Following months of lobbying and protests by human rights activists, campaigners and the legal profession, the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) have announced that it is prepared to make significant concessions in its proposals to reform criminal legal aid.
There have been intensive talks throughout the summer between the Law Society and Ministry officials in an attempt to make the changes more acceptable and the MoJ is expected to launch a new consultation soon on its redesigned proposals.
Although the department is still determined to make the same savings of £220m, this could be achieved through cutting back on fees and on some pre-trial hearings, which could instead be carried out by email or videolink.
In addition, legal aid will definitely be removed from the 11,000 cases brought each year by prisoners and there will be an end to the automatic legal aid for defendants with a combined annual disposable income of £37,500 and at least £3,000 a month in the bank after essential bills.
However, one proposal that may disappear, or at least be reduced to one option amongst many, is the introduction of price-competitive tendering, which lawyers had feared would have enabled large-scale service providers to undercut them and take over their work.
Another proposal that has attracted widespread criticism is the structure of fees, which critics claim would have led to more defendants being encouraged to enter an early guilty plea.
The new consultation has been brought about in part by the response to the original one; Justice Minister, Jeremy Wright said yesterday (September 4) that there had been almost 16,000 responses to it, meaning that ministers had to listen to respondents’ concerns.