Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, pursuant to the Answer of 16 November 2017 to Question 112641 on Ministry of Justice: Finance, what the projected change of his Department's budget for legal aid in real terms is in each year to 2020.

The Legal Aid Agency’s 2010/11 to 2016/2017 budgeting measure of Resource Departmental Expenditure Limit in real terms is publicly available: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/legal-aid-statistics-july-to-september-2017.

Departmental level funding from HM Treasury up until 2019/20 was reported at the Spending Review, 2015, and subsequently updated at the Autumn Statement, 2016. Future years’ budget allocations within the department have not yet been confirmed and therefore it is not currently possible to provide a breakdown of this funding by business area. Legal aid is demand-led and the conditions for its availability are laid down in legislation, meaning the amount of the department’s budget allocated will depend upon that level of demand. MoJ will shortly be laying its Main Estimate in Parliament, which will provide further detail on our financial plans for the year 2018-19.