Post by nickd on Mar 17, 2012 22:31:36 GMT 1
The Ministry of Justice tells us that out of an overall financial responsibility of £49.1 billion pounds, it has no money and needs to cut the legal aid bill by £350 million a year. As it stands social welfare legal aid is the major casualty – with cuts of up to 100%
Here we take a look at how the Ministry of Justice is spending millions of ££££'s out of the justice bill to pay private providers whilst pretending there is no cash for social welfare legal aid. The question we should be asking is just who really is looting the justice bill?
The Ministry of Justice has made an economic choice to put the money into economic growth rather than access to justice for those who need it most. The Ministry of Justice department's motives are becoming increasingly questionable.
There is no doubt that the Ministry of Justice’s financial management is already in question
Here are just some of the conclusive findings of a Public Accounts Committee into the Ministry of Justice...
“ It is simply not acceptable that, after two years of work, the Ministry still does not have a detailed understanding of the costs of its staff activities in its largest executive agency”
“ Without combined financial and operational performance data and a full understanding of its costs, there remains a risk that, in implementing its Spending Review settlement, the Ministry will not achieve best value for money and will not understand properly the impact of cost reductions on frontline services”.
“ The Ministry was the only major government department not to meet the timetable for delivery of its 2009-10 accounts.”
The Ministry of Justice is making financial decisions without getting its own books in order first.
Read the Public Account Committee's report here
www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmselect/cmpubacc/574/57404.htm
Further concern has been expressed by the National Audit office....
The National Audit Office is also very critical of the Ministry of Justice’s financial management. Ultimately it is the Ministry of Justice’s responsibility to ensure that the Courts, Tribunals & Prisons are all working efficiently. Here they point out that the Ministry failed to collect £1.4 billion pounds worth of revenue.
"Because of limitations in the underlying systems, HM Courts Service has not been able to provide me with proper accounting records relating to the collection of fines, confiscation orders and penalties. I have therefore disclaimed my audit opinion on its Trust Statement accounts.”
(Amyas Morse, head of the National Audit Office, 15 December 2011)
“Total outstanding debt in respect of fines, confiscation orders and penalties at the end of March 2011 according to the HM Courts Service is £1.9 billion, increased from £1.5 billion in the previous year, while only £457 million is recognised in the account as receivable. The difference of £1.4 billion represents management’s estimate of debt that is at risk.”
The Ministry of Justice must accept financial responsibility for an outstanding sum of £1.4 billion in uncollected fines & financial penalties, it is a staggering loss to public funds and serious questions need to be asked as to whether the fine levels were ever realistically set by the courts and what if anything can be done to effect a better level of recovery. It is unfair and counter productive to impose cuts in social welfare legal aid to the tune of £350 million when billions of pounds are missing from the Ministry of Justice’s accounts.
Read the National Audit Office findings here...
www.nao.org.uk/publications/1012/courts_service_trust_statement.aspx
The Ministry of Justice has failed to address the real problems
The Ministry of Justice has not grasped its own financial failings, it won’t deliver savings and nor will it create economic growth.
The Ministry of Justice decided where it would make financial cuts almost simultaneously with the Comprehensive Spending Review announcement in October 2010. It set out its plans to make cuts of £350 million in social welfare legal aid in its legal aid, sentencing & punishment of offender’s bill consultation paper well before it could possibly have known where financial mismanagement existed within its own accounting and budgetary structure. The Ministry of Justice’s decision to cut social welfare legal aid was a knee – jerk reaction with no thought being given to the long term impact upon society, it was also a decision which was made with total disregard to financial failings elsewhere with the overall Ministry of Justice budget.
The Ministry of Justice didn’t fully understand the brief in 2010; - more worrying is a more recent ministerial memorandum for 2011/2012 which shows that they remain rigidly focussed on sticking to their original course and thus appear to have learned little from the criticisms levelled at their plans to radically overhaul the justice system in the run up to the conclusions reached by the Public Accounts Committee, the National Audit Office and to adequately consider the concerns of 5,000 responses to the consultation on the legal aid, sentencing & punishment of offender’s bill. The Ministry of Justice is failing to consider all the alarms & warnings bells.
Here’s how the Ministry of Justice steadfastly continues to set outs its key objectives:
• Operating a new, leaner structure across the MoJ
• Seeking to introduce legislation to make changes to legal aid and sentencing,
courts and tribunals
• Pursuing our Transforming Justice programme
Read more here:
www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201012/cmselect/cmjust/writev/main/main.pdf
The Ministry of Justice is failing to heed all the warnings, not just on its failure to deliver adequate levels of access to justice – but also to deliver on financial savings. The reality is that the Ministry of Justice has been too distracted by its plans to deliver on economic growth to a point where it is simply not listening to the informed views of thousands who are saying ‘you are headed in the wrong direction’. The Ministry of Justice is jumping a red light and what we will see is a calamity; - it will cost us all dearly.
The Ministry of Justice must be challenged upon its functions & key responsibilities.
