Every year, more people in England and Wales are involved in disputes before the civil courts in England and Wales than in the criminal courts. Over 1 million claims a year – for personal injury, debt, housing disrepair, faulty consumer goods or breach of contract, for example – are dealt with in the county court.

Hidden beneath this are at least another 3.5 million people who have a legal problem that could be dealt with by the civil courts but is not. This is because they either do not know that their problem is a legal one, they cannot access legal advice or assistance, or they cannot afford to do so.

Significant reform is coming for the criminal courts, which have a backlog of 80,000 pending prosecutions. But there is a longstanding gap in access to civil justice that has not received the same attention.

This gap has grown over the last 20 years as the Ministry of Justice has had to focus on criminal justice to a greater extent than it did in the past. In 2007, it became responsible for prisons as well as the courts, and has had to distribute its financial resources accordingly. Those resources have been reduced significantly over that period by the Treasury.

Reductions in funding aside, successive governments have repeatedly attempted to improve access to the civil courts. Of four significant reform attempts dating back to 1988, none led to any lasting improvement.

A leading international study, the World Justice Project’s Rule of Law Index, shows........

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