Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps he is taking to implement the recommendations of the Independent Review of Criminal Legal Aid.

We have introduced a 15% uplift across most fee schemes in line with the recommendations made in the Criminal Legal Aid Independent Review. Uplifts for solicitors and barristers have already started being paid for new cases following the increased rates which came into force on 30 September 2022.

We have also applied the recent fee uplifts to the vast majority of existing Crown Court cases to address concerns that the uplifted fees did not apply to previous work. This came into force on 31 October 2022.

This, alongside longer-term reforms and our investment in court recovery this would take expected criminal legal aid spend to £1.2 billion per year.

We plan to publish our response to the remaining areas of our consultation by the end of November.