"A significant sum of taxpayers’ money is
being paid to solicitors in error. The Legal Services
Commission needs to build on its existing efforts to tighten its
controls on payments to solicitors and on how it monitors the
eligibility of cases supported by legal
aid"
Amyas Morse, head of the National Audit Office, 29 October 2009
The head of the National Audit Office, the
Comptroller and Auditor General, has today qualified the accounts
of the Legal Services Commission for 2008-09 because of
overpayments made by the Commission to solicitors, estimated at
almost £25 million.
The Legal Services Commission is responsible
for the provision of legal aid in England and Wales through the
Community Legal Service Fund (for civil cases) and the Criminal
Defence Service (for criminal cases).
The NAO, as part of its annual audit of the
Legal Services Commission, identified an estimated total
overpayment to solicitors of £24.7 million in 2008-09. Of
this, £6.4 million were payments made to solicitors where legal aid
had been provided to claimants where there was no evidence that
they were eligible to receive it. The remaining £18.3 million
of erroneous payments were made to solicitors working on cases
which were eligible for legal aid, but in which solicitors
over-claimed for the work they did.
The highest level of financial error was in
relation to solicitors working on Family and Immigration
claims. Within this area, the NAO’s testing showed that 25
per cent of the claims examined were incorrect or
unsupported. For many cases, the error resulted from
solicitors claiming against an incorrect category of work or for an
incorrect level of work carried out. For example, the NAO
identified a number of instances where the solicitor had
incorrectly claimed a fee for an asylum case instead of the
correct, and lower, fee for immigration work.
The LSC recognises there are a number of
factors contributing to this level of error, including the
complexity of the fee regime, the limited controls to validate the
accuracy of the submitted claims, and the quality of the
Commission’s post-payment internal assurance processes. In
the NAO’s view, this, together with the absence of a strict
sanctions regime to deter the submission of incorrect claims,
creates a risk of solicitors exploiting the payment system.
Publication details:
HC: 731 2008-2009