Tag Archives: public funding

FOI about LIPs from MOJ is FFS and OMG then AAK

I recently received a response to my Freedom of Information Request to the Ministry of Justice concerning private family cases and litigants in person. It’s a little impenetrable, so to help break through to what it means I’m going to run through it. First, read the response here.

The information comes from the HMCS FamilyMan database, the software so maligned by the Norgrove Review. It is clear that in some respects the data is unreliable, the most obvious example being the numbers of private law children cases with guardian appointments, which are very obviously too low (260 out of 45020 cases) and is likely to be simply because court staff do not consistently update the case records when an appointment is made.

So what I’ve been given is a set of tables.

Table 1 (actually comprised of two tables) shows Private law Children Act cases still outstanding in Family Proceedings Courts, as at 30th June 2011. The first shows “Applicant Representation”, the second “Respondent Representation”. Table 2 is the same date for the County Court, Table 3 for the High Court.

It’s unclear what duplication of data there is between the Applicant and Respondent tables, or whether the parties in cases involving cross applications are each counted in both tables as applicant and respondent. It is difficult to guess what proportion of “applicants” are applicants for contact (probably majority fathers), applicants for residence (probably reasonably evenly split) or applicants for other orders or combinations of orders. And any single party may be both applicant (say for contact) and respondent (say to a residence application). As a consequence it’s difficult to draw much from the fact that respondents are far less likely to be represented than applicants in all tiers of court (broadly speaking around 20% of Applicants are unrepresented and around 40% of Respondents are unrepresented in all tiers – based on the “none” figures). One could hypothesise that those who are initiating proceedings are far more likely to have organised themselves and actively sought advice and assistance prior to issue, or that a high proportion of those who are applicants do so because of intransigent and inflexible exes who may be less inclined to seek or follow advice – but we don’t even know when the data for representation is gathered (at issue?) or if it is maintained and updated as cases progress, lawyers are sacked and clients run out of funds for representation. Frankly, who knows? Continue Reading…

Trying To End Things

I’ve had two very different articles published today, both about attempts to end things:

Those responsible for the latter could do to take a leaf out of the former: draconian powers, not to be used summarily…sadly we read today that the Government is planning to fast track the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill – second reading on Weds next week. That is really, really shoddy: politics at its worst.

Summary of Legal Aid Reforms to Family Law

Nearly Legal has provided an excellent summary of the legal aid reforms in respect of housing and other areas of law: Ask not for whom the bill tolls. Due to other commitments I have not been able to put together a full analysis of the Bill insofar as is relates to family law. That will follow, but here is a summary of the position (largely borrowed from someone else I’m afraid).

Headlines: The confirmation of the removal of large numbers of private law cases from scope of legal aid, and of the reduction of family fees by 10% (on top of the FAS cuts implemented in May).

The Bill

Part 1 of the Bill itself is dedicated to Legal Aid (Clauses 1-40). The Bill contains provisions to abolish the LSC and transfer the day-to-day administration of legal aid to the Lord Chancellor. In practice, this will be done by civil servants in an executive agency of the Ministry of Justice. However, decisions on legal aid in individual cases will be taken by a statutory office holder: a civil servant designated by the Lord Chancellor as the Director of Legal Aid Casework. The Lord Chancellor will have no power to direct or issue guidance to the Director in relation to individual cases

There are empowering sections for the Lord Chancellor on legal aid issues, there is some provision about funding legal services and eligibility for legal aid (Clause 20). By Clause 36 the Legal Services Commission is abolished.

Clause 9 is an important provision for the payment of legal aid for ‘exceptional cases’ (i.e. where failure to do so would be a breach of the individual’s Convention rights within the meaning of the Human Rights Act 1998). It is clear from the tenor of the response paper that the Government anticipate that this will be a narrow category, albeit with some initial boundary testing via JR.

In Part 2 of the Bill there is provision (Clause 45) for a new section 22ZA of the MCA 1973 for the payment of a sum to enable the other party to obtain legal services in proceedings for divorce, nullity of marriage or judicial separation. Clause 22ZB sets out the matters to which the court should have regard in a legal services order.

Schedule 1 sets out the categories of cases in and out of scope. Schedule 1 is structured in a rather confusing way with a set of “excluded services” and other “exceptions and exclusions” some of which then don’t apply in certain instances. I suggest you tackle it in print rather than on screen. Continue Reading…