Bob Neill MP visited Kesar & Co Solicitors

Following the YLAL “take your MP to work” campaign – we invited eleven MPs to visit our office and talk about the legal aid cuts and poor state of the UK justice system. Six MPs ignored us, three declined the offer, one accepted it but later made an excuse and cancelled the visit and Mr Bob Neill, chair of the Parliamentary Justice Committee and MP for Bromley, actually came to talk to us on 18 March 2019.

We discussed the following:

1. Ways to save money:
We proposed that lawyers should be permitted to use the video link in all UK prisons in England and Wales. At present, the governors use the video link facilities in a random manner, often forcing lawyers to make avoidable journeys and incur unnecessary expenses. Such disbursements are frequently rejected by the LAA.
Another example of the missed savings opportunity is our duty to pay the court fees in legally aided cases. The payments from the LAA (MoJ budget) go to the court service (MoJ budget) and in the process we have to seek permission and rely on the HMCTS admin staff to process the payments. We suggested that the legal aid cases should be exempt.
Most prisoners do not have money or assets and the savings made on making them all eligible for legal aid (and avoiding assessments, applications audits, SoAs etc. ) could outweigh the savings achieved by excluding those few with some money. We mentioned the ridiculous rule about partners where clients have to declare whether they will return to their partners in, say, 15 years when they get released. They could be denied access to legal aid if that partner is working and owns a property.

2. Legal Aid Agency
We also talked about the LAA assessment and work which cannot be done within the time they are prepared to fund (i.e. long letters which can be paid only as standard (6 minutes) items, refusal to pay for perusal etc. We also spoke about the difficulties with funding of trafficking cases, s.11 cases (cases where the LAA will exclude foreign nationals), CCMS etc. We explained that it is unfair that we have to be audited by the funding body when they have the interest to recoup funds whenever possible. The LAA make decisions on the appeals and we often feel that there is no transparency or impartiality. We also mentioned the examples where the negative LAA decisions are on appeal reviewed by the same person.

3. Civil contracts
We discussed the 30 days rule for payment of the disbursements which is forcing us to bankroll the LAA. We are expected to pay the expert, counsel and interpreters within 30 days and have no chance of getting paid for months or years.

4. Our firm supports the Bach proposals so we spoke about the value of the early advice and access to lawyers.

5. Finally, we also gave examples of the clients who, in our view, have been unfairly treated and denied legal aid. Mr Neill took notes but did not say anything about the recommendations he and Justice Committee could make.