Community Legal Service (Hansard, 10 April 2001)

§ The Lord Chancellor (Lord Irvine of Lairg)

1 have today issued three directions. The first is a budget direction for the CLS, as required under Section 5 of the Access to Justice Act 1999. The budget for 2001–02 includes the following provisions:

the same budget as in 2000–01 for controlled work and new services, of £232 million;

within that budget, £5 million for the new Partnership Innovation Budget, and an increase in other support grants (from £1.5 million to £5 million);

as last year, a minimum of £20 million to be spent on services provided by not-for-profit bodies; and

an increase in the budget for high-cost cases, from £1 million to £4.5 million.

The second direction brings a number of tribunals into the scope of the CLS by allowing advocacy services to be funded. They are the VAT and Duties Tribunal; the General and Special Commissioners of Income Tax; and the Protection of Children Act Tribunal. In the first two, my decision is based on the need to provide representation where the interests of justice require it, because of the potential for the tribunals' powers to be interpreted as criminal penalties. In the third, my decision is based on the overwhelming importance to applicants of being allowed to challenge decisions to place them on the Protection of Children Act List and List 99.

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The third direction revises the circumstances in which cases that are normally excluded from scope can be funded. The main changes from my first direction, made in April 2000, are:

excluded cases involving the liberty of the applicant will be funded, in line with the Government's obligations under the Human Rights Act;

it will be easier to take action for professional negligence, even where the original service was provided in an area of law that is outside the CLS's normal scope;

the treatment of cases against public authorities has been revised to make it easier to bring actions for judicial review or serious wrongdoing, and to match the direction to the way the Funding Code treats equivalent work that is in scope; and

the treatment of mixed cases has been clarified, to restore the Government's original intention that only cases where the excluded element is minor or incidental to the main issue can be funded.