions.

The consequences of climate change — droughts, fires, and floods — will have far more impact on the poor, particularly in the global South. As socialists and internationalists, we cannot let that happen.

Labour’s green environmental policy, bringing together economic and environmental principles and committing to banning fracking, encouraging renewable energy and making solar power affordable, is a good start.

Labour for a Green New Deal makes the point that there is no conflict between jobs and saving the planet, arguing for state intervention and investment so as to achieve zero carbon by 2030, and for solidarity with climate refugees.

Mainstream politicians now, particularly Labour politicians, should not forget that they stand on the shoulders of giants. Labour’s 20th century achievement of creating the NHS and the welfare state needs to be matched in the 21st century by a green revolution, based on redistributive, anti-poverty and internationalist principles.

Liz Davies is a barrister specialising in housing rights, an active member of Southampton Test Labour Party and vice-president of the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers. She blogs at www.lizdavies.org.uk.

Decent housing is part of the fight for climate justice. A safe, affordable, warm, weather-proof, secure roof over our head is something that we all want but not enough of us have.

I could reel off statistics at you –in Southampton it costs over £1,000 pm to rent 3 bedroom property, there are more than 8,000 households waiting for council or housing association homes, the average house price is more than 6 times average wage.

But there’s no need for statistics to prove the housing crisis. We all experience the realities of the

housing crisis in our daily lives. Most of us are lucky enough not to sleep rough – although on any one night over 4,600 people sleeping on the street in England – but many of us are only one or two pay cheques away from homelessness. And there are other forms of homelessness. There are far too many people who are not sleeping rough, but are constantly moving from one friend’s sofa bed to another, with nowhere private and nowhere permanent.  You might be renting privately & worrying about whether you will have to leave on just 2 months’ notice to leave – and how you would find & afford another home, close enough to work, to children’s schools, to your family, mates & all your local links.

Labour has ambitious plans to tackle housing crisis. We will abolish no fault evictions, bring in security for private renters, we will build 100,000 homes a year, half of them at rents of no more than one third income, we will free up councils finally to build council homes again. And we plan to end rough sleeping & tackle homelessness – so that anyone who is homeless has right to emergency accommodation & to move on quickly to secure accommodation.

It is a tribute to the common sense of those policies that the Tories – after 40 years of creating the housing crisis & failing to solve it with neo-liberal policies – have jumped on the bandwagon and adopted our policies.

I’m Proud of Labour’s ambitious plans and I’m desperate for a general election so that Jeremy Corbyn can enter Downing Street and we can start implementing those plans.

 But I also think we need to go much further. To solve our housing crisis we need nothing less than a housing revolution, a revolution about our attitude towards housing. We need to cease treating houses as vehicles for wealth creation, as economic communities. Instead we need to change society so that we value decent housing, as part of our commitment to a decent life and so that our promise to each generation – no matter what their age, income, family circumstances are – is that you have a right to a safe, affordable, warm, decent, sustainable & secure home.

Our aim should be that no one struggles to pay their rent, no one struggles to heat their home, no one struggles to put food on the table. And in the 21^st century, under a Labour government, we will abolish homelessness & abolish poverty.

Together, we can turn Southampton red, turn the country red & get Jeremy Corbyn into Downing Street heading a radical Labour government that will make a real difference to people’s lives.

My local Momentum group recently discussed social care. The speaker, talking about her mother who had dementia, asked how many people in the room had personal experience of relatives with dementia. Over half the meeting raised their hands. As we get older, more and more of us will need personal care and ask society for help in providing it.

The crisis in social care is the part of the welfare state that Beveridge never tackled, because in the 1940s no-one predicted how long we would live. We enjoy longer lives than any previous generation did, thanks to the NHS, modern medicine and the welfare state, but at a cost: the associated illnesses, principally dementia. The 1945 Labour government abolished workhouses and the Poor Law, in the National Assistance Act 1948, so that was something of a revolution. The next policy shift was Thatcher’s “care in the community,” contained in the National Health Service and Community Care Act 1990.

