Solicitors may not see £16m set aside for police station fees until late next year, the High Court has heard on day one of a legal battle between the Law Society and government over criminal legal aid.

The Society is challenging the government’s decision not to raise criminal legal aid fees by the minimum 15% recommended by the independent criminal legal aid review in December 2021. 

Lawyers for the Society told Lord Justice Singh and Mr Justice Jay yesterday that the government ‘skimped on the recommended cure’ by offering just a 9% increase.

The government then decided to increase fees by a further 2% per annum in steady state. However, Tom de la Mare KC, for the Society, said the government arrived at the extra 2% - which represents £16m and will go into police station fees - by removing money set aside for training grants that would have dealt with recruitment and retention challenges, expanding the Public Defender Service to be a ‘safety net’ for areas at risk of unmet need, and LGFS reforms.

De la Mare said consultation on how to distribute the £16m has not begun and the process could take at least a year. 

The High Court heard that the ‘driving factor’ for the Ministry of Justice proposing less than what the review recommended was that the level of funding allocated by the Treasury was sufficient to fund only 50% of the review’s recommendations. 

De la Mare said: ‘You will go through these ministerial submissions and search in vain for any analysis on whether the measures proposed are assessed to be sufficient to meet the serious concerns identified in the review. No one was asking questions like “is what we’re doing enough to avoid the problems in Bellamy? What levels of gap will remain with the level of funding we propose? Will our funding be eaten up by inflation or salary rises?’

De la Mare told the High Court the lord chancellor ‘never corresponded with the Treasury to ask for more money’.

The High Court also heard that duty solicitor capacity risks, most notably in Barnstaple and Skegness, were not raised in submissions to the lord chancellor and legal aid minister considering the government's response to the review.

Gayatri Sarathy, for the Society, said: ‘The solution the defendant now gives - which is the Ministry of Justice has committed to consulting on increased fees by £16m – has not yet happened. Even if the funding is made available, it will not be available until mid next year. It will not be available to address the problems in specific schemes that need the reform. At the moment they lack the data to cost any proposals for these sums.’

Today, the court will hear from counsel for the Criminal Law Solicitors Association and London Criminal Courts Solicitors Association, who are interested parties. Sir James Eadie KC will also begin presenting the government's case. 

The hearing is due to conclude tomorrow.

 

This article is now closed for comment.