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There needs to be "significant improvements" to the way data is collected across UK Government to prove if major changes to legal aid have delivered value for money to the taxpayer, a new report says.

The Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act of 2012 was intended to make significant savings to the cost of the civil legal aid budget. The previous government was unable to provide evidence for this.

The report argues there needs to be more systematic collection and analysis of quantitative data across government and local government. This would then show if legal aid cuts have led to savings to the public purse, of if the costs have been passed on to local authorities and other organizations via legal or housing costs associated with the slowing down of court cases, or by people waiting for judgements not being able to work and pay tax.

The report, authored by Emma Marshall, Samuel Engle and Siân Pearce from the University of Exeter in partnership with Public Law Project and Migrants Organise, spells out what data Government needs to collect to work out the actual costs of the 2012 LASPO Act legal aid cuts and if, as current evidence suggests, the cuts were a false economy all along.

It says without information about the full costs of LASPO, it is impossible to know whether better value for money has in fact been delivered. Better data would enable a better understanding of the impact of changes to immigration legal aid under LASPO, and would also improve understanding of the wider impact of changes to the scope of civil legal aid.

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