Government’s £23m legal aid cuts ‘affront to justice’
The government will cut £23m from the £2.1bn legal aid budget by reducing fees for police station work, scrapping file review payments in criminal cases and consolidating committal hearing payments.
The government said that its reforms are ‘designed to help sustain the legal aid budget’ and ‘ensure that we focus criminal legal aid spending effectively’ in 2010/11. The Law Society said that the cuts are an ‘affront to justice’ and that ‘a fair trial for all will be an increasingly distant memory.’
Legal aid minister Lord Bach (pictured) told the Gazette that ‘too much’ of the legal aid budget is currently spent on criminal rather than civil matters. ‘Central to what we’re trying to do on legal aid is to prioritise civil legal aid – like debt, housing and employment advice,’ he said. ‘We are having to make savings elsewhere.’
The reforms have been announced following a Ministry of Justice consultation, Legal Aid: Funding Reforms. Proposals in the consultation, launched in August, attracted scathing criticism from legal aid practitioners and led to an exchange of letters between Law Society President Robert Heslett and Bach.
In its response to the MoJ consultation, Chancery Lane claimed that there was an ‘absence of any objective economic rationale’ for the cuts and pointed to National Audit Office (NAO) research that showed that criminal legal aid expenditure has decreased by 12% in real terms since 2003/04.
Heslett said this week: ‘It is difficult to understand how a government that can find £130bn to bail out banks cannot find one five thousandth of that sum to maintain a vital service that protects the rights of all our citizens. These cuts will have a devastating effect on justice.
‘The determination recklessly to proceed with these cuts entirely vindicates the NAO’s comments about the ministry’s lack of understanding of its suppliers. A number of the biggest and best known firms in London have already given up routine criminal defence work, and these latest cuts can only accelerate that trend.’
Bach said: ‘To be frank, I can’t see more money coming into legal aid in general over the next few years. There are tough times ahead. Legal aid will have to take its share of these tough times too.’
Bach said that the figure of £23m in cuts is not linked to the figure of £25m recently identified by the National Audit Office as the amount overcharged by solicitors for legal aid work in 2008/09.
The reforms include:
- Reducing police station legal aid fees in the most expensive and oversubscribed areas
- Ending the current fee arrangements that remunerate litigators for preparation for committal hearings. The change will see all working on committals combined into one fixed fee which will be paid out of the Litigator Graduated Fee Scheme
- Scrapping file review fee payments for practitioners in criminal cases. Such payments do not apply in civil cases
The MoJ will also undertake a second consultation on reforms to Crown court advocacy fees. The MoJ said that, on average, advocates acting for the prosecution receive 18% less pay than if they were acting for the defence, which could be creating an incentive for barristers to favour defence work over prosecution work.
A separate response to the proposals on experts’ fees will be published in January.
Comments
Police Station Fee Reduction
I object to the way the LSC and the MOJ have defined "oversubscribed areas". It is using old data which has not taken into account the number of firms who have given up crime since the LSC asked us to say how many slots we could cover, and they are using old slot numbers which no longer apply to some area. An example is the Welsh valleys who have moved from part rota and part panel to all rota-thereby cutting the slots by half!! The LSC use new data when it suits them mixed with the old data to reduce the Fee and mislead us.
It won't effect me I've got a new job as a sewage worker starting soon! SAME PAY THOUGH LESS HASSLE.
How long will it be before the legal aid system collapses?
We are currently watching the entire legal aid system collapse -- but it's death by 1000 cuts, so no one will really notice before it's too late. It might struggle on for another five years -- but I'm taking bets from all comers that it won't be here in 10 years time. The government will have to find some sort of cover for much of the work -- what's the betting it won't be the private sector they turn to -- they will set up another quango and end up paying far more for it.
Yet more Legal Aid cuts
Previous comment well made but perhaps putting Legal Aid fully in the public sector is the best solution in the end for all concerned: solicitors and their staff won't have to worry anymore about their firms' survival and can concentrate on representing their clients, they'll also get better pay and conditions; clients will get a higher standard of advice and more consistency and the government will have more legitimate control of the budget. Ok it might be controversial and costly to set up but there'll be no shortage of people willing to sign up. If this is in fact what the MOJ want they should just be honest about it rather than slowly strangling legal aid firms.
Legal aid is a means by which
Legal aid is a means by which the Executive controls the judiciary, sustains an inefficient legal system and excludes 95% of the UK citizens from justice.
How true 'Law Victim' I
How true 'Law Victim' I having been a victim of the family law courts via legal aid totally agree with
your statement. The only historic events I could aliken the case to was the English/Spanish
inquisition or Witch dipping, the whole case barbarrick from start to finish knowingly done by
legal in the best interests of a child. Each day I pray what goes around comes around.
Joining European Bar association
Please advise how to join the above Bar Association.Many Thanks