The chairman of the Justice Select Committee in the Commons, Bob Neill MP, is calling for urgent government action on shortfalls in the civil legal aid system.
Neill, a Conservative Party MP and barrister, recently told The Times, ‘we have now removed more than the system can take and should rectify the anomalies as soon as possible’.
Writing in NLJ, Legal Action Group director Steve Hynes says there are now nearly a million fewer civil legal aid cases than there were seven years ago.
He points out that, although the legal aid cuts of 2013 aimed to shave £350m off the Ministry of Justice budget, they actually went further than that—reducing the budget from £2.2bn to £1.6bn.
Hynes welcomed Neill’s comments. However, he also noted that Neill has expressed frustration at the delay in setting up the Select Committees. Its members will not be elected until September and it will not begin work until October. Therefore, more than a third of the year will have gone by without parliamentary scrutiny.
Hynes said: ‘The post-legislative review of LASPO had been announced in January by the government, but was delayed again when the general election was called. Ministers intended to provide plans for the review to the Justice Committee and Neill wants to press the government to do so urgently.’
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