ACSO recently submitted a reply to the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) Review of Civil Legal Aid. The review constitutes a much-needed opportunity for the MoJ to consider how to update and modernise civil legal aid to ensure it is sustainable. This is imperative for the 25 per cent of the population eligible for legal aid to continue to have swift and high-quality access to free legal advice.
We have highlighted to the MoJ the lack of options for the consumer in certain geographical areas due to the almost 50 per cent decrease in providers. We take the view the decrease is due to the unsustainable remuneration they receive, becoming reliant on inter-partes costs orders to subsidise the lack of investment from the MoJ, which has failed to increase fees in more than 25 years.
We further stressed that the civil legal aid contract is highly bureaucratic, which in turn drives providers out of the market or makes the explanation of entitlement to consumers unnecessarily complex.
The review needs to result in a pragmatic approach to remuneration to ensure that consumers have access to a high-quality service via civil legal aid that is self-sustaining, rather than reliant on alternative sources of funding to support a contract that has been left in the past.
It is our view that any failure to ensure the provision of legal aid to vulnerable consumers will mean a failure to ensure access to justice, therefore a swift and timely review in welcome.
A review of Civil Legal Aid being conducted by PA Consulting on behalf of the MoJ can be found at this link.