Public Consultation on proposals for enhanced remuneration for providers of legal services

Overview

People encounter the justice system when they are facing challenges: when they are victims of crime, when they are experiencing trauma, when they are dealing with physical and emotional injury, when they are managing changes to their financial and personal circumstances and family life.

How access to justice is supported can impact on how people manage and respond to those challenges. It can help determine their life outcomes, the support they need in the future, and how they live and engage with society. How we provide information, support, and representation can be critical to ensuring voices are heard, rights are exercised, protections are secured. It can be critical in ensuring inequities can be challenged and that decision-makers and others are held to account. It can help determine the longer-term costs of public services: the cost of policing, prisons, health and support services, and benefits.

We would like your thoughts on proposals relating to revising the remuneration for solicitors and barristers involved in criminal legally-aided work and civil legal services.

Legal aid remuneration plays a vital role in ensuring that there is fair and equal access to justice in Northern Ireland. Legal aid exists to help pay for a solicitor or other legal practitioners:

• to help people who are under investigation, or are charged with a criminal offence or brought before a court to be dealt with; or
• to help people facing civil or family legal issues relating, for example, to housing, migration, family separation and the care of children.

These proposals follow on from the Department’s comprehensive Enabling Access to Justice Programme Delivery Plan, which was informed by detailed evidence gathering, including evidence from the Burgess Review, the Foundational Review of Civil Legal Services and other reviews of criminal and civil legal aid.

The amendments will be brought forward via legislative amendment and associated guidance, namely:

• The Magistrates Courts and County Court Appeals (Criminal Legal Aid) (Costs) Rules (Northern Ireland) 2009;
• The Legal Aid for Crown Court Proceedings (Costs) Rules (Northern Ireland) 2005; and
• The Civil Legal Services (Remuneration) Order (Northern Ireland) 2015.