Jonathan Djanogly has insisted that the government took full account of thousands of hostile responses to the government’s controversial proposals on legal aid and the Jackson reforms of civil litigation costs.
However, the justice minister confirmed that the legislation published earlier this week is to be fast-tracked through Parliament.
The second reading of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill will take place next Wednesday, he told the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Legal Aid.
Most of the 5,000-plus responses to the consultation opposed the plans, but their input had helped ‘shape the government’s direction of travel’, Djanogly insisted.
‘I want to make it absolutely clear that we have considered each of the responses presented to us. We had a significant team working on it,’ he added.
He said the government had ‘looked carefully’ at the Law Society’s proposals for alternative savings.
These had been ruled out as over 50% involved the introduction of new taxes, which the Treasury is ‘not keen on’, or suggested that the MoJ should penalise other sections of government.
Djanogly said the MoJ is working very closely with other departments, especially the Department for Work and Pensions, to improve performance.
‘Penalising other departments is simply robbing Peter to pay Paul. There’s no saving for the taxpayer,’ he said.
Law Society president Linda Lee told the minister and the meeting: ‘I’m disappointed, I’m more than disappointed, I’m heartbroken.’
She said the bill amounted to an attack on the vulnerable and was ‘fundamentally wrong’.
She warned Djanogly: ‘You will pay as a government and we will pay as a society.’
Lee added: ‘Unfortunately there will still be solicitors willing to do the work.
‘I say unfortunately because I don’t know how they’ll continue to make a living. But for them it’s a vocation.’
Urging the profession to continue its opposition to the changes, Lee said: ‘The fight will go on, we’ll fight on every clause.’
The chair of the parliamentary group, Labour MP Yvonne Fovargue, said the bill is ‘the biggest attack on legal aid I’ve seen’; while a spokeswoman for human rights group Liberty raised concerns over a clause allowing the MoJ to remove further areas of law from scope in future without parliamentary scrutiny.
Djanogly said the government had no plans to remove other areas from scope and that the clause would also allow areas to be put back in.
Barrister and Liberal Democrat peer Lord Carlile was less downbeat than most present, saying he expected concessions to be made, particular in the area of clinical negligence to enable funding to be made available for expert reports.
He said the timetable for the bill’s passage through parliament, which is forecast to be completed by next Spring, was ‘very tight’, which might help when it came to securing amendments.
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