Criminal legal aid spending 'to fall by £84m without cuts'

A report by forecasting and research consultancy Oxford Economics has predicted that the criminal legal aid budget may decline by £84m over the next five years, due to falling crime rates, without the government's planned cuts.

Researchers said the Legal Aid Agency's forecasts did not vary "in response to recent trends in crime, the detection rate or the number of prosecutions"

Oxford Economics said its alternative approach, based on crime continuing to fall at the existing rate, suggested that two thirds of the £120m the government was hoping to save through fee cuts would be saved anyway.

The report was commissioned by the Law Society, and practitioners' groups - the Criminal Law Solicitors Association, London Criminal Courts Solicitors Association, Legal Aid Practitioners Group and the Big Firms Group.

Bill Waddington, chairman of the CLSA (pictured), said that cuts already imposed have yet to work through the system and due to continuing falling volumes, the MoJ had "no need at all for any cuts".

Waddington went on: "They can now simply sit back and watch the legal aid spend fall as we predicted it would.

"What a great shame that all this time, energy and money has been spent over 12 months to show that what we predicted is indeed correct."

Nicola Hill, president of the LCCSA, said the government's numbers and the Lord Chancellor's demand for £120m in savings, did not "stack up".

Hill said: "If ever there were hard and fast evidence of why the MoJ should re-think their devastating plans for legal aid, it's now. It's not too late but time is running out.

"We fully embrace continuing to improve and increase efficiencies in the criminal justice system, but scrimping on legal advice and attacking justice for all is not the way to do it."

Des Hudson, chief executive of the Law Society, said that, taken as a whole, the cost of the criminal justice system to the taxpayer in England and Wales was comparable to other countries in Europe.

"The expenditure on criminal cases has not risen in two decades and is set to shrink further following more fee cuts," Hudson said.

A spokesman for the MoJ argued that the analysis on which the report is based led to inaccuracies.

"If we had used this methodology in past years, we would have repeatedly overspent on our litigation legal aid budget," he said.

The Legal Aid Agency said in a statement: "The alternative scenario proposed by the Oxford Economics report is too simplistic and does not take into account the many factors that influence legal aid spend. Last year our legal aid forecast was accurate to within 1 per cent."