Graduated fee U-turn

The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has backed down on proposed cutbacks to graduated fees. In February, its consultation, ‘Litigators’ Graduated Fees Scheme and Court Appointees’ proposed reducing the number of prosecution pages used to calculate the graduated fee from 10,000 to 6,000 and limiting costs payable to court appointees to legal aid rates, in Crown Court cases.

Almost all of 1,005 responses opposed the proposals. A MoJ spokesperson said this week: ‘The Lord Chancellor has confirmed he will not reinstate the second fee cut for all defence litigation work that was suspended in April 2016. At the same time, we are making changes to ensure payments better reflect the actual work being done in legal aid-funded criminal proceedings.’