Skip to main content

Legal Aid

Volume 455: debated on Tuesday 9 January 2007

To ask the Minister of State, Department for Constitutional Affairs what representations she has received on proposals to reintroduce means testing for legal aid in magistrates court. (113096)

Since 2 October my Department has received approximately 20 letters from MPs on behalf of solicitors and an additional 33 direct from solicitors. There is abundant support for means testing in principle, and the majority of correspondents have raised practical concerns about the operation of the test. Many of these concerns have already been addressed in changes I announced before Christmas, and implementation is being kept under review.

To ask the Minister of State, Department for Constitutional Affairs if she will commission research to show the (a) mean, (b) median, (c) mode and (d) largest legal aid payments made in the last year for which figures are available. (113354)

The size of any individual payment is not informative. Individual payments tend to cover parts of cases or multiple cases.

However, the Legal Services Commission keeps data on the costs of all types of acts of assistance from which the statistical averages and largest amounts paid may readily be extracted. A research project is therefore not necessary.

To ask the Minister of State, Department for Constitutional Affairs how much was paid in legal aid to Leigh Day and Co. in each of the last five years. (113575)

The information is in the process of being extracted. I will write to the hon. Member as soon as it is available.