Civil Legal Aid expenditure

Summary

The Treasury responded to a request for detailed Civil Legal Aid expenditure breakdowns by year and category, citing practical refusal grounds for the specific data but providing aggregated net expenditure figures for family and non-family matters over five years.

Key Facts

• The Treasury refused to provide expenditure broken down by specific legal areas (e.g., personal injury, medical negligence) due to the substantial manual compilation required for paper-based files.
• Aggregated data was provided for Civil Legal Aid costs, contributions received, and costs recovered for the financial years 2012/13 through 2016/17.
• Legal aid funding may be repaid to the Treasury if an assisted person receives compensation, depending on whether interim bills were already paid.
• The provided cost figures represent invoices paid within each year rather than costs incurred in that specific year.
• Non-family legal aid covers matters such as personal injury, medical negligence, property disputes, and Mental Health Review Tribunal appeals.

Data Disclosed

• 2012/13 Net expenditure: £1,424,011.53
• 2013/14 Net expenditure: £1,488,136.05
• 2014/15 Net expenditure: £1,269,993.19
• 2015/16 Net expenditure: £1,335,678.46
• 2016/17 Net expenditure: £1,280,903.54
• 2012/13 Non-family costs: £299,458.81
• 2012/13 Family costs: £1,281,129.83
• Request date: 12 December 2017
• Response date: 15 January 2018

Exemptions Cited

• Section 11(2)(b) of the Freedom of Information Act 2015 (Practical refusal reason)
• Section 11(3)(b) of the Freedom of Information Act 2015
• Section 8(3)(c) of the Freedom of Information Act 2015 (Substantial compilation or collation of information)

Original Request

Civil Legal Aid expenditure details

Data Tables (1)

Full Response Text

The Treasury

Yn Tashtey

REFERENCE NUMBER: IM1134991 REQUEST UNDER THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT 2015 (“the Act”)

Thank you for your request dated 12 December 2017.

Your request

You asked:-

I would like to know:

How much money had been spent by the treasury on legal aid for civil matters over the last five years and could this please be broken down by each year for the following areas?

personal injury medical negligence possession and family matters domestic proceedings (in the Summary Courts) Inquests Mental Health Review Tribunals Advocates Disciplinary Tribunals Data Protection Tribunals

Once legal aid has been awarded to an individual and that individual then receives compensation (say for personal Injury, medical negligence, etc), is any of the awarded legal aid funding paid back to treasury, if so how much, if not, why?

Divorce: I would also like to know the number of legally aided divorce cases in the last 60 months (broken down by each year), and the cost for each individual case.

Freedom of Information Seyrsnys Fysseree

The Treasury Government Office,
Douglas Isle of Man,
British Isles IM1 3PU

Telephone (01624) 685605 Email: FOI.Treasury@gov.im

Government Website: www.gov.im Date: 15 January 2018

Also, staying on the divorce cases, recent statistic suggest that the majority of divorce cases on the Isle of Man end in a sale of the matrimonial property. I would also like to know, how many legally aided individuals are required to repay their legal aid fees (and how much was repaid) once they have sold their property and have potentially hundreds of thousands of pounds in their bank?

Response to your request
The response that follows addresses the four parts of your request sequentially.

1. In relation to part 1 of your request, while our aim is to provide information wherever possible, section 11(2)(b) of the Act makes provision for public authorities to refuse to give an applicant the information they requested on the grounds that a practical refusal reason applies.

Section 11(3)(b) of the Act provides a practical refusal reason where complying with the request for information would require the public authority to do one or more of the matters mentioned in section 8(3) (actions a public authority is not required to take).

In this instance, providing this subsection of information would require Treasury to undertake substantial compilation or collation of information that it holds, which we are not required to do under section 8(3)(c) of the Act.

Specifically, in order to identify the money spent on the areas listed in your request, an analysis of all of the Legal Aid files for the five years concerned would be required. As the files are paper based, this would be a manually intensive exercise. In addition, this would not necessarily provide the information you have requested, because cases may take several years to complete; it would merely indicate the costs for cases completed within each year.

However, in order to assist you with your request we are able to provide an analysis of expenditure on civil legal aid broken down simply between non-family and family matters, contributions received from assisted persons and costs recovered for the past 5 financial years, as set out in the table below.

