Lord Beith
Main Page: Lord Beith (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Beith's debates with the Ministry of Justice
(11 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Chris Grayling
That information is already available to a degree. It is available to hon. Members and has been published under the Freedom of Information Act. It is very important that at the same time as ensuring we have a proper legal aid system that provides access to justice to all, we ensure that the payments we make are payments we can afford.
Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)
How can Ministers be confident that under their proposals there will be a genuine market and not just a few very large businesses that would have no great incentive to maintain quality once they got a fixed proportion of the business?
Chris Grayling
That is a very important point. First, I have absolutely no intention of ending up with a legal aid market dominated by a small number of very large firms. A central part of the tendering process will involve a quality threshold that ensures that we have the quality of advocacy and litigation support in this country that we need and expect.