Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what recent progress his Department has made on its meeting the commitments made in the Government’s full response to the Criminal Legal Aid Independent Review and consultation on policy proposals, published in December 2022.

In November 2022 we published our full response to the Criminal Legal Aid Independent Review (CLAIR), setting out various proposals to ensure the long-term sustainability of the criminal legal aid sector.

This followed the interim response to the CLAIR which introduced a 15% uplift across most fee schemes in line with the recommendations made in the Review. This funding began to come into effect from the end of September 2022, and we subsequently agreed to extend it to the majority of cases already progressing in the Crown Court. Following these reforms, an increase in expenditure of up to £141 million a year will take expected annual criminal legal aid spend to £1.2 billion.

We have established the Criminal Legal Aid Advisory Board (CLAAB) in October 2022, now chaired by former judge Deborah Taylor, to bring together criminal justice system partners to take a wider view and encourage a more joined-up approach to criminal legal aid within the criminal justice system. We are continuing to work with the CLAAB on our proposals, including long term reform of the Litigators’ Graduated Fee Scheme and Advocates’ Graduated Fee Scheme, to reform criminal legal aid fees.

In addition to the 15% uplift that was applied to both the magistrates’ court and police station fee schemes from 30 September 2022, we will be investing a further £16m into the police station fee scheme and £5.1m towards youth court fees which currently sits under the magistrates’ court fee scheme. In total, this will be an additional £21.1m going to solicitors over the next financial year (2024/25). We will be consulting further on how this money will be distributed within the fee schemes.