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Carter Review (Legal Aid)

The hon. Lady is right: the report says that in terms, and I shall refer to it again. We focused our inquiry firmly on the potential impact of the reforms on legal aid clients and their needs, and we took evidence from individuals, lawyers, representative groups, academics and senior judges. All the witnesses agreed with the need to reform the legal aid system, but only a few thought that the Government had approached that in the right way. Eminent academics in the field of legal aid and its reform complained of the lack of a more holistic approach to legal aid reform: instead of identifying and analysing the cost drivers in the legal aid budget and then addressing them, the reforms would be focused on short-term gains and cuts in lawyers’ fees. That is despite indications that average case costs in terms of lawyers’ fees in a number of areas were not the only factor that contributed to the recent rise in legal aid expenditure, and certainly were not the most significant. It is self-evident that cuts to legal aid fees, or at least a further freezing of those fees in the future, could set free funds that could be used to finance a greater number of acts of assistance under legal aid. Although the measure of acts of assistance is one of quantity not quality and there is a limit in its value, I still welcome the significant increase in the number of acts of assistance in terms of civil legal help from fewer than 600,000 to nearly 800,000 in 2006-07 and the associated rise in spending on civil legal aid since 2004. However, such increases in the quantity of publicly funded legal advice, especially when funded through what are in effect cuts in legal aid fees for a significant number of providers, may come at a price. That price is difficult to quantify, but may be very high. Dedicated and experienced legal aid lawyers and not-for-profit organisations providing legal advice may be forced to leave the market because of significant and unsustainable loss of income as a result of the new transitional fee schemes. The quality of legal aid may deteriorate and, worse, there may even be a risk to the provision of legal aid advice, especially in family and civil law in some areas of the country. Areas of unmet need already exist in the north of England, in Wales and in East Anglia, for example, and include rural areas such as those to which the hon. Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew) referred.