Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, What steps his Department is taking to help ensure there are an adequate number of duty solicitors available across the criminal justice system.

The Legal Aid Agency (LAA) is responsible for commissioning duty solicitor services and the day-to-day administration of the court and police station duty schemes. This includes keeping membership records, allocating slots and producing and maintaining duty solicitor rotas.

At a national level, the LAA monitors capacity across criminal legal aid contracts on an ongoing basis and, where demand is greater than the available supply, takes action to secure additional provision to ensure the continuity of legal aid-funded services.

The LAA is satisfied that there continues to be sufficient duty solicitor coverage across England and Wales. Provision under the duty schemes is demand led and so there may be variations in numbers across each local rota or other fluctuations in numbers depending on prevailing market conditions, and other internal factors such as firms merging or other consolidation activity.

More generally in relation to criminal legal aid, on 30 November 2022, the government published its full response to the Criminal Legal Aid Independent Review (CLAIR) setting out various proposals to ensure the long-term sustainability of the criminal legal aid sector.

This followed the interim response to the CLAIR which introduced a 15% uplift across most fee schemes in line with the recommendations made in the Review. This funding began to come into effect from the end of September 2022, and we subsequently agreed to extend it to the majority of cases already progressing in the Crown Court. Following these reforms, an increase in expenditure of up to £141 million a year will take expected annual criminal legal aid spend to £1.2 billion.

Overall, our ambitious reforms will deliver a stronger justice system for all who rely on it. They will reinforce a more sustainable market, with publicly funded criminal defence practice seen as a viable long-term career choice befitting of our world-class legal professionals.