Speeches by Olney.

“Finally on this—well, maybe not finally—and this is really important: there are vulnerable groups who are more disadvantaged and are finding it harder to access legal aid. Specifically, what information do you have about the impact of reducing legal aid on them, and what are you doing to address that?”

“Per year?”

“Jane Harbottle, this is a follow-up to a previous session we had about getting value for money from legal aid. We expressed our concerns at that point that the removal of remote legal aid provision was having a disproportionate impact on vulnerable groups. What steps have you taken to understand the full impact of that…”

“Sorry, I am going to interrupt. I hear that—solicitors are best placed, and it is their relationship with the client and so on. My question to you is: what are you doing to ensure appropriate access, and what are you doing specifically for people in more vulnerable groups to ensure that access is possible?”

“Thank you.”

“Yes. Q37 [1]Mr Betts: We have raised the issue before that there are often knock-on effects on other parts of the public service when a decision is taken in one part. Here, legal aid restrictions and reductions can have a knock-on effect on other areas, particularly on local government. I think we particularly asked fo…”

“Excellent, thank you. I want to move on to how the contingency arrangements have affected the delivery of justice. We have talked about the contingency arrangements—particularly the representation service—and we have identified that family courts are one of the main areas for that. What impact has the contingency had o…”

“Gemma, when do you expect the court service to have more information about the impact of litigants in person on the administration of the courts? We can see that they are having an impact; what is the Ministry of Justice doing to properly understand that impact?”

“Thank you; that is good to know. Gemma, is the improved data that you have and will have on litigants in person going to help you to differentiate between the litigants in person who are more actively engaged in their cases and the ones who are not engaging at all?”

“What about appearance in hearings?”

“Okay. I will go back to my main question about the overall impact of litigants in person. Before I interrupted you, you were saying that there is no evidence that there is any less efficiency in having litigants in person.”

“So we are saying that the data will record just that the participant is a litigant in person; it will not record whether they are actively involved or whether they are a litigant in person by default, but they are not actually speaking up for themselves or making an active attempt to present their case.”

“Is there an increased risk of child protection failure from a litigant in person in a family court, particularly when the other side is properly represented?”

“There isn’t?”

“Jo, there was a lot of concern about the impact of the breach on the operations of the legal aid providers. You wrote to the Committee at the beginning of this month to say that, “the attack and subsequent response have” not “led directly to any providers withdrawing from the market,” which seems quite a high bar. Do y…”

“I want to ask about the cash flow point. Were you making loans to providers?”

“Just quickly, what have you learned from the roll-out so far? What are you picking up from the data on that?”

“I appreciate the point you make about efficiency. One thing that is a real concern for me, because it comes up in my constituency casework a lot, is this. What evidence are you picking up about child protection issues in the family courts, particularly where one party or the other is a litigant in person? Are you confi…”

“We have talked a lot about the cost of the lease and the radon mitigations. Dr Farrar, do you have a full understanding of all the costs associated with keeping this prison going without prisoners? There will be security costs, business rates, I assume, and other associated costs. Do you have a sense of what the full c…”

“I beg your pardon; I know I keep interrupting you, but what you are saying is that the new system makes it more efficient—it’s not—but the point is really around the litigants in person, because what we are examining here is the impact of reductions in legal aid. What does the data show about the increased child protec…”