Meeting of the Parliament 06 January 2026
Presiding Officer, I extend, as others have, the wishes of the new year to you and to other members in the chamber.
This has been a fascinating debate, and could perhaps have merited more time. We have heard unanimity of support for the excellent report from the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee and the call for change.
It cannot be acceptable that people’s capacity to exercise their legal right to realise their human rights is so severely compromised. The committee’s report is unequivocal. The shocking picture of the legal aid deserts has been mentioned by Marie McNair and by my colleague Pam Duncan-Glancy with regard to those with a disability facing a lack of access to justice because of the lack of legal aid, and there were powerful contributions from Ariane Burgess and Liam McArthur about the situation in rural and island communities. Those challenges are important.
The report calls for immediate action on the uplifting of fees, a reduction in bureaucracy and the widening of the eligibility thresholds. What has the Government delivered but promises, consultations and deferrals?
Regulations were laid in December 2025 to simplify the judicare model, but that simplification will not solve the crisis of capacity. Three of the four areas that are dealt with in the draft regulations relate to children and the children’s hearings system, which is undergoing massive change; we are unsure what it will look like in the end.
Other issues that could have been dealt with include having easier access to legal aid for homeless people and women who face domestic violence. The rates could also have been dealt with. However, the Government has chosen not to do so, describing that issue as needing primary legislation, when, with the greatest respect, it does not.
After years during which the SNP Government has been in power, legal aid has constantly been pushed further and further down the line, and we are now, as we have heard, at the point of absolute crisis, given that an expert group such as Grampian Women’s Aid is required to make 50 or 60 phone calls to find a legal aid solicitor. It is not randomly choosing people out of the old “Yellow Pages”. It knows the law firms that deal in legal aid and is going specifically to those, in ever wider areas, to try to find support for—as others have, rightly, pointed out—some of the most vulnerable individuals in society.
Solicitors are leaving legal aid work because the fees remain unsustainable. The Government’s response is a fee review mechanism group, yet there is no commitment to increasing the fees, despite the fact that every day of delay deepens that access gap.
The committee has urged the reform of eligibility thresholds, which have been unchanged since 2011. The Government admits that those thresholds are outdated but offers only “future” consideration. Survivors of domestic abuse cannot wait for another session, and homeless families cannot wait for another consultation, because justice delayed is justice denied.
The minister has talked about the rising expenditure on legal aid, and I welcome that, but here is another reality: in 2014-15, there were 1,067 civil legal aid solicitors; in 2023-24, there were just 791. More money spent does not mean better access when the system is broken in the way that it is.
On public interest litigation—which, again, was raised by my colleague Pam Duncan-Glancy—at the end of the day, regulation 15 can be reformed. The Government agrees in principle, but defers it to “longer-term ... reform”. Meanwhile, systematic injustices remain unchallenged.