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Carter Review (Legal Aid)

The point is that if we have a system that overpays some and leaves insufficient money for the rest, we ought to limit the overpayments so that more is available for the others. We need to find ways to build incentives into the legal aid system to reduce unnecessary expenditure. For example, some cases come to court only because legal aid is available and could be settled properly and justly if they did not. Let us look at some family law cases, which account for the largest part of the civil legal aid budget. The National Audit Office produced a report in March of this year, entitled ““Legal Aid and Mediation for People Involved in Family Breakdown””. It states:"““The average cost of legal aid in non-mediated cases is estimated at £1,682, compared with £752 for mediated cases, representing an additional annual cost to the taxpayer of some £74 million.””"