Every politician who engages in major reform ends up with scars on their back. Tony Blair famously complained about those scars from grappling with the public sector, while Michael Gove mostly relishes his tussles with the education establishment that he likes to call the ‘Blob’. But the education world isn’t the only one with a big, scary blob wibbling about with rage whenever a minister embarks on reform. In my Telegraph column today I look at the justice ‘Blob’, which has scored a pretty impressive scar on Chris Grayling with a campaign about a ban on books for prisoners which isn’t quite as it seems.
Books are a useful weapon for the Blob, but other fights are taking place in the justice world at the moment. The Pulic Law Project is currently bringing a judicial review against Grayling for his residence test, which means that people in civil cases who are not lawfully resident in the UK and have not been lawfully resident for 12 months do not have access to legal aid.
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