Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what is the annual (a) cost of the Legal Aid Agency’s audit and compliance activities and (b) value of the funds recovered from legal aid providers as a result of the Legal Aid Agency’s audit and compliance activity.

Information relating to element (a) of the question is not centrally held. The cost of time spent, and expenditure associated with audit and compliance functions is not specifically tracked or recorded by the Legal Aid Agency (LAA). Staff engaged in audit and compliance activity may not exclusively be engaged in these functions and as such it is not possible to reliably calculate an estimate of costs based on staff salaries.

The LAA estimates that in the financial year 2022-2023 it recovered £4.56 million as a result of audit and compliance activities. This is based on audit and compliance activity relating to Controlled Work, Crime Lower including police station attendance and duty solicitor advice and Prison Law claims which are typically paid prior to review by the LAA. For Civil Representation and Crime Higher the LAA has robust assessment processes in place which form part of the billing processes rather than audit and compliance activity. Other recoveries can be made as a result of routine case management processes such as quality control procedures, which the LAA would not classify as distinct audit or compliance activity. In the same period the LAA processed over 1.7 million claims totalling £1.83 billion pounds.

Audit and compliance activity does not solely lead to financial recoveries. This activity also helps to improve providers’ understanding of and compliance with contracts and legal aid legislation, supports identification of process improvement opportunities, and provides confidence in the positive performance of providers.