Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many people were granted legal aid under exceptional case funding each (a) year and (b) quarter since 2010.

Prior to 2013, when a case fell outside the usual remit of Community Legal Service funding, an individual could make an application to the Legal Services Commission for exceptional funding under s6(8) of the Access to Justice Act 1999. These cases included disputes, inquests and tribunal hearings. Depending on the type of case, funding could either be granted by the LSC, or by Ministers. The figures below reflect the volume of cases granted exceptional funding under the provisions of the Access to Justice Act 1999, based on the date the decision (by either the LSC or by the Ministry of Justice). Please note these figures have been extracted from an operational database, which like any operational database may contain errors. The figures have not been verified to the standard of Official Statistics, and should be interpreted as such.

Please note that all volumes referenced in this answer are recorded by successful application, as opposed to being by ‘person’. An application may include more than one person and one person can also have more than one application.

The Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (LASPO) superseded the Access to Justice Act 1999 in April 2013 and introduced a new Exceptional Case Funding (ECF) scheme to provide funding where a lack of representation would otherwise breach an individual’s Convention rights.

The LAA publishes data about the ECF as regulated by section 10 of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 as part of its published statistics on gov.uk. The data for the period 2013-2018 is available on gov.uk in column ‘J’ at table 8.1, on the following link:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/748562/legal-aid-statistics-tables-apr-jun-2018.ods