Committee publication · Report · 17 July 2026 · HC 541
3rd Report – Access to Justice: Legal Aid
From: Justice Committee
Inquiry: Access to Justice
Government response deadline: 17 September 2026
Summary
The Justice Committee's third report examines access to justice through the lens of legal aid in England and Wales. It finds that legal aid has been severely eroded: criminal eligibility thresholds frozen since 2009 are now extraordinarily low (£22,325 gross income for magistrates' courts), civil legal aid frozen eligibility creates a growing justice gap affecting millions, duty solicitor schemes have lost 25% of practitioners since 2017, and the Legal Aid Agency faces serious administrative and IT challenges. The committee calls for urgent implementation of the stalled Means Test Review, independent fee-setting mechanisms, and systemic reform of legal aid administration.
Key findings
- Criminal legal aid means test has not been updated since 2009; an adult earning the national living wage with no dependants now earns too much to qualify for magistrates' court legal aid, despite 64% inflation since 2009.
- An estimated 48% of defendants in magistrates' courts appear unrepresented for imprisonable offences; the government does not publish reliable data on this despite Lammy review recommendations, creating unacceptable risk of miscarriages of justice.
- Criminal duty solicitor numbers fell 25% between 2017–2026 to 3,944 active practitioners; 47% are over 50, only 7% under 35, with schemes in some areas having fewer than seven solicitors each working 24-hour weeks.
- Civil legal aid eligibility thresholds frozen for years have created a 'justice gap': 76% of single parents with one primary school-aged child fall below civil legal aid eligibility despite inability to afford private representation.
- Real-term spending on criminal legal aid fell 36.3% per capita between 2007–08 and 2023–24; recent fee uplifts (£116 million) implement only the minimum Bellamy review recommendation from 2021 and are insufficient to prevent firm closures and recruitment failures.
Recommendations
- Government should immediately implement the Means Test Review and uprate proposed thresholds to reflect inflation and 2023–24 cost-of-living data (proposed threshold should be £43,065, not the 2023 proposal of £34,950), and publish methodology alongside implementation.
- Government should establish an independent mechanism to review evidence on average incomes and self-representation rates, formally recommending future uplifts to the Lord Chancellor, potentially via the Criminal Legal Aid Advisory Board.
- Government must publish data on representation in magistrates' courts and conduct independent research on case outcomes as recommended in the Lammy review.
- Government must address how defendants will not be sentenced to a year or more in prison without legal representation, including implementing Leveson Review recommendation 29 by increasing magistrates' court income thresholds and committing not to increase sentencing powers until Means Test Review recommendations are implemented.
- Government should liaise with police and stakeholders to identify duty solicitor shortages and use LASPO section 2(2) powers to directly fund additional duty solicitors in areas with negative impact on justice administration.
- Government should publish within six months its assessment of the number and geographical distribution of duty solicitors required for sustainable coverage, and use LASPO powers to fund additional provision where schemes fall below that level.
- Government should create an independent mechanism to review and uprate criminal legal aid fees with clear targets for recruiting and retaining criminal legal aid lawyers.
- Government should expand early legal advice and simplify the scope of legal aid, with particular attention to areas where early intervention prevents legal problems becoming more complex and costly.
- Government should accelerate reform of the Legal Aid Agency's IT systems, reduce unnecessary administrative burdens, and ensure providers and clients affected by the recent cyber-attack are properly supported.
Tone
CriticalTopics
legal-aidcriminal-justiceaccess-to-justicepublic-financecourt-administration
Key actors
Andy Slaughter, Sarah Sackman KC MP, Jane Harbottle, Richard Atkinson, Richard Miller, Sir Brian Leveson, Ministry of Justice, Legal Aid Agency
Notable line
“A legal aid system that people cannot qualify for or access, and that providers cannot sustainably deliver, is no system at all.”
Key Quotes
“It is antithetical to government aspirations on rehabilitation of offenders and productivity in the workforce for full time workers to be denied legal advice and representation when accused of crimes.”
“There are growing numbers of duty solicitor schemes where there are fewer than seven duty solicitors on the scheme, which means that each one must be on duty for at least one 24-hour period every single week. [ … ] The average age of duty solicitors now is about 51, 47% of them are over the age of 50, and only 7% are under the age of 35, so it is very much an ageing profession. In fact, I would go further; it is a profession that is becoming extinct before our very eyes.”
“Aid Ontario told me [ … ] that it is very concerned about backlogs, and one big issue and driver of that is unrepresented defendants. They have increased legal aid eligibility in Canada to make sure that more defendants are represented so that cases can move more swiftly.”
“In five years' time, a big chunk will have left and will not have been replaced. That is the issue. There are clear problems. One example is in west Wales, [ … ] the court had to decide whether it would adjourn for the afternoon to allow the duty solicitor in the area to go and represent someone at the police station who was on a PACE clock and the police needed to interview, or continue to have the court sitting that afternoon.”
“Many police station cases are done at a loss and the rest of the fee structures do not allow these cases to even meet the impoverished ambition that they will be a loss leader.”
“The fact that we are not seeing a commitment to a regular increase is fatal to the system surviving more than a very short time. If firms are to see a business proposition for carrying on doing this work, they need to know as an absolute baseline that these rates will be maintained in real terms.”
“The eligibility threshold for criminal legal aid in the magistrates' court is shockingly low and is contributing to increasing levels of self-representation. It is a clear denial of justice that an individual working for the national minimum wage may earn too much to be eligible for legal aid in the magistrates' court.”
Source · parliament.uk record ↗