The Welsh government will tell Westminster to increase civil legal aid funding, the counsel general has revealed, following a visit to the only law centre in Wales.

Mick Antoniw, counsel general and minister for the constitution, and Jane Hutt, minister for social justice, visited Speakeasy Law Centre in Cardiff this week.

In an announcement today, Antoniw said: ‘The Speakeasy Law Centre is providing a valuable service. I welcomed the chance to hear how it is helping people. High-quality legal advice can prevent issues from spiralling and becoming more serious, and I encourage people across Wales to take advantage of support available to them if they need it.’ 

Speakeasy

Mick Antoniw and Jane Hutt (centre) visited Speakeasy Law Centre in Cardiff

Today’s announcement states that despite many areas of justice not being devolved, the Welsh Government’s single advice fund, introduced in January 2020, supports advice services across Wales with around £11m a year, helping to support services like Speakeasy Law Centre.

So far, the fund has supported 144,000 people deal with more than 660,000 social welfare problems, helped people to claim £83m of additional income, and write off debts worth more than £23m, the announcement states.

Antoniw said: ‘Information and advice services are even more important because of the sweeping real-terms cuts to legal aid over the last decade, which is putting access to advice out of reach for more and more people and increasing the burden on volunteers. We will be stressing the importance of information and specialist advice services, and the need to increase levels of funding, in the upcoming UK government review of civil legal aid.’

Speakeasy Law Centre was set up in 1992 and is currently the only law centre in Wales. However, work is well underway to set up a law centre in Llandudno Junction, North Wales.