The Guardian view on family courts: cuts hurt | Editorial
Liz Truss, the justice secretary, did the right thing in ordering an urgent review into the best way of stopping abusers tormenting their victims through the family courts. It is entirely unacceptable that, as the Guardian has been reporting, some women face aggressive cross-examination by an abusive former partner (one was even made to sit beside her ex while the court watched a police video of her reporting an assault). There is, simply, no justification for this. No justification: but there are explanations, and they point to a solution higher up the food chain than the courts themselves.
The immediate problem was widely predicted before Ms Truss's predecessor Chris Grayling took the axe to his department's budget. Legal aid is now denied in most family cases. The main exception is for a victim of domestic abuse. Ms Truss, who has already beaten austerity to get more money to increase the number of prison officers, would win the gratitude of thousands of individuals if she could also get funding to roll back the worst aspects of austerity in the court system. Cuts of more than 30% are crippling access to all sorts of justice. But in the family courts it can mean a renewal of old traumas; worse, a mistake can see a vulnerable child being put at risk of further abuse.
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