Responding last week to the Justice Select Committee’s inquiry on ‘The future of legal aid’, CILEx said legal aid was already at a critical stage before the pandemic, with members reporting growing problems with recruitment and retention due to repeated government cuts and many firms moving away from the legal aid sector altogether. The COVID-19 pandemic has piled on further financial hardship.
CILEx President Craig Tickner, a specialist criminal defence advocate, said: ‘The precarious financial stability of legal aid firms pre-dates the current Covid crisis.
‘For as long as we can remember we have been calling for proper funding and additional resources, engaging with review processes such as the Criminal Legal Aid Review. With COVID-19 now hovering over remaining providers like the grim reaper, action is needed now. Any delay will be too late.’
In its response, the organisation warned that funding cuts caused by LASPO (the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012) had disincentivised practitioners from working in legal aid and created ‘incessant court backlogs’ through under-resourcing the sector. Consequently, the legal aid market was ‘increasingly dependent on a limited pool of providers to provide an unrealistic level of output, worsened by new initiatives, such as extended opening hours for the court estate’.
As well as increased funding for legal aid work, CILEx called for earlier access to payment for legal aid work to help financially precarious firms, ‘In order to help safeguard income streams, manage risk and protect the financial longevity of providers in supplying legal aid services’.
The Justice Select Committee inquiry aims to look at the major challenges facing clients and providers, market sustainability, impact of COVID-19 and the increasing reliance on digital technology. Read more at: bit.ly/338AOxQ.
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