Civil Legal Aid –Costs & recoveries 2012/13 £ 2013/14 £ 2014/15 £ 2015/16 £ 2016/17 £ Non-family 299,458.81 342,789.28 400,162.65 313,447.75 309,268.27 Family 1,281,129.83 1,276,547.72 1,098,179.98 1,173,914.38 1,209,329.70 Contributions received -49,691.58 -61,635.90 -96,791.24 -75,192.16 -62,384.42 Costs recovered -106,885.53 -69,565.05 -131,558.20 -76,491.51 -175,310.01 Net expenditure 1,424,011.53 1,488,136.05 1,269,993.19 1,335,678.46 1,280,903.54

Note: “Non-family” legal aid covers all types of matters which are not covered by criminal or family legal aid, such as personal injury, medical negligence, property disputes and appeals to the Mental Health Review Tribunal.

Please note that as regards costs, the figures in the table represent the amounts of invoices paid within each year and are not necessarily representative of the year in which the costs were incurred.

1. In relation to part 2 of your request, if a person is awarded legal aid funding and subsequently goes on to be successful in obtaining compensation through the courts, in some circumstances some of the legal aid funding may be repaid to Treasury. It order to explain this further, I set out below the various scenarios in which legal aid costs may be refunded:-

(i) If an assisted person (i.e., a person in respect of whom a legal aid certificate is in force) is successful in their claim for compensation then the award may include both damages and costs which are payable by the opponent. It is normal practice for the Advocate representing the assisted person to only submit their bill of costs once the award has been made. So, in this scenario the Advocate representing the assisted person would not submit a bill to Legal Aid, and consequently no legal aid funding would be paid.

(ii) If the Advocate representing the assisted person has submitted an interim bill, and this has been paid by Legal Aid, then the Advocate representing the assisted person would send a full refund to the Legal Aid Office.

(iii) In the case where the award is in respect of damages only and does not include costs and disbursements, the Advocate representing the assisted person would forward a cheque to the Legal Aid Office to cover the costs of legal aid already paid to them in respect of the case. The balance of the award is then paid to the assisted person.

In relation to the amounts repaid to Treasury in this manner, Section 11(3)(b) of the Act provides a practical refusal reason where complying with the request for information would require the public authority to do one or more of the matters mentioned in section 8(3) (actions a public authority is not required to take).

In this instance, providing this information would require Treasury to undertake substantial compilation or collation of information that it holds, which we are not required to do under section 8(3)(c) of the Act.

In order to obtain this information a full, clerical review of the Legal Aid files would be necessary. As the files are paper based, this would be a manually intensive exercise.

1. In relation to part 3 of your request regarding the number of legally aided divorce cases and the costs; while our aim is to provide information wherever possible, section 11(2)(b) of the Act makes provision for public authorities to refuse to give an applicant the information they requested on the grounds that a practical refusal reason applies.

Section 11(3)(b) of the Act provides a practical refusal reason where complying with the request for information would require the public authority to do one or more of the matters mentioned in section 8(3) (actions a public authority is not required to take).

In this instance, providing this information would require Treasury to undertake substantial compilation or collation of information that it holds, which we are not required to do under section 8(3)(c) of the Act.

In order to obtain this information a full, clerical review of the Legal Aid files would be necessary. As the files are paper based, this would be a manually intensive exercise.

1. In relation to part 4 of your request, which asks for information about how many legally aided individuals have been required to repay their legal aid fees (and how much was repaid) if they have sold their matrimonial property, the answer is zero.

Where the former matrimonial home of an assisted person is sold, the assisted person is not then required to repay their legal aid costs from the proceeds of that sale. This applies where the former matrimonial home was their main or only dwelling. This is provided for in the Legal Aid (Financial Resources) (Amendment) Regulations 2014, Regulation 3.

Your right to request a review
If you are unhappy with this response to your freedom of information request, you may ask us to carry out an internal review of the response, by completing a complaint form and submitting it electronically or by delivery/post to me at the above address.
An electronic version of our complaint form can be found at www.gov.im/foireview. If you would like a paper version of our complaint form to be sent to you by post, please contact me and I will be happy to arrange for this. Your review request should explain why you are dissatisfied with this response, and should be made as soon as practicable. We will respond as soon as the review has been concluded.
If you are not satisfied with the result of the review, you then have the right to appeal to the Information Commissioner for a decision on;
1. Whether we have responded to your request for information in accordance with Part 2 of the Freedom of Information Act 2015; or 2. Whether we are justified in refusing to give you the information requested.
In response to an application for review, the Information Commissioner may, at any time, attempt to resolve a matter by negotiation, conciliation, mediation or another form of alternative dispute resolution and will have regard to any outcome of this in making any subsequent decision.
More detailed information on your right to a review can be found on the Information Commissioner’s website at www.inforights.im/. Should you have any queries concerning this letter, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Further information about freedom of information requests can be found at www.gov.im/foi.
Yours sincerely,

FOI Coordinator, the Treasury