Tag: Michael McCann

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Michael McCann on 2014-06-04.

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, in how many cases against his Department funded by legal aid public interest lawyers represented clients in each of the last 10 years.

Anna Soubry

All of the judicial review proceedings relating to Iraq and Afghanistan brought by the firm Public Interest Lawyers (PIL) in the last ten years have been publicly funded through the legal aid budget. According to available records PIL has represented approximately 200 clients in issued judicial review proceedings. It is not possible to provide a meaningful annual breakdown as some claims made in one year have had further claimants joined to them in subsequent years.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Michael McCann on 2014-06-04.

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how much public interest lawyers have received in legal aid for cases against the Minstry of Defence in each of the last 10 years.

Mr Shailesh Vara

The Legal Aid Agency (LAA) cannot separately identify legal aid cases against the Department for Work and Pensions, the Ministry of Defence and the Home Office. Opponents are not systematically recorded against Legal Aid cases.

The net payments to Public Interest Lawyers over the past ten tears were:

Financial Year	Net Payments
FY2003-2004	£139,620.72
FY2004-2005	£158,282.52
FY2005-2006	£251,844.27
FY2006-2007	£299,667.99
FY2007-2008	£577,263.60
FY2008-2009	£628,527.75
FY2009-2010	£267,433.88
FY2010-2011	£439,268.02
FY2011-2012	£331,238.85
FY2012-2013	£50,633.27

These payments cover all work undertaken by the firm under legal aid. The payments made will be offset by recoupment on successful cases where the opponent has paid the costs.