Recommendation 22

We asked MoJ and LAA for an update on how they were monitoring the sustainability and profitability of legal aid work. MoJ said that it had recently surveyed both criminal and civil legal aid providers and that it was currently considering recommendations made by the CLAAB. It also stated that fees across the rest of civil legal aid remain under review. However, it 38 Qq 44-53, 67-68 39 HC Committee of Public Accounts, Value for money from legal aid, Thirty-Third Report of Session 2023-24, HC 481, 24 May 2024. 40 HMT, Treasury Minutes, 5 September 2024 41 Letter from the Ministry of Justice, 6 November 2025 14 stressed that any changes to fees are ultimately a decision for Ministers.42 LAA acknowledged that the sustainability of legal aid remains a concern and that while setting fees is outside of its domain, there are several things it was doing to help address this. This includes looking at what it can do to reduce the administrative burden on providers, extending contract terms to give providers more certainty, and making contract processes more flexible to enable firms to join the market more regularly, which was previously only possible every five years.43