Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment his Department has made of the availability of solicitors qualified to conduct Criminal Legal Aid work in rural Wales.

The Lord Chancellor (via the Legal Aid Agency) has a duty to ensure that qualifying individuals who require assistance at the police station or the magistrates’ courts and who do not have their own solicitor have access to a Duty Solicitor. The LAA monitors capacity in each duty scheme area based on the number of solicitor organisations in that area, as well as the proportion of duty solicitors each of those organisations engages. There are currently 126 offices contracted to deliver criminal legal aid services in the Wales area. Additionally, across the 16 areas which make up the Duty Solicitor scheme in Wales, there are 260 solicitors listed on the rota who are available to provide advice and assistance. We are confident we have solicitors to fulfil criminal cases and will make sure we continue to do so.

The Legal Aid Agency monitors access to public funding according to the location of the solicitor providing the service. Client location is not reliably captured for the majority of the criminal legal aid scheme and therefore accurate data based on a defendant’s residence is not available. Information on expenditure under criminal legal aid by solicitor offices located in Wales is proactively published, and is available to view at https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/720217/legal-aid-statistics-crime-provider-area-data-to-mar-2018.ods.