Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what recent assessment he has made of the (a) effectiveness, (b) accessibility of legal aid in England and Wales.
In February 2019 we published the LASPO Post-Implementation Review to review the effectiveness and accessibility of legal aid in England and Wales. Alongside this, we published the Legal Support Action Plan which set out the government’s vision for the future and a number of changes to improve access to legal aid in England and Wales. These include a comprehensive review of the legal aid means tests, improvements to the exceptional case funding scheme, the removal of the mandatory element of the Civil Legal Advice telephone gateway, and the launch of a campaign to raise awareness of legal support, including legal aid.