Implementing reforms to civil legal aid
27 November 2014
The Public Accounts Committee announces an inquiry into the implementation of reforms to legal aid.
Legal aid is government-funded legal services for people who meet its eligibility criteria. In England and Wales, it is administered by the Legal Aid Agency, an agency of the Ministry of Justice. Legal aid is made up of criminal legal aid for criminal cases and civil legal aid for non-criminal cases. The Ministry set out its proposals for reforming legal aid in November 2010. It reduced fees paid to civil legal aid providers by 10% between October 2011 and February 2012. The Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 reduced the range of issues and financial eligibility criteria for receiving legal aid. The Ministry of Justice is on track to meet its main objective of significantly reducing in a short timeframe spending on civil legal aid. However, it is less clear to what extent it has met its other objectives of reducing unnecessary litigation and targeting legal aid at those who need it most; to deliver better overall value for money for the taxpayer.
The Ministry expected that removing funding for civil legal aid for private family law matters would divert people away from courts and increase mediation referrals. However, there were 17,246 fewer mediation assessments in 2013-14, a 56% decrease from 2012-13. In the year following the changes, there has been a 30% increase in the number of family court cases in which neither party has legal representation. This is likely to create extra costs for the Ministry and HM Courts and Tribunals Service.
This inquiry aims to identify the full costs of the reforms and explore why the Ministry did not do more to understand the wider costs of the reforms to civil legal aid before implementing changes; explore the Ministry’s understanding of how and why people access civil legal aid and identify how the Ministry intends to better target civil legal aid at those who are eligible and examine the management of the legal aid market, including the quality of the services it pays for.