HOME OFFICE SPLIT: lawyers call for safeguards to protect courts and legal aid finances


The Lord Chancellor insisted last week that he is 'content' with funding levels for the new Ministry of Justice, despite receiving no extra money for its creation and having to implement a 3.5% cut in expenditure following last month's Budget.



The Department for Constitutional Affairs (DCA) becomes the ministry on 9 May, after the government confirmed plans to split the Home Office into separate ministries for security and justice.



In addition to existing DCA responsibilities, including legal aid and the courts, the ministry will be tasked with managing the whole criminal justice system, including the Prison Service and probation.



Lord Falconer, who will become the first Secretary of State for Justice, said: 'We are content with the amount of money that we have been given. We did not agree to the justice ministry being set up until we were satisfied that there was sufficient resource funding and sufficient capital funding to deal with both the building programme and the resourcing of the Prison Service.'



He confirmed there is no extra funding but said 'in excess of £5 billion' will be transferred from the Home Office budget to the justice ministry, covering a three-year period from 2008. Exact figures are to be published in the near future.



Law Society President Fiona Woolf said: 'We are particularly in favour of the transfer of responsibility for criminal law and procedure to the minister responsible for ensuring the fairness of the justice system as a whole.'



The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Phillips, and the Bar Council called for 'structural safeguards' to protect court funding and the administration of justice.



Welcoming the reorganisation, Bar Council chairman Geoffrey Vos QC said safeguards should ensure 'a minister who believes, for example, that more criminals should be locked up, cannot fund prison building at the expense of criminal, civil and family legal aid'.



Former DCA minister Keith Vaz MP, a member of the constitutional affairs select committee, said he strongly welcomed the creation of the ministry, but it was important to ensure the reorganisation is 'properly resourced and planned through'. He added: 'It is important that the financing is clarified as soon as possible, so that MPs and the public are able to give their approval.'



On concerns that scarce resources could adversely affect sentencing, Lord Falconer said: 'It is not for the judges to take into account resources when determining what sentence somebody has.' He said discussions were under way about funding and the courts.



In response to concerns over parliamentary accountability, Lord Falconer said there was no constitutional bar to a Lord Chancellor being in the Commons.



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Anita Rice and Rupert White