Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if his Department will publish a timeline for the implementation of the recommendations made in the Independent Review of Criminal Legal Aid.

On 15 March, we published our interim response to Sir Christopher Bellamy’s report together with a consultation on related policy proposals.

On 20 July, the Government published its interim response and laid a statutory instrument to implement a 15% uplift to most fee schemes, which will come into force for new representation orders from 30 September 2022. Criminal legal aid practitioners will start to receive the pay increase from October 2022 onwards for their work on these cases. The increases we are implementing from 30 September 2022 are on top of the £74m we have invested in criminal legal aid over the last 4 years.