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Civil Law Cases (Funding)

Volume 406: debated on Tuesday 3 June 2003

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To ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellors Department if the Lord Chancellor will make it his policy to ring-fence a proportion of the legal aid budget for civil law cases. [114621]

The priorities for legal aid expenditure are cases where the rights of citizens may be at risk, and cases involving social exclusion. Within these broad priorities, we have to judge which cases have the highest priority. The Lord Chancellor directs each year how much of the legal aid budget can be spent on the Community Legal Service. But ring-fencing this budget could, in certain circumstances, result in funds ceasing to be available within the overall legal aid budget for those cases which have the highest priority, for example, those where there is a risk of imprisonment. It would, therefore, be neither desirable nor possible (because of obligations under the Human Rights Act) to ring-fence one part of the legal aid budget.