1. What consideration has the Counsel General given to the recommendations made by Sir Christopher Bellamy's independent review of criminal legal aid? OQ57418

Thank you for the question. Sir Christopher Bellamy makes many essential recommendations about the criminal justice system and criminal legal aid. The extent to which the UK Government accept his recommendations is going to be a good test of the extent to which they are committed to saving the criminal justice system, which they are responsible for.

I thank the Counsel General for that answer. Counsel General, I am sure that you agree with me, and with Sir Christopher Bellamy, that the legal aid system needs huge investment to nurse it back to some level of health after years of neglect from various Westminster Governments. But, if we look beyond the scope of Sir Christopher Bellamy's review, we have seen how hard it is for ordinary people to obtain justice—those subpostmasters wrongly convicted in Wales and across the UK, those who lost their lives in Grenfell and those fans and their families who went to a football match and never came home. They all had one thing in common: they all had huge barriers put in the way of them obtaining justice. Counsel General, do you agree with me, and do you support calls from Andy Burnham, Steve Rotheram and Police and Crime Commissioner for North Wales, Andy Dunbobbin, to call for a Hillsborough law now?

Firstly, can I thank you for that very important supplementary question? Just to say in starting that I, of course, met with Sir Christopher Bellamy and many of the points that you're raising are points that I have raised. And I'm also very grateful to the Member that you regularly raise this issue because access to justice is, to some degree, dependent upon having an effective and working legal aid system. Sir Christopher Bellamy, of course, identified a whole series of access to justice issues in terms of accessibility of lawyers, the desert of legal advice that exists, and also the funding system. But it was quite limited in respect of criminal legal aid.

In respect of the Hillsborough law campaign, it is one I am very, very interested in. In my past life, I was involved, of course, in the Orgreave cases and the demand for an inquiry, for example, into Orgreave, which, had lessons been learnt from that, might well have impacted on the way Hillsborough developed and so on.

Now, the proposals, as I understand them, have come, actually, from the Bishop of Liverpool, and three of the key ones were that there'd be a public advocate, representation at inquests, which is something that I've always argued for, and the duty of candour. And, of course, there are others. So, I think that this is something that is a very, very important call, and I understand why it has come. It relates right to the base of people in communities having access to justice and I think it is an issue I would really like to explore further. It is of course aimed in terms of a UK Government piece of legislation, but there may well be relevant lessons in respect of Wales, and if the Member is happy, I'm more than happy to meet with him, and with, in fact, other Members, in order to explore how the importance of the calls for a Hillsborough law could be relevant to Wales and also relevant to justice that takes place in Wales. And, of course, justice is not devolved. Were it devolved, I think we might be able to move far more progressively and more quickly on this issue. But I'm certainly exploring it; I'm very interested in it, and I'm happy to engage with the Member and others to look further at it.