Press Release

Reforming the Legal Aid Family Barrister Fee Scheme

11 September 2008

The Legal Services Commission (LSC) and Ministry of Justice consultation entitled ‘Reforming the Legal Aid Family Barrister Fee Scheme’ closed yesterday, 10 September.

Protecting children and families is a priority and is a key driver for our current proposals. More than a quarter (£582m in 2007-08) of the £2bn legal aid budget is spent on helping adults and children with family problems. Our prioritisation means that in cases where people are facing domestic violence there are more generous rules on eligibility than in other cases, and where children could be taken into care there is no means or merits test at all.

Access to legal services for families who are eligible for legal aid is also good, with 95% able to get access to a legal provider within 45 minutes on public transport. In addition, we are now rolling out a scheme where clients can receive publicly-funded legal advice over the telephone. In 2006-07 the number of people represented under family legal aid was 128,000. In the same year there were a further 275,000 acts of assistance under the legal help scheme.

Payments to barristers in family cases have grown dramatically from £74m to nearly £100m in the last five years and currently account for over 10% of the overall civil legal aid budget.  This is not sustainable if we are to continue helping as many people as possible with legal aid. We need to control family advocacy costs so that services to people needing help with civil and family problems are not threatened and the best possible value for money for taxpayers is delivered.

The proposals we put forward in the consultation that has just closed are designed to tackle this. The LSC and the Ministry of Justice are now considering the responses we have received to the consultation.