The Ministry of Justice is responsible for prisons, probation, courts, tribunals, the judiciary and legal aid – but a shocking new report from the Institute for Fiscal Studies reveals just how low a spending priority the department has been over the past quarter of a century.
The report, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, is believed to provide the first consistent estimates of what has happened to MoJ funding since the early 2000s.
While justice spending has increased in recent years, the report says recent cash injections come on the back of, and in most cases do not offset, severe budget cuts in the 2010s. Real-terms day-to-day justice spending in 2025-26 is set to be no higher than it was in 2002-03, and around 16% lower in per-person terms.
On average the MoJ 'fared worse' than other government departments, with smaller budget increases during the first decade followed by larger cuts during the second.
'Between 2007–08 and 2016–17, a 33% cut to the MoJ day-to-day budget compares to a 3% cut to total day-to-day departmental spending, a 3% cut to the Department for Education, a 6% cut to the Ministry of Defence, and a 25% increase to the Department of Health and Social Care day-to-day budget. Other (non-health, non-education, non-defence, non-justice) departmental budgets fell by 22%, meaning justice also did worse than the average “unprotected” department,’ the report says.
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Had the MoJ’s day-to-day budget increased at the same rate as the average department since 2007–08, the report says it would have been some 41% (£4.5bn) higher in 2024–25. If it had grown in line with the average ‘unprotected’ department, it would have been 9% (£1bn) higher.
With chancellor Rachel Reeves cracking down on ‘wasteful’ spending across Whitehall, justice cuts loom for the ministry.
The report says the department could be spared cuts in the forthcoming Spending Review 'but on the face of it, if nothing changes, the justice system of England and Wales is facing another period of retrenchment'.
Law Society president Richard Atkinson said the government has recently taken ‘initial positive steps’ to increase legal aid and ‘sustained investment is essential in all parts of the justice system - courts, legal aid, judiciary, prisons and probation - to reverse decades of neglect and to avoid a widespread collapse of the system'.
