Oral Answers to Questions

Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi Excerpts

Tuesday 31st October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gyimah]

The former Prisons Minister makes an excellent point about good practice at Parc Prison. As he is aware, there is good practice dotted around the prison estate. We have Storybook Dads and Mums in some prisons and Our Voice in other prisons. We want to see good practice spread across the entire estate. To enable us to do that, we are devolving budgets to prison governors, and we will also hold them to account when we pilot new family and significant relationship performance measures as of next year.

[Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)]

6. What recent progress his Department has made on its review of legal aid reforms.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Dominic Raab)]

Yesterday, we laid a written ministerial statement before the House setting out the details of the review of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, and publishing the post-legislative memorandum, which discharges the promise made by previous Ministers to this House. I expect the review to be completed by the summer of 2018.

[Mr Dhesi]

I thank the Minister for his response about progress on the review of legal aid reforms, but it is disappointing that, even though the Government first announced this review nine months ago, it still will not conclude for another nine months, which is nine more months of many thousands of people not being able to afford to access our justice system. His Government’s reforms of legal aid were intended to save £350 million. In fact, legal aid has fallen by double that. Will the Minister lobby his colleague the Chancellor, so that some of those additional savings go immediately to help those who have been priced out of access to our justice system?

[Dominic Raab]

I thought the hon. Gentleman might at least welcome the fact that we laid out the terms of the review yesterday. I am not sure whether he has had a chance to study the post-legislative memorandum. Let us be clear about one thing: last year, we spent £1.6 billion on legal aid in England and Wales, which is a quarter of the Ministry of Justice’s budget. International comparisons are not exact, but according to the Council of Europe’s review last year, the UK spent more per capita than any other Council of Europe member.