Journalists reveal huge waste of taxpayers’ money resulting from abandoned criminal legal aid plan

The government has wasted over £400,000 on failed attempts to push through legal aid reforms that would have further crippled the justice system if implemented, it has been revealed.

The unworkable proposals for a criminal new legal aid contract bidding regime would have forced many firms to close and had already led over 100 to launch litigation against the government before the plans were dropped by justice secretary Michael Gove, in an attempt to clear up a mess left by his predecessor, now a leading member of the Brexit campaign, Chris Grayling. The revelations were discovered by the Law Society Gazette, which launched a freedom of information request to the Ministry of Justice to find out what it had spent on the abortive proposals before their abandonment. The Gazette found that agency staff involved in the process had cost the taxpayer £271,574, while legal services for the procurement and assessment process had cost £125,933 and external legal fees for drafting the criminal legal aid contracts had come to £13,565. 

However, the full cost of services enlisted by the government - such as those provided by the Legal Aid Agency - has still been withheld due to restrictions in the Freedom of Information Act, so the overall cost of this episode may be much, much more.