Legal Services Commission to be an executive agency

A few days after Carolyn Regan resigned as the chief executive of the LSC after 3.5 years, Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, said in evidence to the Commons Justice Select Committee that the Legal Services Commission was inefficient, overstaffed and had an overweening policy remit. Mr Straw complained that one of his frustrations was, typically, ‘getting at what precisely is going on with this arm’s-length body that has been pushing officials in my department away. That would have been OK if they had been running an efficient ship, but I am afraid they had not …They have 60 officials working on policy. That is not their job. The issue of policy is for the Ministry of Justice. To have two sets of policy makers made negotiations very difficult because they were making policy as well as my department.’ He continued: ‘As an executive agency it will be an integral part of my department and therefore there will be clear lines of responsibility.’ The costs of the legal aid scheme are running at £2.1bn a year and in recent years the Commission has come under constant fire as it has tried to find savings and assert control over legal aid fees. Mr Straw said there had been ‘a series of adverse reports about the inadequate financial control at the Commission and other failures, which included the overpayments to lawyers without proper checks and other examples of inadequate financial control. The auditors qualified its accounts and said that the LSC lacked proper controls to check whether claims made by solicitors were adequate.’ The Bar Council and the Law Society have welcomed the change.