Recommendation 40

HM Government Acknowledged

the Ministry of Justice need to revaluate the Legal Aid Agency’s priorities. By asking the Agency to prioritise the “error rate” over other considerations, particularly access to justice and the sustainability of providers, the Government risks missing the wood for the trees. The Government’s work on the sustainability of both criminal and civil legal aid should consider how to empower the Legal Aid Agency to take a more flexible and proactive approach to funding legal aid. The Government should ensure that providers are not required to conduct disproportionate amounts of unpaid work to apply for funding. The LAA’s strategy puts users of their services first, whilst ensuring that public resources are managed appropriately, in line with the principles of Managing Public Money. The LAA aims to make decisions quickly and in line with relevant legislation to ensure fairness. Within this, the error rate is not specifically prioritised at the expense of other considerations such as effective delivery of access to justice or sustainability considerations; the Agency maintains a balanced approach. The LAA continues to invest in making improvements to digital services and processes to enable quick and accurate payment of bills, and assessment of eligibility in line with Legal Aid Regulations. The LAA is currently developing an online tool called Apply, which aims to significantly improve the civil application process for providers. Alongside this, the Criminal Legal Aid Independent Review is considering the extent to which Criminal Legal Aid contributes towards the efficiency of the Criminal Justice System. It will assess how administrative requirements affect providers, how this compares to other professions and whether the underlying policies should be revised to reduce Government and provider administrative costs. The review will also consider how systems and contracts could be made more flexible to allow providers to innovate or adapt to changing market conditions.