The Ministry of Justice is heading towards a 40% budget cut in real terms spend by the end of the decade. In a written parliamentary answer, justice minister Dominic Raab revealed the impact on the ministry’s budget to 2020. In current value, the size of the MoJ budget was £9.3m in 2010 compared to an anticipated spend of just £5.6m by 2020.

The shadow justice Richard Burgon who asked the question, tweeted:

Government response showing Ministry of Justice budget to be cut by 40% from 2010-20. Conservative cuts have already devastated our justice system. With further cuts on this scale, our justice system looks set to go from repeated crisis to a full blown emergency. https://t.co/Ecac6fkZQd

— Richard Burgon MP (@RichardBurgon) November 20, 2017

Burgon last week wrote (for LabourList) on the impact of the cuts on the prison service.

‘Cuts have consequences and they are clear for all to see in our prisons system,’ the Labour MP said. ‘When understaffing means prisoners spend 23 hours a day behind their cell door unable to take part in educational activities, this makes a mockery of the government’s claims that it is turning prisons into places of education and reform. Ultimately that leaves the wider population much less safe as most prisoners will one day leave prison and move back to their communities, often much more likely to re-offend.’

‘[The] IFS is warning that “over the next two years, particularly deep budget cuts are planned for the Ministry of Justice and that in the decade 2010-20, the MoJ will have suffered the deepest cuts of any department. Cuts on the scale planned means that, under the Tories, our prisons look set to go from repeated crisis to a full blown emergency.’
Richard Burgon

The justice secretary David Lidington recently confirmed to the justice committee that the department faced ‘real constraints’ on resources as reported in the Law Society’s Gazette (here). ‘I would always welcome being given a crock of gold by the Treasury, but I am conscious too [that] I sit around the table with ministers for departments of health, education, defence and work and pensions – all, like me, could make the argument “we could really use some extra money”,’ he said.

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About Jon Robins

Jon is a journalist and has written about the law and justice for the national papers and specialist press for more than 15 years. Jon is a visiting journalism lecturer at Winchester University, a visiting senior fellow in access to justice at the University of Lincoln and patron of Hackney Community Law Centre. He has won the Bar Council’s legal reporter of the year award twice (2015 and 2005). Jon is editor and co-founder of LegalVoice

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