You can tell when Michael Gove is driving all over another one of the policies of his predecessor Chris Grayling purely by the volume of incredibly polite language and fulsome praise that he deploys when doing so. In a written ministerial statement published today, the Justice Secretary announces that he will not be going ahead with major changes to the legal aid system designed by Grayling when he was Justice Secretary. The statement says the following:
I would like to place on the record my gratitude for the determined, yet sensitive, way in which my predecessors pursued these economies.
Gove also praises the ‘careful negotiation’ that Grayling carried out on the changes. Those changes involve a process for awarding legal aid contracts, known as the ‘dual contracting’ system, which Gove is scrapping, and a 8.75 per cent cut to legal aid, which Gove is suspending.
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