The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has today issued details of its plans to introduce price-competitive tendering (PCT) for criminal legal aid. The consultation also includes measures to cut a further £220m from the criminal and civil legal aid budget.
Read the MoJ consultation
Summary of the proposals
Below is our summary of the main proposals:
Chapter 3
Eligibility, scope and merits:
- Reduce scope of prison law to cases that involve length of detention and adjudications that require representation to comply with Article 6.
- Financial eligibility threshold for legal aid in the Crown Court. Defendant with disposable household income exceeding £37,500 will be ineligible.
- Residence test for civil legal aid restricting eligibility to those with at least 12 months' lawful residence.
- Legal aid payments for judicial reviews will only be made if the permission application is successful.
- Civil cases to have at least 50 per cent change of success - 'borderline' cases no longer eligible.
Chapter 4
Competitive tendering for criminal legal aid:
- Contract length: Three-year contract term with the option for the government of extending the contract term by up to two further years.
- Geographical areas for the procurement and delivery of services: Criminal Justice System (CJS) areas (subject to two proposed mergers of areas) with an exception for London, to be further subdivided into three procurement areas.
- Number of contracts: Applicants allowed to apply to deliver services in more than one procurement area, but only one share in each area. The number of contracts to vary by procurement area. Illustrative contract numbers based on 2010/11 LAA data suggests a range between four and 38 in each procurement area with the total number of contracts around 400.
- Contract value: Successful applicants in a procurement area to be awarded an equal share of access to cases in the procurement area.
- Client choice: Clients would generally have no choice in the provider allocated to them at the point of requesting advice, and would be required to stay with that provider for the duration of the case, subject to exceptional circumstances.
- Remuneration:
- Police station work: block payment for all police station attendance work per provider per procurement area, based on the historical volume in area and the provider's bid price.
- Magistrates' court work: fixed fee per provider per procurement area based on the provider's bid price.
- Crown Court cases with less than 500 pages of prosecution evidence (PPE): Introduce fixed fee per provider per procurement area based on the provider's bid price.
- Crown Court (non-VHCC) cases with more than 500 PPE: maintain current graduated fee scheme but rates set per provider per procurement area based on the provider's bid discount against the current rates under the Litigators' Graduated Fee Scheme.
- Procurement process: Two-stage application process:
- Pre-qualification questionnaire – evaluating an applicant's suitability to contract with a public body and its experience and capability of delivering the services.
- Invitation to tender – split into two parts – the first evaluating the provider's quality and capacity to deliver the specific service in the procurement area and the second evaluating the bid price.
- Contract award/ implementation: Competitive tendering process to start in all procurement areas in autumn 2013. Contracts would be awarded in summer 2014 with the service commencing in autumn 2014.
Chapter 5
'Reforming' criminal legal aid fees:
- reduce fees for Crown Court advocacy and very high cost cases (VHCCs) (both litigation and advocacy), which are not included in the proposals for competition
- a proposal to restructure the current Advocacy Graduated Fees Scheme to encourage earlier resolution and through a harmonisation of guilty plea, cracked trial and basic trial fee rates to the cracked trial rate
- a reduction in and tapering of daily trial attendance rates from day three
- a proposal to reduce all VHCC rates by 30 per cent
- a proposal to tighten the rules governing the decision to appoint multiple counsel in a case
- changes to litigator contracts to require greater support to counsel from the litigation team.
Chapter 6
'Reforming' civil legal aid fees:
- reduce graduated fees and hourly rates for care proceedings by 10 per cent
- barristers' fees for civil (non family) proceedings to be the same as other advocates
- Remove 35 per cent uplift for immigration and asylum Upper Tribunal appeal cases
Chapter 7
Civil and criminal expert fees:
- Reduce current specified standard fees for experts by 20 per cent