Will the justice budget ever matter?

I have been following very different budget discussions in two jurisdictions, the UK and the EU. 

Of course, the two are not easily comparable: the UK has an annual budget for a single country, delivered this week by our chancellor of the exchequer; while the EU negotiates an EU level (not national) budget covering 27 member states for seven years. But they share one thing: justice is rarely, if ever, mentioned in pre-budget discussions and negotiations, despite justice being both a common budget line and a common cornerstone of how our societies properly work.

The Law Society laid out its budget requests a month ago to the UK government. It naturally reminded the government that legal services are one of the country’s greatest exports, generating a £9.7bn trade surplus in 2025, and that the profession contributes £60bn annually to the UK economy, while employing 1.1% of the workforce. 

It pushed the Burnham government’s buttons: look at us, legal services provides well-paid, highly skilled jobs across the country, and shows significant growth in regional hubs like Manchester, Leeds and Cardiff. The message was: you want thriving devolved economies, you want growth in every postcode? You can’t do it without the legal sector.

Overall, the Law Society made 25 specific requests. Some of them are relatively technical, and those under the heading of ‘Keeping legal services competitive’ are probably of highest general interest. Having mentioned the perfect storm of regulation, tax threats and increasing obligations around anti-money laundering that the profession faces, the Society said, among other things:

• don’t proceed with the proposed interest on lawyers’ client accounts (ILCA) scheme; and
• make HM Treasury and HMRC apply explicit proportionality analysis to any new regulatory obligations on solicitors. 

Just as importantly, for legal aid lawyers, the Society requested (among other things):

• an increase in civil legal aid fees categories, prioritising family law;
• an annual review and uprating of fee levels with inflation to take the system off a crisis footing and allow long-term planning for legal aid firms;
• the funds necessary to uprate the legal aid means test so legal aid remains accessible to those entitled to it;
• an increase in criminal legal aid remuneration by inflation plus 2% in each of the next 10 years; and
• investment in our courts to ensure they have sufficient capacity to deal with the backlogs, repairs and technology, and to fund fully the Leveson review reforms.

You are reading this after the chancellor has published his budget, so you may now know whether any of this has been fulfilled. Given the pre-budget publicity devoted to NEETS (not in education, employment or training), to council house building, to cost of living savings, and devolution of powers to local mayors, it will have come as a pleasant surprise if it were.

Compare this to the EU process for context. The negotiations for what is called the MFF (multi-annual financial framework, the full name for the seven-year budget from 2028-2034) have been tempestuous and delayed. The fight, as always, is between the frugal, who make a net contribution to the budget, and the net beneficiaries. The Irish Presidency has already suggested an 8% overall cut to the European Commission’s original budget – a cut too big for some and not big enough for others. Germany is the leading frugal, and has demanded a €400bn reduction in the original proposals, including on farm subsidies and regional cohesion funds, which others want to protect.

I always look for the impact on justice. Unbelievably, the commission’s original proposal was for the justice budget to go up from €305m in the MFF 2021-2027 to more than double that – €798m – in 2028-2034. Millions are not billions, and so this is very small fry in the negotiations. The overall size of the budget originally requested by the commission across all its responsibilities was for around €1.8 trillion, equalling 1.26% of the EU’s gross national income on average. Of that, the amount requested for justice (€798m) amounts to 0.04% – so next to nothing.

Maybe it is therefore not surprising that, although I read about the impact of the frugals’ budget-slashing on competitiveness, defence or border migration management, the reports are silent about justice – just as happens in the UK.

We in the UK can only dream about our national justice budget more than doubling. Of course, the EU is not responsible for national justice systems, most of which are suffering from the same problems as we are, for instance very poor legal aid fees. It has asked for more money for justice because, among other things, of its drive to digitalise justice at EU level and to train more judges, prosecutors and lawyers in EU law.

If we take just the common elements between the two budget cycles, the outcome is rather depressing, though: our professional area is just not important enough to matter to anyone but us.

Jonathan Goldsmith is Law Society Council member for EU & International, chair of the Law Society’s Policy & Regulatory Affairs Committee and a member of its board. All views expressed are personal and are not made in his capacity as a Law Society Council member, nor on behalf of the Law Society