Recommendation 5

The Ministry of Justice has still not made sufficient progress in identifying or addressing wider system costs of its legal aid reforms. Almost a decade ago, this Committee urged MoJ to get a better understanding of the wider costs of its reforms. While MoJ has taken some steps to understand where additional costs may lie, its overall progress in measuring the scale of these costs is disappointing. For example, MoJ acknowledges that the removal of most early legal advice via the reforms is likely to have led to additional costs to the public sector. However, its attempts to understand the costs and benefits of providing early advice have been unsuccessful to date. Similarly, evidence suggests that MoJ’s attempts to reverse the decline in legally-aided mediation following its reforms are not working, and the proportion of litigants-in-person in courts remains high. Shortcomings remain in HM Courts and Tribunals Service’s data on litigants-in-person remain, which mean that its analysis in this area provides limited insight. MoJ says it is now working with other government departments such as the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities to better understand where its reforms may have shunted costs to other government departments, but we are yet to see the results of this work. Recommendation 5: The Committee recognises that it will not be possible to calculate a precise figure of the costs of the reforms to other areas of government and the justice system. However, the Ministry of Justice should set out in its Treasury Minute response: • how it plans to work with other government departments such as Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and the Department of Health and Social Care to better understand where reforms may have led to cost-shunting and the potential scale of these costs. This should include looking at the extent to which local authorities are funding immigration legal advice; and • how it intends to work with HM Courts and Tribun