Speeches by Vaughan.

“I want to ask about appeals from a magistrates court to the Crown court. Is it the proposal that a judge alone will hear both the permission to appeal and the appeal itself? Does your modelling factor in the time those stages would take?”

“Does your model attribute delay, or a portion of these increasing trial times, to each of those elements?”

“But is the systemic change not factored into the model? Does the model not need to assume behaviour change?”

“Ms Sackman, I wanted to pick up on Mr Juss’s point about—[Interruption.]”

“Forgive me; I am talking about the length of the trials, or the time that cases are taking to be resolved, which is perhaps not about the volume of cases. Taking individual cases, each case is taking longer to resolve. What are the factors behind that?”

“The earlier witnesses were not able to provide an answer to this question. It would be really useful for us to have information, in due course, on the number of these kinds of appeals that end up being resolved in the appellant’s favour because witnesses do not turn up.”

“Will you make that entire model transparently public so that Sir Ashley can put his sitting days into it, which he says are irrelevant but would actually show what the outputs would be?”

“Will legal aid cover permission to appeal? There are some jurisdictions where you do not get paid unless you get permission to appeal. Will you ensure that they do, in any event, so as to mitigate any concerns about the reduction in rights from changing appeal rights?”

“That all presupposes that you have transcripts of the proceedings below. Are you confident that you have the technology in place to be able to do that quite easily?”

“I want to ask about appeals from a magistrates court to the Crown court. Is it the proposal that a judge alone will hear both the permission to appeal and the appeal itself? Does your modelling factor in the time those stages would take?”

“But is the systemic change not factored into the model? Does the model not need to assume behaviour change?”

“Is the ability of juries to deal with the evidence being presented to them part of the cause of the increased timeframes? Is that part of your case?”

“Does the hon. Member agree that economic regeneration through the arts and culture is a powerful way of showing the link between the past and the future in our national story? If so, would she agree that Folkestone is a prime example of that? Having been a port from which our troops went to the frontline in world war o…”

“When the Justice Secretary gave evidence to the Justice Committee in December, he said that the evidence underpinning the 20% time saving that comes from Sir Brian’s report would be released. If that makes the proposition good—I understand that the hon. Gentleman disputes that—would he and his party still oppose even t…”

“There is a power in section 2(2)(c) of LASPO to make arrangements to secure legal aid in areas where it is not being met. I was going to ask about remuneration for legally aided work.”

“Thank you, Chair. Thanks for all your answers so far. I want to ask about legal advice deserts. I know, Richard, that you mentioned that already. We have had a very large number of legal aid providers disappear, and we have areas of the country where, as you said, there is virtually nothing around. In Kent, we have zer…”

“Do you think that these increases will go anywhere near to preventing this attrition that we see in the system, where solicitors are spending all the time, as you referred to earlier, doing admin, essentially, that they are not paid for, but they have to do as part of a contract? Are we going to see this trend continue…”

“In relation to areas that are not housing and immigration but education, welfare benefits and community care, which have not had the increase, how would you assess the position there as to their sustainability and whether people are going to stick in those sectors if they are not getting paid properly?”

“Hello. I am Tony Vaughan. I am a barrister and before I became a Member of Parliament I practised a lot in civil legal aid. I am an associate tenant at Doughty Street Chambers. I draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. It is also relevant that I used to be a legal aid funding adjudic…”

“Similarly, to what extent—this is to any of you—will those increases address those historical funding difficulties?”