Surely few of us would question that the Ministry of Justice has in its functions, two key overall responsibilities
• To ensure that there is justice for all
• To ensure we live in a society where individuals are adequately protected from crime
These admirable responsibilities are lost with the Ministry of Justice’s current direction which appears to be well and truly focussed on opposing forces; unless we alter course we will see promotion of the following undesirable outcomes
• Justice for the privileged few
• Too much emphasis on profiteering over and above the true values of social justice
We should be analytical and question the component parts of the Ministry of Justice. The key components we should most challenge are those individuals who steer these reforms through Parliament. There is a rising tide of dissent amongst backbenchers; we can see this in almost every debate where politicians from all sides of the house speak so eloquently of the value of social welfare justice. It is evident from the House of Lords where we saw cross-bench peers vote with common sense as they overturned government on the worst elements of legal aid reform. Our Ministers of Justice aren’t so blind that they cannot see the real value in making sure legal aid is available to those with a social welfare problem; they are losing the argument every time they speak. Ken Clarke makes a mockery of his own government every time that he tries to tell us welfare reform is so simple it needs only ‘general advice’ - why on earth is government then spending billions to try and reduce the complexity?
Even the Prime Minister is on record as saying the welfare benefit system is a myriad of complexity and needs the intervention of benefit specialists. You can read what Mr. Cameron has to say here
mylegal.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=frontline&action=display&thread=542
The Ministry of Justice is out of touch with the lives of the people the justice system is intended to protect, it is also out of touch with the legal professionals who time and time again are saying these reforms will not work. There are however, some legal practitioners who welcome these reforms with open arms; - not least because they know they will end up profiting as government commits huge sums of public money to wealth creating ideas. You only have to look at the constitution of the key movers and shakers who front bench all this legal reform. Millionaire Ken Clarke is a QC who will always look after his closely counselled friends in high places; he’ll make sure high financiers in trouble get the best possible defence in Court even if it means paying out millions of pounds in expensive fraud trials which go on for months rather than days. Likewise you have lack lustre Jonathon Djanogly, he’s hardly a man of the people – but he is exceptionally well connected when it comes to the city of London and its corporate foundations; not to mention his proven connections with the British Insurance Industry and a multi millionaire father who has an interest in insurance, city academies & energy projects – he’s a good friend of John Major too. The odd one out appears to be Lord McNally until you consider the psychology, he’s been well picked as a liberal with previous labour leanings and it no doubt helps to have someone in the House of Lord’s who speak in a North Country tone. The House of Lords rebelled heavily against McNally as it was; - imagine if it had been another well heeled southern speaking Tory telling errant crossbenchers how to vote – there would have been absolute uproar.
These reforms are about political choices. The coalition government is making a deliberate choice when it comes to demoting access to social justice. It’s not being done to save money; it is being done because government has committed the tax payer’s cash elsewhere.
The Ministry of Justice is disregarding its duty to ensure justice is fair and accessible to all. It has at its heart an out of touch constitution which is focussed on further enhancing its connections with a view to the promotion of wealth. The Ministry of Justice is placing too great an emphasis on prioritising the politics of the profiteers whilst simultaneously disregarding the needs of the common person who seeks their slice of justice. There are no guarantees that the abandonment of access to social justice now will one day be deemed a price worth paying when it comes to creating a better economy for us all. The Ministry of Justice’s wealth creation agenda is a gamble; – access to social justice should never be the stake.
Let’s take a close look at how the Ministry of Justice spends our money
It may help us answer a question quite a few of us would like an answer to
You will see how the Ministry of Justice has a massive level of overall financial responsibility. There's plenty of room to move within a budget of this scale, so it's only right that we question where the money is going and who it is being paid to.
The Ministry of Justice's overall budgetary responsibility is immense - it extends to a sum of £49.1 billion pounds.
An extract from the Ministry of Justice's annual report quotes the overall level of financial responsibility for spending across England, Scotland & Wales (it does not mention Northern Ireland). These include amounts used to support devolution settlements in Scotland amounting to £26.8 billion and Wales amounting to £13.2 billion.
Quite how these devolution 'settlements' work is anyone's guess.
The Ministry of Justice as a whole, across all three 'Requests for Resources' was responsible for £49.1 billion of net
public spending in the 2010/2011 financial year after taking account of income appropriated in 'aid' of £1.1 billion.
The overall Ministry of Justice annual bill came to £9.2 billion pounds in 2007/2008 and £9.7 billion pounds in 2008/2009.
The revised spring estimate for 2010/2011 was substantially increased by way of movements in its estimates from an initial request for resources of £8,708m (£8.7 Billion) to £9,313m (£9.3 billion).
So broadly speaking what we have is the following
£26.8 Billion -- Devolution settlement Scotland
£13.2 Billion -- Devolution settlement Wales
£9.1 Billion --- MOJ Budget (England)
£49.1 Billion total level of financial responsibility
The £9.1 Billion figure is subject to 'variation in estimate' and the amount of £1.1 billion in 'aid'.