The principle, had it been properly funded, was not such a bad idea, releasing people from institutions and treating them as individuals to be supported rather than problems to be contained. But without adequate funding, the consequences were always going to be increased reliance on family carers, overwhelmingly women, people left isolated as their conditions deteriorated and means-tested care services, delivered too often by private providers.

All of us, at some time in our lives, are likely to need the services of the NHS. These days, most of us are also likely to need some social care services. Even allowing for the dreadful impact of cuts and re-organisations in the NHS, the contrast in treatment is striking. A cancer patient receives free health care, free prescriptions, free aids, services at home and free hospital stays, and is (theoretically at least) entitled to the same level of care wherever in the UK she or he lives.

Someone with dementia must pass their local authority’s eligibility criteria (which might be different to those of the local authority next door), pay for services at home and for residential care (including by selling their home) and only receive state support after a demeaning means test.

Both major political parties have tried to grapple with how to fund social care. The Tories’ 2017 election manifesto originally sought a mandate for the “dementia tax” – recipients of services would continue to pay for care, but the cost could be deferred by way of a loan on the house, repayable after death. The outcry was such that Theresa May had to withdraw it.

The Tories have repeatedly promised Green Papers on social care but have postponed publication five times since 2017. The most recent announcement was that a Green Paper would be published “before April” – ie now – but there is no sign. The Tories’ difficulty is that it is impossible to fund social care fairly without treating it as a universal entitlement and funding it from taxation, but of course that runs contrary to their ethos.

Labour under Blair and Brown similarly struggled with how to pay for social care. In 2010, Labour took a huge step forward when it proposed a National Care Service that was universal, free when people needed it, and integrated with the NHS. But the White Paper ducked the question of funding.

In Scotland, personal care has been free for those over 65 since 2002 when it was introduced by a Labour administration. As of 1 April 2019, the minimum age has been abolished and free personal care is available to all assessed as needing it.

Labour’s 2017 manifesto promised to lay the foundations for a National Care Service for England. Labour would increase social care budgets by a further £8 billion over the lifetime of the next Parliament so as to pay care workers a real living range, adopt the Ethical Care Charter, end 15 minute care visits and pay for travel time and training. It would also increase Carer’s Allowance for unpaid full-time carers. Labour will limit the maximum amount paid under the means-test for care, increase the asset threshold (so that recipients keep more of their savings or their home) and provide free end of life care.

These measures are a necessary first start for Labour to work towards a National Care Service, free at the point of need, universally available, and paid for by taxation. Let us also move away from private companies making profits from the provision of essential caring services and keep care services in the public sector, or use Labour’s new, innovative models of enterprise such as democratically owned and not-for-profit companies.

I looked after my late partner who had a serious physical illness, an experience made more bearable because at no time did we have to worry about funding his medical care. We had plenty of other things to worry about. I would happily pay taxes so that those now needing care do not have the burden of worrying about money, and in the expectation that the same will apply to me when I too need society’s help.

Liz Davies is a barrister specialising in housing and homelessness rights, a member of Southampton Test CLP and an honorary vice president of the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers. She writes this column in a personal capacity.

Young people changing our politics and changing our Labour Party
We have to welcome the energy and enthusiasm of all those young people who want to change the world, says LIZ DAVIES

WHEN mainstream media commentators berated themselves in the wake of the June 2017 general election for failing to predict the Corbyn surge, they spotted that it was down to the youth.

Why, agonised the commentators, did young people respond to an older, white, male leader when all the received wisdom was that politicians should appear trendy and claim to follow musical trends and popular television shows as avidly as they read Hansard.

A glib answer pointed to Labour and Momentum’s aptitude with social media. More seriously, there was the abolition of student fees in the manifesto, along with ending zero-hours contracts and other policies. Along with Corbyn’s personal appeal, as a man of principle and authenticity.

