Justice Secretary Ken Clarke speech on criminal justice reform

Justice Secretary Ken Clarke speech on criminal justice reform; Ken Clarke speech SOT - Nobody feels more strongly than this Government about the need to make sure everyone has access to the most important aspects of justice. Particularly, the poor and the vulnerable need access in cases where their liberty or key aspects of their wellbeing are at risk. I suppose in an ideal world we would have a national legal service, in the same way as we have a National Health Service. This has been proposed from time to time in the past, and I believe it was proposed in the politics of post-war England. But ever since the last World War, anyone looking at this sensibly has had to admit that we cannot afford it, and we never have had a national legal service. We're actually in a position where we cannot even afford the system we've now got. Our system has grown to an extent that we spend more on legal aid than almost anywhere else in the world. France spends 3 pounds per head of the population. Germany; 5 pounds. New Zealand, with a comparable legal system, spends 8 pounds. In England and Wales, we spend a staggering 38 pounds per year per head of population. I recently met my New Zealand opposite number, who was struggling with the problem of controlling his legal aid budget. I pointed out that it was only 20 percent of our own. So there is a reason for having a hard look at our legal aid system. That means asking questions about what access to justice means and what part of that access it is right to expect the state to provide and taxpayers to pay for. When is it reasonable to say to someone, you really can afford to pay for that yourself, or you really should have insured yourself against that unlikely legal event? Of course I understand the right and desire of people to use the law to settle disputes and to assert claims. But what is the balance between the assertion of rights and the responsibility to accept the burden of using your own resources to assert them? It may...