Abortion Services (Safe Access Zones) (Scotland) Bill: business and regulatory impact assessment

Legal Aid Impact Test

It is not expected that the Bill will have any impact on the ability for individuals to receive legal aid. As noted above, and detailed within the Financial Memorandum, we do not expect a large volume of prosecutions, and whilst it cannot be definitively stated that no individual charged with an offence would seek legal aid, we anticipate that this would represent a small proportion of the total number of prosecutions. This assessment is, in part, based on experiences of safe access zones in England; individuals charged with offences relating to these have used crowd funding to raise large sums of money to cover legal costs.

In making this assessment, we recognise that it does by necessity rely on a number of assumptions. Nonetheless, on the available evidence, we do not anticipate any significant increased demand on the legal aid fund or attendant increase in fund expenditure. Accordingly, we also do not foresee that the measures will impact individuals’ rights to justice.