The law is supposed to solve the problems within, and arising, from society, and is not meant to create them. Sometimes the judiciary are able to implement, and correct mistakes in the, interpretation of the law written by the legislature. Within such a framework, it is possible for the day-to-day process of the law to be non-political, even if the creators of the law are, at any particular stage of time in England’s history.

It is hard to ignore that the use of language can impinge on areas of activity of corporate life; take for example the reference by Ed Miliband, the Labour Leader, to private equity firms as ‘predators’. Private equity practice seats exist in virtually all the major corporate law firms in the City. The fact that the Lord Chancellor is currently from the Conservative Party as such should not matter, as he is a professional barrister, and indeed studied law at Cambridge. Lord Justice Laws, at a recent meeting of ALBA, did however query what gave judges any particular advantage in able to adjudicate on matters of social justice. The fact that society has recently been faced with issues of social justice including the law, such as the eviction at Dale Farm or the revision of the Disability Living Allowance system, is unfortunately inescapable. The Law Society and the Bar Council are not supposed to be political, but notare against the legal aid cuts in their current form. That is not to say that they are in complete denial over the funding problem in legal aid; indeed the Law Society have proposed an alternative method of funding, which would save a substantial amount of money.

‘Sound off for justice’ and ‘Justice for all’ maintain that their campaigns are not political. However, senior people I talk to in law centres in London come to a conclusion that it is not possible to divorce politics from legal aid funding. Poverty unfortunately is political, as the Shadow Attorney-General, Emily Thornberry MP, suggested yesterday on BBC’s ‘Any Questions’. It happens that access-to-justice could disproportionately affect people on the basis of their income, in that cases of access-to-justice could become much harder to obtain for poorer people for certain problems. With many law centres set to shut down altogether, the legal services for immigration, housing and asylum, and welfare benefits, look set to be affected. The question is whether the poor will suffer disproportionately. Rich people will possibly be able to afford superinjunctions as before, as the evidence that the top 1% of the population have been affected substantially by the recession is lacking. This top 1% includes some (at least) well-paid lawyers in London.

In recent months, it has been argued that much policy is not entirely based on macroeconomics, but has a strong ideological basis. In the 1980s, the Conservatives under Margaret Thatcher promoted “deregulation”, and this mantra appears to have been resurrected with some success by David Cameron, the Prime Minister. “Deregulation” presumably means ‘getting rid of the law’, but one is not absolutely clear whether Cameron means it in a libertarian way; one is told not. It does however pose a problem potentially for workers in manufacturing industry, potentially, who see their employment rights whittled away. Absolute deregulation would, of course, mean that the energy oligopolies could make a massive profit, maintaining an extremely high shareholder dividend, while elderly and poorer people do not burn as much gas over the winter saving money; and the law would not regulate against abuse of dominant position. In an extreme form, there would be no taxes, so a windfall tax, even for utilitarian good and justice, would be out of the question.

It could therefore be a political convenience that the law is not seen as political. Most astute pundits think that the Legal Aid and Sentencing Bill will become enacted after it passes uneventfully through the House of Lords. This because the Liberal Democrats will vote for it, as indeed past precedent provides (in the form of the Health and Social Care Bill). It does not matter that this Bill might affect the quality-of-life of children and families affecting Liberal Democrat voters or activists. Past precedent is all important.