Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what progress his Department has made on expanding the scope of legal aid to cover special guardianship orders in private family proceedings as set out in Legal Support Action Plan (February 2019); and if he will meet interested parties.

In February 2019 as part of the Legal Support Action Plan, we committed to bringing special guardianship orders into scope of legal aid.

Work to progress this specific action has been delayed, most recently, due to the focus on the ongoing response to the Covid-19 pandemic and the prioritisation of justice recovery.

We now intend to re-start the work - looking at the scope for extending legal aid to special guardians in private law proceedings. To ensure we approach this in the appropriate way, we plan to include consideration of further representations from expert stakeholders including the Cross-Party Parliamentary Taskforce on Kinship Care, the Family Rights Group and the Law Society.