Responding to a question from Alan Beith MP, Liberal Democrat chair of the Justice Committee, on the low take-up of exceptional case funding, Vara said ‘the giveaway is in the title’. While the funding is meant ‘to be exceptional’, some people have ‘seen it as a discretionary fund’, he said. He added: ‘[N]ot surprisingly, therefore, the numbers involved in it have been few.’

Vara also rebutted the criticisms contained in the Justice Committee report into the impact of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act on civil legal aid.1Impact of changes to civil legal aid under Part 1 of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (March 2015).

Andy Slaughter, the shadow legal aid minister, said the report had found that Vara’s ‘government had failed in three of their four objectives for legal aid: they have not discouraged unnecessary litigation; they have not targeted legal aid to those who need it the most; and they have not delivered better value for money for the taxpayer’. He asked the minster if he agreed that this ‘abject failure is a fitting epitaph for the least competent Lord Chancellor since the Reformation’. In reply, Vara argued that the previous Lord Chancellor was responsible for the proposals Slaughter was referring to.

The government usually responds to select committee reports within two months, but due to the pending general election LAG understands it is unlikely that they will do so until later in May.