Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many parents have been refused legal aid in cases of forced adoption in (a) Wales and (b) Newport East.

The Legal Aid Agency’s (LAA) IT systems that are used to record applications for civil legal aid do not record a proceeding type of ‘forced adoption’.There is no legal or business requirement for the agency to record this information.

The LAA is able to identify adoption matters generally, but is unable to distinguish where the legal aid applicant in adoption matters are the parents of the child/children in question.

Notwithstanding this, decisions to grant legal aid funding are made by the Director of Legal Aid Casework, having regard to statutory tests of the means of the applicant and the merits of the case. These tests ensure public funds are focused on the financially vulnerable and the cases where public funding is justified.