MoJ announces interim payments on criminal legal aid fees

The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has published a statutory instrument which makes changes to interim payments on legal aid fees for criminal solicitors and barristers working on long-running cases.

Designed to ease the financial burden on lawyers who have suffered a wave of successive fee cuts, the amendments to the legal aid regulations will come into force from 2 October.

Interim payments will be made to practitioners undertaking lengthy cases, in order to help with cashflow issues. Solicitors and barristers will also be able to claim some of their fees at the beginning of the trial. The ministry admitted that in some instances lawyers in trials lasting more than 10 days have to wait 'too long' for fees to be paid if bills are submitted at the end of a trial.

Cracked-trials

Fee changes introduced by the government mean that if a case is halted as the result of the prosecution offering no evidence, solicitors and barristers, whose clients have chosen to have an either-way case heard in the Crown court, are paid fixed fees of a similar level to those in the magistrates' court.

The MoJ accepted that this is unfair to defence lawyers given that such disruptions are beyond their control. The ministry has, therefore, also announced that it will reintroduce graduated 'cracked-trial fees' for both litigators and advocates on either-way cases.

This effectively means that practitioners will no longer lose out financially when a case cracks because the prosecution decides to drop the case.

Too late?

Announcing the amendments, the justice secretary, Chris Grayling, said: "I promised we would do everything we can to ease the transition to the new legal aid fee system. While we have no choice but to make fee reductions we said we would introduce interim payments for solicitors and cracked-trial fees where the prosecution drops the case. The regulation changes make good on that commitment."

Reacting to the news, the Law Society president, Andrew Caplen, said: "These measures remedy a well-recognised unfairness in the system and will help to improve cashflow for our members. We are glad to see them being introduced at last and they will undoubtedly be of some help to some firms."

Caplen continued: "However, the scale of the fee cuts and the impact of the contract changes being introduced mean that many of our members will regard this as too little, too late to save their businesses. We will be continuing to press the government to recognise the impact of its proposals on our members working in the criminal justice system, and to think again before irreparable damage results."

Suppressed evidence

Last week, the High Court heard allegations that the justice secretary relied on "bluff and bully" tactics to drive through the government's controversial legal aid cuts.

A judicial review challenge, which names the Lord Chancellor as a defendant in the hearing, has been brought by the London Criminal Courts Solicitors' Association and the Criminal Law Solicitors' Association. They accuse Grayling of coordinating a "caricature of fairness" in the MoJ review of legal aid, which they claim was unlawful.

The MoJ's changes to legal aid resulted in cuts of 17.5 per cent in criminal court fees and reduce the number of duty solicitor contracts for attending police stations and courts in England and Wales from 1,600 to 525.

Appearing for the solicitors, Jason Coppel QC said evidence contrary to the MoJ's aims was suppressed and that the Law Society was "manipulated" into agreeing to the changes. "The Lord Chancellor personally misled [criminal solicitors] about the matter of the independent research which had been commissioned to assist him to make decisions. He personally refused to disclose that research, it would seem, for no other reason than that it might provide ammunition to critics of his proposals," said Coppel.