Legal aid spend still below pre-Covid in 2021-22: SLAB
The total cost to the taxpayer of providing legal assistance was £118.2m in 2021-22, according to the Scottish Legal Aid Board's annual report and accounts published today.
The total is up 19% on the previous year’s cost of £99.1m, but still 10% below the amount paid in the pre-pandemic year of 2019-20. SLAB states that the ongoing pace of the court recovery programme meant that by the end of the year, weekly payments for most case types were at or above pre-pandemic levels.
Criminal legal assistance was up by 29% overall to £62.5m, with solemn criminal legal aid spending rising by 49% to £29m and summary criminal legal aid by 30% to £21m.
Civil legal assistance rose by 8%, and continued to be dominated by family disputes which accounted for 56% of net expenditure. This was up by 21% on contact cases and by 25% on residence cases. Adults with incapacity cases also saw a 26% increase in net expenditure. Continued protections in relation to housing debt meant that demand for housing advice and representation remained very low.
Direct services accounted for £5m, children's legal aid for £4.4m and grant funding for £3.8m.
SLAB's administration costs rose by almost £1m to £13.9m, due in part to pension costs on the retirement of senior staff and the purchase of four years of Oracle licences at 2021-22 prices.
SLAB chief executive Colin Lancaster said "huge challenges" still lay ahead for the justice system in clearing the backlog of court cases caused by Covid-19.
Recognising that solicitors' finances had been hit by the massive disruption brought about by the pandemic, he commented: "As a reflection of the ongoing recovery in the wider justice system, the increase in payments to legal aid firms compared to 2020-21 is welcome."
He added, however, that the legal aid system and delivery model were fundamentally unaltered from the 1950s and had not evolved to fully reflect societal changes over the decades.
"It is perhaps unsurprising in this context that the profession finds itself struggling with some of the mismatches between the way they are structured and operate, the strictures of the legal aid system, and the wider world in which both exist but perhaps no longer adequately reflect", he said.
The focus on fees (both structures and levels) was just one part of a complex range of factors, trends and interactions that impacted on the financial return, sustainability and suitability of one particular model for the delivery of this public service.
"That model is at the core of the current legal aid system, but alongside the challenges faced by those delivering the service, the system is itself in urgent need of reform.
"It is overly complex; elements of it can be confusing and time consuming for both applicants and solicitors and for SLAB to deliver; and this complexity makes aspects of it more costly to administer than need be."
The transformational potential of additional or alternative systems and the legislation required to deliver them "need careful thought and will take time to deliver". The right solution – one that met the needs of users and those who deliver the services they rely on – had to be informed by detailed analysis both of the problem and data that can illustrate it. It also needed "constructive dialogue in order to build a shared understanding of the issues and an informed approach to identifying what is likely to be a range of measures to address those issues".