Francis Nettles: I once was nearly the victim of a miscarriage of justice

The best speeches at today’s “Grayling Day” demonstration against legal aid cuts weren’t by lawyers or politicians, but by those who’v been at the sharp end of the justice system. And Francis Nettles’s speech was perhaps the most impressive of the day.

He explained with clarity and straightforwardness how, having been confronted by a boy who he’d asked to be quiet outside his home, he’d had to take hold of the boy to make him leave the front of his house – and was later accused of common assault. “Cases like mine” he said “are why access to justice is important for us all”. He felt he’d acted completely reasonably, but without the help of lawyers funded by legal aid he felt he would have been unable to prove his innocence and avoid irreparable damage to his life.

Nettles felt that the failings of the police and CPS were at least partly responsible for what happened to him. He said he understands those failings may, themselves, be due to budget cuts. But, he said, in a passage that made the case for legal aid as well as any I’ve heard,

this makes it all the more important that the defence is properly funded to make up for the deficiencies in the prosecution, and to ensure that justice can be done.

If any story is capable of breaking through the cynical perception that the legal aid debate is just about lawyers’ incomes and criminals’ rights, this is it.