Legal Aid Scheme

(asked on 2nd March 2021) - View Source

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what recent steps he has taken to help ensure the accessibility of affordable civil legal aid.


Answered by
Alex Chalk Portrait
Alex Chalk
Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice
This question was answered on 10th March 2021

We have already made a number of changes to ensure that civil legal aid remains accessible to those who need it. For example, in May last year we removed the mandatory element of the Civil Legal Advice telephone gateway.

In addition, in December last year we brought forward legislation improving financial eligibility for civil legal aid. We laid legislation which removed the £100,000 cap on the amount of mortgage debt that can be deducted from the value of a person’s property in the means test. This means all mortgage debt will be deducted from a property’s value when assessing eligibility for civil legal aid. This legislation also enables the Legal Aid Agency to disregard some compensation and ex-gratia payments for the purposes of assessing legal aid eligibility. These changes will widen access to civil legal aid.

We announced a comprehensive review of the means test for legal aid in the Legal Support Action Plan in 2019. The review is assessing the effectiveness with which the means test protects access to justice, particularly for those who are vulnerable. As part of the review, we are considering the full range of means-testing criteria, including the income and capital thresholds for civil legal aid. We plan to conclude the review in late Spring 2021, at which point we will publish a full consultation paper setting out our future policy proposals in this area. We will seek to implement any final recommendations as soon as practicable following public consultation.

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