Ever-decreasing circles

It’s hard to make out what’s happening in legal aid. The recently published 2007 Pre-Budget Report and Comprehensive Spending Review states that legal aid will be cut by just under £200m by 2010-11. This appears to mean only that legal aid spending is to be flatlined at about £2bn a year. This will be bad enough, particularly as it’s boom time for prison builders. But what will happen to legal aid over the period of the spending review?

Legal aid spending reached probably its maximum level ever in 2002–3 when it amounted to £2.1bn. Since then it has hovered around the £2bn mark—where it will stay. Anyone who has heard secretary of state for justice Jack Straw speak about legal aid will recognise three things. First, he is not really interested. Second, he wants to reduce the budget. Indeed, at the recent Labour party conference in Bournemouth, he expressly queried why such spending should be higher than in France, Italy or Ireland—three countries with somewhat unremarkable legal