Grayling demands further cut in legal aid for prisoners

Justice secretary Chris Grayling is demanding further cuts in the amount of legal aid spent on representing prisoners.

The previous government cut legal aid fees for prison work in 2009. This was followed by restrictions on prison advice in 2010, which helped reduce the prison law legal aid bill by 3m in the financial year 2011-2012.

However, the justice secretary said last night that he was "appalled that taxpayers pay millions of pounds every year supplying lawyers for prisoners to bring unnecessary legal cases" and wanted to cut a further 4m from the budget.

"The vast majority of these types of complaint can and should be dealt with by the prison service's complaints system," Grayling said.

A spokeswoman for the MoJ added that the government was "putting a stop to prisoners receiving criminal legal aid where their issues can be dealt with by the existing complaints system - like a prisoner appealing against the category of prison in which they are held, or a decision to move them to a different section within a prison, or taking legal action over issues like visits or correspondence."

However, the spokeswoman said cases where prisoners' detention was being reviewed, such as at a parole hearing, would continue to receive legal aid and the changes would be the subject of a consultation paper.

Simon Creighton (pictured), a partner specialising in prison work at London firm Bhatt Murphy, said a "large number of prison lawyers" had already left the area and it was becoming "increasingly difficult" to remain.

"The rates are totally uneconomic and leading to more and more prisoners being unrepresented," Creighton said.

"This will not produce the cost saving the government wants if it leads to parole hearings being held up. The weekly cost of keeping someone in prison is a lot more than the legal aid cost in having someone represented."

Creighton said the mention of appeals over categorization appeared to be the only new element in Grayling's statement. He said the previous review into legal aid for prison work had decided that this work was so closed linked to parole and progression that it should continue to be publicly funded.