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Legal Aid

I have said what I have said—can we now talk about legal aid? In our view, there is no prospect of any more cash for the legal aid budget. I wait to see whether any other party will pledge to offer more, but I do not think that they will—or that they should while we are not getting best value for our cash. Let me make it clear: the changes are not about cost cutting; if there were a sudden windfall into the legal aid budget, we would still make them. It is imperative that we obtain best value for taxpayers’ money. We have a duty to get best value for taxpayers and to pay in a way that ensures the best-quality coverage to people who need legal aid. That requires us to stop paying by the hour, which can favour the inefficient, and instead to pay per case, which will encourage high-quality and efficient practitioners to streamline the processes and develop the capacity to do more cases and get more advice to more vulnerable people. The quality of service will improve. Peer review as the means of quality assuring all practitioners has been welcomed by everyone. If suppliers do not reach the required level under peer review, they will not be allowed to supply legal aid. It has been said over the months that we are not addressing all the cost drivers in the justice system, but that is not correct. The proposals that we are discussing deal with legal aid procurement; other reforms that are taking place across the justice system deal with other cost drivers. Part and parcel of the way ahead is a commitment to new stakeholder representation to help to see the reforms through, to head off any emerging problems at the pass, and to monitor progress. For the first time, legal aid lawyers will have a say on problems caused to them by other agencies in the justice system. The first meeting, to set the framework of the stakeholder body, will be on 1 February. Let me deal with some specifics of the scheme. On crime, it was always clear, but it became much clearer in the consultation, that there are differences in the way that criminal advice works in urban and rural areas, so for magistrates court work we will initially introduce the new standard fees only in 16 urban areas. We will consider spreading the system to rural areas when we have seen how it works in the urban areas, where the market is different. Some practitioners were concerned about the level of police station fees proposed in the Carter reforms. They were based on averages in criminal justice areas. In discussions with me and in the consultation responses, lawyers rightly pointed to differences between particular spots in the criminal justice areas and the consequent differences in the costs of attending at a police station. We have therefore delayed the introduction of fixed fees for police station advice until October to allow the LSC to consult on the detailed police station duty rotas—again, only in the 16 urban areas. We shall fix the police station duty rotas best for the advice needs of the locality. We will then fix the fees very locally and very specifically, based on those duty rota areas and on where the current claims are clustered. They will therefore be based on true averages for the specific area. We should be as sensitive as possible to local issues.