DRACONIAN curbs on access to legal aid have had a “crippling effect” on the British justice system, the chairman of the Bar Council warned yesterday.

Alistair MacDonald QC, who heads the barristers representation organisation, said the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act had left civil courts struggling.

His comments, made in legal magazine Counsel, coincided with concerns raised by the most senior family court judge in England and Wales earlier this week.

“The courts are clogged with litigants in person,” he wrote.

“In a huge number of cases there is no representation and the process to provide for exceptional funding has utterly failed.”

Judge Sir James Munby voiced unease on Wednesday about a case involving a couple who had struggled to get legal aid while fighting to stop their three-year-old son being adopted.

The High Court family division president said that the couple, both of whom have mental health issues, could be forgiven for thinking that they were “trapped” in a system which was “neither compassionate nor even humane.”

Justice ministers have attempted to rationalise the changes by claiming that the legal aid system was one of the most expensive in the world and that taxpayers’ resources were limited.

They insisted that legal aid was still available to those who needed it most.

A spokesman for the Legal Aid Agency, which makes decisions on provision, said that the couple had been granted legal aid once “correct information was provided.”