As happens with the budget every year, the chancellor George Osborne’s Commons statement on the comprehensive spending review triggered a mad scramble to clarify and unpick the numbers referenced, and work out their significance.

Osborne dedicated 148 words to the Ministry of Justice and the Law Officers Department, with more clarification coming later in a three-page written statement from the MoJ.

Between statements and coverage, depending on the source or the method of measurement, the starting point for the MoJ’s budget could be £9.5bn, £9.2bn, £9bn, or £8.9bn – all four figures were used. And that budget will be cut over four years by £1.6bn, £2.9bn or £2.5bn – the three figures have all been referenced. In 2014/15, the MoJ budget will be £7bn according to Osborne’s speech from the dispatch box, or £7.3bn according to the MoJ’s press statement. Some calculations seem to add in the budget for the Law Officers Department, though the difference in the rival figures wouldn’t account for the difference in the calculations. And should the meaningful figures include, or exclude ‘depreciation’?

On some counts the MoJ’s statement gave clarity – such as the cancellation of the 1,500-prisoner Titan jail. But reference to the Crown Prosecution Service’s ‘inflated cost base’, as if it were an accepted fact, raises more questions than it answers.

What is clear is that what flows from these cuts is a challenge to the way that public policy is formulated. Central to the MoJ’s ability to deliver its share of the cuts, are a number of consultations and reviews, especially those covering legal aid, sentencing and rehabilitation, and court closures.

As is usual, the policy process will involve the production of green papers. Traditionally, the green paper is a call for evidence on a range of options a government department is considering. It is typically a broad document, in many places vague about government’s actual preferred position. The government’s position is harder and clearer in the white paper that follows – and mostly set in stone by the time a bill is published.

But this coalition is a government in a hurry. We can expect the green papers to work backwards from the cuts that each area within the justice system has to deliver. If anything else happens, then Osborne’s statement to the House, and the figures quoted, were meaningless. So lawyers and representative bodies can expect much less scope to influence government policy on legal aid, prisons, prosecutions, and the courts than they have had in previous consultations.

For a profession that takes pride in the role it plays in scrutinising the executive, this is serious blow – not just on matters within the MoJ’s remit, but also on the consultations to be carried out by other departments.

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