Those are partial explanations, but they fail to give credit to the young people themselves. Young people are far more politically motivated and aware than the middle-aged believe. I saw them not only queueing to vote but campaigning for Labour on the streets of Croydon, Hackney, even Sevenoaks, and proclaiming, loudly and visibly, that voting Labour mattered.

They defied the lazy characterisation that they are snowflake millennials, self-absorbed, ignorant of world affairs, only interested in consumerism. Liam Young, youthful adviser to Corbyn, brilliantly tells the story in Rise (Simon & Shuster, 2018).

Indeed, young people have always been politically engaged. Over the last 50 years, anti-war movements (Vietnam, Iraq), feminism (from women’s lib to #MeToo), environmental campaigns, black power and anti-racism, liberation campaigns (from lesbian and gay liberation to LBGTQ+ and now gender fluidity), international solidarity (South Africa, Palestine) have been fuelled by young people.

They have been told that they will grow out of it, but that is just as lazy as the apathetic stereotype. Most of us will recognise our youth in some of these campaigns. We’ve joyfully and defiantly refused to grow out of it.

Sixteen to 17-year-olds jumped at the chance to vote in the Scottish independence referendum. Some 75 per cent of them did so.

Many secondary schools in Scotland debated independence, so all school students, whether they could vote or not, were engaged with the momentous decision.

Equally, in the 2016 EU referendum, many 16 and 17-year-olds were furious that they could not participate. It’s an old slogan, but it’s worth repeating: if you can marry, join the army, pay taxes, or have sex at 16, why can’t you be trusted to vote?

Labour is committed to votes for 16 and 17-year-olds, in all elections. We have policies that benefit young people. Not just tuition fees, also abolishing unpaid internships and zero-hours contracts, increasing the minimum wage and ending lower rates for young workers, employment rights from day one, investing in apprenticeships and green and digital technology.

Labour will tackle the housing crisis, which hits young people disproportionately hard, by building a million homes, half of which will be affordable, and requiring long-term tenancies in the private sector. More recently, we’ve announced free bus fares for everyone under 25.

Those policies stood in stark contrast to the Tories’ dementia tax, making older people pay for their care needs.

Labour can’t just sit back, though, and take the support of young people for granted. We need to be on the side of young people when they take action, as we were for the McStrikers striking for a living wage and action on sexual harassment. We need to offer to come into schools and talk politics.

We need to be seen on university campuses, in workplaces which employ young people, and at young parents’ events.

We need to be taking action against poverty, both by campaigning and through practical solidarity supporting foodbanks etc. At football matches and concerts, we could be campaigning on ticket prices. We need to acknowledge and start to tackle the terrible cost that mental illness inflicts on individuals and on society. We need to go to young people, not expect them to come to us.

We also need to be promoting political discussion and engagement within citizenship education. Despite the youth surge of 2017, turnout among young people remains too low. Too many believe that all politicians are the same, or politics doesn’t affect them.

Motivating young people to vote isn’t solely about making voting more technologically accessible, it is also about connecting a desire for cleaner air or better pay with political change.

Trade unions, and the work they do in reaching out to people in insecure, traditionally unorganised sectors, are vital to that. And when trade unions reach out to the young, they find themselves campaigning not just on traditional employment issues, but also on austerity, liberation issues and the environment. When young people join trade unions, they bring about change.

Momentum is the organisation that has best understood and organised young people, by using social media, encouraging sharing, targeting information. And by events such as The World Transformed, which are now being held locally (Derby, Norwich, Southampton) as well as at Labour Party Conference.

We’re not doing badly at attracting and retaining the respect of young people. But we have to get it right. Most people, old and young, prefer political discussion at Labour Party branch meetings to infighting, or endless reports of other meetings. Most people, old and young, who join the party want to be on the streets campaigning to elect a Labour government.

We have to welcome and nurture the energy and enthusiasm of all those young people who want to change the world, and who trust the Labour Party to do that with them.

Liz Davies is a member of Southampton Test CLP and was formerly constituency secretary of Hackney North & Stoke Newington CLP. She is a housing rights barrister and honorary vice-president of the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers. She writes this column in a personal capacity.