PARLIAMENTARY WRITTEN QUESTION
Criminal Legal Aid Review (28 May 2020)

Question Asked

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of the recommendations of the Law Society's submission to Criminal Legal Aid Review, published in February 2020.

Asked by:
Zarah Sultana (Independent)

Answer

In order to focus on the most pressing issues for practitioners during the COVID-19 pandemic we agreed to temporarily pause our work on the Criminal Legal Aid Review in order to focus on short term sustainability issues. We will return to the review, which has a wider focus on long term sustainability of the criminal legal aid market as quickly as we can, while doing all we can to mitigate the current crisis and support justice recovery.

On 28 February 2020, as part of the review, we launched a consultation on policy proposals for the “Criminal legal Aid Review - An accelerated package of measures amending the criminal legal aid fee schemes”. This consultation remains open and we continue to engage with various stakeholder and representative bodies and value the contributions being made. Once the consultation closes, the Government will publish its response after carefully considering the issues raised by the Law Society and others who respond to the consultation.


Answered by:
Alex Chalk (Conservative)
9 June 2020

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