The Ministry of Justice says unclaimed cash partly explains why it has spent only a fifth of an annual £51m injection for a package of accelerated measures over the course of a year.
The extra funding, announced in August 2020, covered unused material, paper-heavy cases, cracked trials, sending cases to the Crown court and pre-charge engagement.
In a parliamentary response this week, justice minister James Cartlidge revealed that total expenditure between September 2020 and September 2021 was £10m. Of this, £2.3m was paid to advocates and £7.7m was paid to litigators.
Cartlidge said expenditure on those accelerated items was lower than expected.
‘This is due to a number of factors including the impact of COVID-19 on the court system, which has slowed the rate at which new cases are disposed of by the courts, meaning that the build-up of expenditure on these measures has been generally slower than anticipated. Additionally, there have been lower than expected numbers of providers making claims where they are eligible to do so under certain accelerated items such as the fixed fee for consideration of unused material,’ the minister said.
To encourage practitioners to claim for the money they are entitled to, Cartlidge said the Legal Aid Agency has increased its communications regarding claiming accelerated items and added prompts to the digital payment system. The MoJ expects payment rates to increase over the next few months.
Cartlidge was responding to a written parliamentary question from shadow justice minister Afzal Khan.
A Law Society spokesperson said: ‘The fact that only a fraction of urgent, accelerated funding has found its way to criminal defence solicitors demonstrates the need to ensure that increased funding recommended in the independent review of criminal legal aid actually gets to our members as soon as possible.’
A spokesperson for the MoJ said; 'While our criminal legal aid reforms have increased funding by £74m since 2018, we saw a reduction in the number of cases flowing through the system due to the pandemic. In addition to this, fewer practitioners than expected claimed fees for work on collapsed trials – something we have since addressed.
'We are on track to get through a fifth more cases next year than before the pandemic and will shortly announce our response to the independent review of criminal legal aid - setting out plans for a stable and sustainable sector for years to come.'
The £51m boost for accelerated measures represented the first phase of the government’s criminal legal aid review. The second phase was commissioning an independent review, which last December recommended an urgent £135m a year to nurse the sector back to health. The ministry will publish its response to Sir Christopher Bellamy’s recommendations, and a consultation on proposals, next week.
The criminal bar, which is unhappy with the speed at which the government is moving, is currently being balloted on action.
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