§ Mr. BercowTo ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department if she will make a statement on the savings in 2000–01 resulting from the introduction of conditional fee arrangements. [15037]
§ Ms Rosie WintertonConditional fee arrangements were introduced in 1995 and are now widely used in personal injury cases. Because of the availability of conditional fees, personal injury and some other areas of law were taken out of the scope of civil legal aid in April 2000 when the funding code for the community legal service fund was introduced.
We estimate that net the direct savings to legal aid in 2000–01 from taking most personal injury cases out of scope were £32 million. This is based on a comparison with the previous year. It is not possible to quantify separately savings in 2000–01 resulting from the use of conditional fee arrangements in other types of cases which were taken out of the scope.
The figure of £32 million understates savings to legal aid from the introduction of conditional fees. Expenditure on personal injury cases fell substantially in the years before 2000–01 following the introduction of conditional fees, but our records do not enable us to cost this accurately.