LAPG welcomes Justice Committee report into legal aid

Legal Aid Practitioners Group has today (17 July 2026) welcomed the House of Commons Justice Committee’s Third Report of Session 2026-27, ‘Access to Justice: Legal Aid’.

The Committee’s conclusions and recommendations in relation to legal aid provision across England and Wales are closely aligned to what we and our legal aid practitioner members have been asking of government over many years.

The Committee received 173 individual written submissions to this inquiry, which builds on the Committee’s 2021 ‘Future of Legal Aid’ inquiry. Five oral evidence sessions heard from a wide range of witnesses, including our Director of Policy (Parliamentary Engagement), Rohini Jana, various legal representative bodies, law firms, charities, and legal scholars. The Committee also heard directly from Sarah Sackman KC MP, Minister of State for Courts and Legal Services and Jane Harbottle, Chief Executive of the Legal Aid Agency (LAA).

LAPG welcomes the findings of this wide-ranging report which has found overwhelming evidence of a growing “justice gap” where people are too “rich” to qualify for legal aid but far too poor to afford private advice and representation.

Findings and Recommendations

The Committee explicitly states that the Lord Chancellor is failing in their statutory duty to “secure that legal aid is made available”, with restrictive rules around scope preventing early intervention, allowing simple issues to escalate into crises. The proportion of adults in England and Wales eligible for civil legal aid is unacceptably low and misaligned with the Ministry’s policy goals. The Committee urged the government to immediately implement the Means Test Review and uprate the proposed thresholds to reflect inflation and cost-of-living data since 2022 (Recommendation, Paragraph 63).

In giving oral evidence to the Committee, Rohini Jana spoke at length about the effect on providers of three decades of frozen fees and cuts, and the need to uprate fees in line with inflation if the system is to be more sustainable. The Committee concluded that civil legal aid rates are fundamentally uneconomical for providers, particularly in non-housing and non-immigration and asylum categories. Urgent action, of a greater scale than currently offered by the government, is required to retain even current levels of supply. This includes funding to offer enhanced rates and grants in “justice deserts” in both crime and civil legal aid. Fee rates should be subject to regular independent review and uplifted to ensure continued viability of providers. (Recommendation, Paragraph 81).

The Committee also accepted our recommendations around the need for a more strategic approach to the delivery of access to justice, stating that government should, within 12 months, publish a civil legal aid workforce strategy. This should cover recruitment, retention, training capacity, succession planning and regional shortages (Recommendation, Paragraph 88).

Our written evidence described the administrative burdens placed on providers by the LAA and the need to compensate providers for the additional costs and stressors generated by the 2025 LAA data breach. The Committee concluded that the structure of the LAA remains deficient, with a focus on process time and error and insufficient focus on enabling access to justice (Conclusion, Paragraph 149). Administrative and audit requirements imposed on providers further damage their economic viability and are disproportionate for established providers (Conclusion, Paragraph 151).

In the short term, the Committee recommended reform of the LAA’s focus, objectives and delegated authorities. Reimagining the role of the LAA will empower it monitor legal need and secure adequate provision to meet that need. The Committee also highlighted the benefits of simplifying cost guidance, reducing unbillable work for providers, and piloting a high-trust model. (Recommendation, Paragraph 152)

In respect of the new Public Office (Accountability) Bill (“Hillsborough Law”, Rohini Jana argued in oral evidence that the government must address current inequality of arms by ensuring that funding is available early and at a rate comparable to what public authorities pay their legal representatives. She warned that while the expansion of legal aid for inquests is positive, there is a lack of qualified and experienced practitioners to undertake this work, a point reinforced in the Inquiry report (Conclusion, Paragraph 127).

The Justice Committee is unequivocal about the scale of investment and reconstruction required to transform the legal aid scheme into one that is accessible, sustainable and capable of responding effectively to public legal need. A failure to implement the Committee’s recommendations, and to do so at pace, will mean thousands of people will continue to suffer the adverse consequences of unresolved legal issues on a daily basis. It will also mean that the pool of professionals available to support some of the most vulnerable members of society will continue to shrink.

We call on the Ministry of Justice to take bold and concerted action to implement the Committee’s recommendations, and we look forward to working with the Ministry and LAA to bring about positive, lasting change.