Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Michael Connarty Excerpts

Monday 31st October 2011 Commons Chamber

As we said in Committee, we are retaining legal aid for most judicial reviews, immigration or otherwise. We accept that an individual’s ability to hold the state to account is an important principle, but when it has been abused, combined with the need to target resources effectively, we think that removing legal aid from those discrete categories of cases is justified, especially with the safeguards that I have set out.

[Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)]

In the analysis of the evidence of the number of cases that actually had used judicial review to have another review that then turned out to be supported in the courts, does the Minister have actual figures to justify his blanket removal?