Petition · PE01695 · Session 5
Access to justice in Scotland
Signatures
0
Comments
0
Considered
7 meetings
What it asks
Calling on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to take action to ensure that access to justice, including access to legal advice from appropriately trained lawyers and financial support through legal aid, is available to enable people in Scotland to pursue cases where they consider a human rights breach has occurred.
What the petitioner did first
Most recently we have raised this issue with David Stewart MSP.
Before this we have taken a range of steps to try and access justice. These include:
Asking the Law Society of Scotland for a list of firms undertaking human rights cases and a list of firms undertaking legal aid work. Lists were provided but were out of date.
Contacted over 50 law firms. The majority of these did not take on human rights cases and most of those that did indicated they would only take on human rights cases involving ‘prisoners or immigrants’ (their words, not ours).
Being told by the few firms that may take on human rights cases that they would only do so providing they were paid a fairly considerable amount of money in advance of any work. (Including comments such as needing to pay £25,000 before even reading the papers on our case or not taking on the case on a legal aid basis as they would receive only £27 per hour compared to the £175 per hour they charge.)
Before this we have taken a range of steps to try and access justice. These include:
Asking the Law Society of Scotland for a list of firms undertaking human rights cases and a list of firms undertaking legal aid work. Lists were provided but were out of date.
Contacted over 50 law firms. The majority of these did not take on human rights cases and most of those that did indicated they would only take on human rights cases involving ‘prisoners or immigrants’ (their words, not ours).
Being told by the few firms that may take on human rights cases that they would only do so providing they were paid a fairly considerable amount of money in advance of any work. (Including comments such as needing to pay £25,000 before even reading the papers on our case or not taking on the case on a legal aid basis as they would receive only £27 per hour compared to the £175 per hour they charge.)
Where it was considered
Official Report-
7 Jun 20181 mention
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8 Nov 20181 mention
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5 Sep 20191 mention
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14 Nov 20191 mention
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5 Mar 20201 mention
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12 Mar 20201 mention
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14 Jan 20212 mentions
Signatures by country
No online signatures are recorded for this petition.
Comments
No public comments.