LONDON (Bywire News) - Lawyers have once again criticised Justice Secretary Dominic Raab over the fast-collapsing Legal Aid system. First, he was a serial “liar” – and now, lawyers have slammed him and the government’s “complacency” and “disdain” for their profession. To top it off, Bywire News can reveal his department appears to have lied about the situation once more.
Bywire News previously reported on the situation with Legal Aid. Since 2010/11, successive governments have cut legal aid spending by 10% a year. The pandemic brought additional challenges – causing huge disruption in the justice system, compounded by government cuts in this area too. And now, the Tories are looking to reform the system yet again.
Over three years ago, the government commissioned a review into Legal Aid. As BBC News reported, it did this because of: “predictions the legal aid system could collapse”.
Fast-forward to December 2021 and the review body published its report. It found that the government needed to put a minimum of £135m into the Legal Aid system to stop it from falling apart. But the chair of the review panel, former judge Sir Christopher Bellamy QC, was fairly scathing in his verdict on how successive governments had managed Legal Aid.
BBC News noted he said: “There is in my view no scope for further delay”.
The Criminal Bar Association (CBA), the professional body of barristers, agrees. It asked Raab and the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) to give it an “assurance” by 14 February that its response to the review and a consultation would be completed by the end of March. But Raab failed to do this.
So, the CBA will be balloting members from 28 February over direct action. It also accused him of being a serial “liar” in his response to its concerns.
But clearly, the government didn’t listen to either the CBA or Bellamy. Because we now know that it’s dragging its heels even further.
As the Law Gazette reported, the MoJ will be releasing its response to Bellamy’s review week commencing 14 March. But the CBA claims the department has told it that any changes to Legal Aid funding will not happen until 2024. So, it has further hit back at Raab and the MoJ.
Chair of the CBA Jo Sidhu QC said its members were “exacerbated” by the government’s “complacency” over the state of Legal Aid. He said the CBA: “waited some three and half years for the… [review] to arrive while we continued to firefight a crisis unprecedented in the history of our criminal justice system”.
Sidhu slammed the government again, saying: “it seems our forbearance is to be treated with the same disdain as our labour”.
And he noted that the MoJ is intentionally dragging its heels over its response to the Bellamy review:
“to extend the overall timetable for resolution, delay a pay settlement, and keep exhausted criminal lawyers working at the coalface to reduce a backlog that has grown ever longer because of Government neglect and in consequence of a deliberate policy over many years to deprive the criminal justice system of the resources it so desperately needs”.
But to top it all off, it seems that Rabb and his department may once again have been lying. In an article for the Times, an MoJ spokesperson claimed it has:
“injected nearly £74 million into criminal legal aid since 2018 and are now listening to all parts of the sector to ensure our reforms improve its long-term sustainability”.
Either the MoJ is incorrectly using the word “injected” (which normally would indicate additional funds) or it is lying. Because official figures show [p5] that the government hasn’t “injected” £74m into criminal legal aid at all. Actually, expenditure since 2018 has consistently declined.
Moreover, further official government figures show that across all measures, including resource department expenditure limit (RDEL, the MoJ’s budget), criminal legal aid funding and expenditure has collapsed.
So, everything points to the CBA taking direct action if its members vote for it. With Raab and the MoJ entrenched in their positions – the dispute over Legal Aid looks set to continue, while people in desperate need of it are left wanting.
(Writing by Steve Topple, editing by Klaudia Fior)