Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what estimate he has made of the number of people who have been granted legal aid in welfare cases in each of the last 10 years.

Information about the volumes of people granted legal aid in welfare benefits cases is published at https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/legal-aid-statistics. The latest figures (to September 2018) of Legal Help matter starts (from table 5.1) and Civil Representation granted certificates (from table 6.2) in welfare benefits cases are outlined in the below table.

The MoJ has spent several months conducting a wide-ranging review of the reforms to legal aid and engaged with more than 100 organisations and individuals as part of the evidence-gathering phase.

Having finalised this engagement at the end of November, the review is now near completion and will be published shortly.