Ministry of Justice scrutineers have a lot of reading to do as on September 15th no less than 15 substantial documents have been published on the same day including:-   ●  A detailed consultation on tribunals and courts (civil, family and magistrates) reform including new digital procedures such as on online court for civil claims (as per Briggs review), virtual trials for low level criminal offences, and cutting down on multi-panel tribunals   ●  Implementation of higher appeal fees in the First-tier Immigration and Asylum Tribunal and the introduction of new fees for appeals in the Upper Tribunal and for permission to appeal applications - effectively a fee hike of 500%.   ●  Further court closures and justice area mergers, with two more London courts facing the axe.   ●   Various sets of performance data in respect of Ministry of Justice spending across all of its business areas   Much of this is not entirely new, and some of it is work ongoing from Michael Gove’s tenure as Lord Chancellor. However, none of these announcements leave us any wiser as to when, whether, or if the Ministry of Justice will commence its long promised review of the LASPO Act and recent legal aid reforms. Indeed whilst overall the policy document on “Transforming Our Justice System” talks lots about "access", modernisation and cost proportionality in the system, it doesn’t mention legal aid or access to advice once! Talk of access and proportionality also rings especially hollow when set against the imposition of new fee systems for immigration tribunal cases rising to £490 for paper hearing applications, and £800 for oral hearing, a new fee of £455 for permission to appeal to the upper tribunal a fee of £510 for an appeal hearing where permission is granted.   The Government commits in its “Transforming Our Justice System” document “to investing more than £700 million to modernise courts and tribunals, and over £270 million more in the criminal justice system”. Under other circumstances this would be very welcome news – poor IT systems, excessive bureaucracy, systems complexity, hearing delays and paper-heavy processes are all barriers to preventing people from accessing justice. However the biggest barriers to access remain financial ones, with ever increasing court fees, legal costs and rates for legal services professional and experts – if Government are serious about "delivering a system that is just and accessible to everyone who needs it" tackling the problem of access to legal services, advice and representation and improving public legal education to address legal capability gaps should be a higher priority.   LAG is also concerned that in the rush for the justice system to catch up with the curve of IT and online technologies and convert more of our legal and dispute resolution processes into virtual or digital by default models and transactions, the Government risks creating new barriers and forms of exclusion from our justice system. In LAG’s view a small amount of the welcome extra £1 billion investment might be better spent in getting the cases involving the most complex issues and/or vulnerable litigants in front of an appropriate expert lawyer or adviser. We will be responding to the consultations in detail in due course.   James Sandbach, Policy Manager