Hansard

I am pleased that we have the opportunity today to debate the provision of civil legal assistance in Scotland. In the course of our inquiry, the committee was presented with an alarming picture of the current availability of civil legal assistance. People’s access to justice is being compromised, and we must take the opportunity today, as a whole Parliament, to debate the “Report on the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee inquiry into Civil Legal Assistance in Scotland”.

Access to justice has been a key theme of the committee’s work during the current session of Parliament. In particular, the committee has been concerned about the provision of civil legal assistance and the increasing challenges that some people face in finding a lawyer to take on a case.

In the context of recent increasing concern about the ever-declining number of solicitors in Scotland who are taking on legal aid work, the committee agreed to undertake an inquiry into civil legal assistance in Scotland. The committee agreed to focus on what is and what is not working in the current civil legal aid system, and on what changes could be made in the short term and the longer term to address access issues.

A number of key themes emerged from our work. However, before I get into those themes, I state that the committee was disappointed that no primary legislation has been introduced in the current session of Parliament to effect an improvement in the provision of civil legal assistance. The concerns that we heard emphasised that the need for legislative change has long been known and has not just emerged, and a desire was expressed that primary legislation should have been introduced earlier in the session. However, it is welcome that the Scottish Government has been consulting on reform, and we hope that the Government will go even further. Legislative reform of civil legal assistance must be a priority for the next Administration.

During our inquiry we heard significant concerns about the operation of current systems, which emphasised the acuteness of the situation. I am grateful to all those who provided us with written and oral evidence that painted such a vivid picture of the current predicament with regard to civil legal assistance in Scotland. The committee was presented with a picture of legal aid deserts that are compromising people’s ability to exercise their legal rights. These legal aid deserts relate both to geographical areas and to areas of law, including those relating to asylum seekers, immigration, welfare, housing and employment.

Perhaps most strikingly, we heard about the experience of women seeking legal assistance in relation to domestic abuse cases. We were given the example of Grampian Women’s Aid, where workers are making 50 to 60 calls a day to find a legal aid solicitor. That challenge is not unique to remote and rural areas. We were also told that, in domestic abuse cases across Scotland, women are having to contact 30 to 50 solicitors before they can access advice. We noted that that was unacceptable and, in our report, we urged the Scottish Government and the Scottish Legal Aid Board to work together to understand the extent of unmet need for civil legal assistance in Scotland. Therefore, we welcome the Scottish Government’s recognition—in its response to the report—of the need to undertake such an exercise, and we also welcome the efforts that are being made by SLAB and the Law Society of Scotland to do it.

It is also pleasing to note the commitment of funding for initiatives such as the legal aid traineeship fund to attract new entrants to the legal profession. Measures to increase the capacity and capability of the supply base are noted, as well as the potential impact of the Regulation of Legal Services (Scotland) Act 2025.

Those are all welcome measures that we hope can contribute to an improved supply of civil legal assistance. However, there must be tangible results from the exercise, and we will strongly emphasise to our successor committee that it must hold the Scottish Government to account for progress in those areas. Although we welcome the measures, we note that they do not respond to the primary driver of shortages that we heard about. We were told that shortages of legal aid practitioners were primarily attributable to the low rates of fees for solicitors for legal aid work, and that increasing those rates would have a significant impact on the availability of legal aid practitioners. There appeared to the committee to be a clear link between low fee rates and the lack of lawyers who are willing to undertake legal aid work.

When we reported, we welcomed the Minister for Victims and Community Safety’s commitment to reinitiate fee review planning and collaborate with stakeholders on the reform of legal fees in 2025. The committee also welcomes the subsequent commitment to establishing a fee review mechanism group. It is pleasing to see that the group has now been established and has met, and we hope that it can make good and swift progress.

The report says:

“Bureaucratic processes were identified as another major barrier to offering and accessing civil legal assistance. SLAB administration requirements were seen as burdensome and disproportionate resulting in a strained relationship between legal aid lawyers and SLAB.”

We also heard that the administrative processes undermined legal practitioners’ capacity to undertake trauma-informed approaches, so it is pleasing to see the Scottish Government’s recognition of that concern, including its recognition of the importance of a trauma-informed approach.

In the coming weeks, the committee looks forward to scrutinising secondary legislation, which the Government tells us will: provide quicker access to legally aided services for people who are eligible; reduce administration for solicitors and SLAB; reduce the number of multiple legal aid applications that are required for payment; and provide greater certainty of payment.

We note the secondary legislation that supports those policy objectives, but it is disappointing that no changes will be made to address the pressing concerns around access to civil legal assistance, and we consider that a range of suggestions from our report could have been taken forward at this juncture. However, we welcome the on-going planning for primary legislation in the next parliamentary session to respond to those challenges.

Eligibility for civil legal assistance was another key concern for the committee that emerged from the inquiry. For example, we noted that it is not tenable that someone with £1,718 in their bank account

“should not be able to access Advice and Assistance”,

and we called for inflationary increases and increases to advice and assistance financial eligibility

“to match civil legal assistance thresholds as proposed by the Scottish Association of Law Centres.”

We recommended

“that the Scottish Government pursue reforms with a view to removing financial eligibility tests”

for legally aided legal advice on civil protection orders and homelessness due to a breach of statutory duty cases. We also urged the Scottish Government to

“investigate options for ensuring legal aid is available without means-testing to a wider selection of domestic abuse cases.”

The committee did not find that the flexibilities that exist in the current system are sufficient to meet the challenges that people currently face in relation to eligibility.

In its response to the report, the Scottish Government noted its commitment

“to ensuring that civil legal aid is accessible to all who need it, particularly survivors of domestic and gender-based violence as highlighted in the Committee report.”

We would welcome more clarity in the Minister for Victims and Community Safety’s response on how that commitment will be met.

In the longer term, the committee welcomed

“the emphasis being placed on mixed models of delivery and user voice by the Scottish Government.”

However, we believe that judicare, whereby solicitors themselves decide whether to offer legal aid and are paid on a case-by-case basis, must remain a key feature of any future system.

The committee also asked that

“the Scottish Government consider preventative approaches and public legal education as part of its discussion on longer-term reforms.”

Again, we would welcome some further reflections on that point from the minister in the course of the debate.

There are serious concerns about the operation of civil legal assistance in Scotland. We welcome the generally positive tenor of the Scottish Government’s response and hope that it will be accompanied by action, so that any future committee will not express similar concerns to ours at the end of the next parliamentary session. I look forward to the remainder of this important debate.

I move,

That the Parliament notes the findings and recommendations in the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee’s 3rd Report, 2025 (Session 6), Report on the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee inquiry into Civil Legal Assistance in Scotland (SP Paper 858).