In the Ministry of Justice accounts (2010/2011) it specifically sites the increased need for resources from its initial estimate of £8.7 billion to a revised spring estimate of £9.3 billion as principally being attributed to increased prison related expenditure, although there is also reference to an overspend on immigration related tribunals as well.
It's fair to say the original request for resources was considerably underestimated and well below the revised spring estimates; - although of course the Ministry of Justice now justify it by claiming to pull in expense elsewhere to compensate for the overspends.
So it is important to bear in mind that when we talk of a £350 million cut, we are talking about a tiny fraction of the overall level of financial responsibility which the Ministry of Justice has.
How can we be certain that the Ministry of Justice has got its sums right? You can't disregard how it has been so heavily criticised by both the Public Accounts Committee and the National Audit Office.
Is any one questioning how the amounts have been underestimated by such a large amount from the initial to revised estimate?
The Prime Minister's judgement in choosing private providers is already in question.
David Cameron is the overall minister who sets the policy, he has an inherent knack of distancing himself from every reform he approves. Few of us will fail to have heard how our Prime Minister sang the praises of Emma Harrison as his ‘family champion’, it all went down hill when the press went to town on Harrison and her welfare to work set up A4E as it was exposed that she earned herself an £8.7 million share dividend in a year out of helping people back to work. Subsequently the Police were called in after people came forward saying that A4E hadn’t put them back to work at all; - A4E is currently under investigation for allegedly claiming fraudulent reward payments for getting people off benefit and into work. A4E and another welfare to work contractor – Reed - have been brought to the attention of the Public Accounts Committee for poor performance on previous contracts; - the committee chairman is calling for all A4E contracts to be suspended until the Police have concluded their investigations; - these include contracts which A4E has with the Ministry of Justice in rehabilitating offender’s. It shows us that private contractors are quite possibly not always the most reliable alternatives.
You can follow the A4E journey, it will show you how well private firms do out of government contracting. A4E has come a long way as you will see here..
www.mya4e.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/a4e-timeline.pdf
It’s right to challenge the Ministry of Justice’s expenditure with A4E because as a contractor they are linked to telephone advice contacts and a prime delivery driver of Government’s ‘Money Advice Service’; - both of which have been cited by the Ministry of Justice as viable alternatives when it comes to social welfare advice solutions.
The Prime Minister can't keep walking away from all the reliance he places upon his champions and then distance himself when their credibility is in question. A4E is relatively small fry when compared with other sums which the Ministry of Justice pays out to other providers of services. Some of the bigger contractors should also come under the spot lamp. After all, both the Conservatives and Liberals heavily criticised Labour for spending huge sums of money on Private Finding Initiatives (PFI's). It seems the spending continues shrouded in a veil of secrecy.
So let's focus on some of these ongoing PFI's.
Here are just a few of the many amounts paid out by the Ministry of Justice. These come from a data set relating to expenditure between May 2010 - September 2010 (a six month period) which shows just a few of the 6135 separate transactions out of a range of itemised accounts which totalled a colossal sum of £1,867,251,864.02 (that’s £1.8 Billion pounds). You also need to bear in mind how this is just one set of the justice department's expenditure accounts.
Just some of the MOJ payments made during May – September 2010
here are just some of the Millions of ££££'s paid to private providers
£56.5 ---- G4S
£43.2 ---- ATOS
£19.3 ---- Reliance
£18.8 ---- HP Enterprises
£14.5 ---- Logica
£12.5 ---- Barclaycard
£7.8 ----- Carillion
£6.9 ----- Treasury Solicitors
£5.3 ----- Fujitsu
£3.5 ----- City of London
£2.5 ----- Aedus Architects
£0.9 ----- Reed Solutions
£0.4 ----- A4E Consultancy
£0.2 ----- Working Links
Remember, these are just a few examples of how much the Ministry of Justice pays out, we are going to look in to this in more detail.
We will analyse two projects undertaken by the Ministry of Justice
(1) The Rolls Building in London
(2) A prison project in the Peterborough & Cambridge area
The House of Lords recently voted in amendments to the Legal Aid, Sentencing & Punishment of Offender's Bill (LASPO) which the Government may now seek to over turn on the grounds of financial privilege. This is because the Government sees that its has the overall say when it comes to voting on laws which will have a direct effect on the finances of the nation.
Some of the amendments passed by the Lords see some of the worst of the legal aid part of the bill put right; - because they bring back areas of social welfare law into the scope of the legal aid scheme. Another change which the Lords voted for was to ditch the Ministry of Justice's highly controversial idea to gateway legal aid enquiries via one centralised telephone gateway.
Social welfare legal aid is one of the most cost effective ways of helping people. For instance Citizens Advice research shows:
For every £1 spent on welfare benefits legal aid advice (which covers specialist enquiries) £8.80 is saved by the State.
There is an overwhelming case for the retention of social welfare legal aid; - the amendments passed by the Lords must stay.
There is also an overwhelming case for saying that the overall cuts of £350 million pounds are simply ones which should not be made out of the social welfare legal aid bill.
The Ministry of Justice should make its financial savings elsewhere; - there is no restriction in movement as to where else in the budget cuts could be made.
