Legal Aid: Funding Reforms
Ref 014.09
This consultation paper by the Ministry of Justice ( MoJ )
sets out proposals intended to further rebalance legal aid
spending, and to target the civil legal aid budget more
effectively.
The proposals, the MoJ claims, will help to sustain the legal
aid budget over the next spending review period, and is designed to
focus criminal legal aid spending effectively, whilst at time
protecting the civil fund as far as possible from any rise in
criminal spend in the short to medium term.
The funding reforms outlined in the consultation paper
include:
- Rationalising the rate of pay for barristers in Crown Court
cases. On average, barristers acting for the prosecution receive
23% less pay than if they were acting for the defence, which could
be creating an incentive for barristers to favour defence work over
prosecution work.
- Stabilising the cost of legal aid representation at police
stations. Costs have been driven up by an oversubscription of duty
schemes in some areas of the country, mostly in areas with too many
firms competing for business. In order to contain these costs and
discourage inefficiency, we are proposing a reduction in police
station fees in the most expensive and oversubscribed areas.
- Ending the current duplication of fees which remunerates
litigators for preparation for committal hearing but which also
remunerates the same litigators for consideration of the Committals
Bundle in preparation for trial in the Crown Court. The change will
see all working on Committals combined into one fixed fee which
will be paid out of the Litigator Graduate Fee Scheme.
- Ending the anomaly by which practitioners in criminal cases
receive a fee for file reviews which does not apply in civil cases.
This would see an end to payments for criminal file reviews.
In addition, the Legal Services Commission will be asked to
consider changes to payments made to experts in both criminal and
civil cases. Currently, the legal aid budget pays different amounts
for the same work by different experts and across categories of
law. The change would see payments standardised to ensure better
value for money.
The Legal Services Commission has also been asked to find an
additional 5% saving from its administrative budget this year, and
10% next year.
The paper can be accessed on the following
MoJ link.
The consultation on the proposed legal aid funding reforms will
run from 20 August 2009 to 12 November 2009.
ILEX would welcome the views of members practicing in the legal
aid field on any or all of the above proposals.