Lord Falconer, Labour Shadow Justice Secretary, responding to the announcement that the Government is to scrap its reforms to criminal legal aid contracting and suspend the implementation of the second fee cut in criminal legal aid, said:

“This is a staggering admission from the Tory Government and represents a final confirmation that their plans to reform criminal legal aid have descended into utter chaos.

“Labour, practitioners and experts warned from the start that this flawed policy would be a disaster but Ministers pushed ahead regardless.”

“While it’s welcome that they have finally listened, the Government must now come clean about how much public money has been wasted on this doomed endeavour, so that ministers can be held fully accountable for this fiasco.”