Update on justice data gaps: legal representation

Our campaign to fill justice data gaps has had more impact, with our analysis cited by the National Audit Office’s report on legal aid, and the Law Society in their High Court victory against the Ministry of Justice.

There’s a hole in our justice system - there are no statistics on how many people appear in Magistrates’ Courts without legal representation. This means that the Government can’t make informed decisions about where to spend its money and there’s no oversight of a crucial measure of access to justice. But in July last year, we got some preliminary data.

Our analysis of the data found that, in the first half of 2023, 48% of defendants appearing in Magistrates’ Courts on imprisonable summary offences were not recorded as having a lawyer. This had risen from 35% in 2022. 

Given that this was the first data to be published on legal representation in Magistrates’ Courts - and that it paints such a shocking picture - our analysis was widely reported on, including in the Times. And we’re happy to report that this work has had some more impact.

We were pleased to see this analysis cited by the National Audit Office in their report on legal aid. In keeping with our concerns, they find that the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) still doesn’t know the costs and benefits of its legal aid reforms, nor do they collect enough data to understand whether those who are entitled to legal aid can access it.

And in December last year, the data was cited in a judicial review application by the Law Society. The judges ruled that the Government’s decision to freeze legal aid funding was irrational and not based on sufficient evidence. This makes sense given how critical data on legal representation is for understanding the value for money of legal aid. 

We do, however, have one quibble with the judgement. It rules that our analysis doesn’t prove that the rise in unrepresented defendants was caused by a lack of funding for legal aid- saying the evidence is ‘anecdotal’, and ‘does not properly give rise to an inference of causation’.

Well, we agree. We think better, official statistics on legal representation are needed - that’s why we’re campaigning for them. And of course, no descriptive statistics (of whatever quality) can prove causation by themselves.

Rather, our analysis was intended to show that the MoJ can produce these statistics itself. After all, the data we used already existed in their systems. So there seems to be little explanation for why the MoJ is still not producing statistics on legal representation in Magistrates’ Courts.

So we’re still pushing for the publication of these important statistics - the Government needs them to make informed decisions on legal aid funding, and to understand its impact on access to justice and court efficiency. We explained this in a recent submission to an inquiry on the value for money of legal aid, which we will publish soon. 

If you can support this work, please get in touch at contact@centreforpublicdata.org.