The Welsh Government's Legal Services Department

Part of 2. Questions to the Counsel General and Brexit Minister (in respect of his law officer responsibilities) – in the Senedd at 2:34 pm on 2 April 2019.

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Photo of Jeremy Miles Jeremy Miles Labour 2:34, 2 April 2019

I thank the Member for that question. The judgment on when to instruct counsel is obviously very carefully taken on a case-by-case basis. Counsel is instructed, for example, in relation to matters where advocacy is required in higher courts, or where legal advice is required on matters that are particularly complex or which raise novel points of law that perhaps may not have been addressed by Welsh Government lawyers in the past. What I would say to the Member is that there is a significant, a vast, amount of expertise within the Welsh Government in relation to a number of the areas that are outlined in my initial question to her, and that, as a result of that, we send out fewer instructions to counsel than we might otherwise do. And I often hear barristers in practice in Wales saying to me that they wish that we would externalise or send out more work than perhaps we do. But these judgments are careful judgments to balance value for money on one hand with the need for expertise and the level of advocacy required in some of the higher courts on the other hand. This is an area that I keep under review consistently, in relation both to the instruction of barristers and solicitors, and I do so with those two critical principles in mind.