It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Ms Fovargue. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Salford and Eccles (Rebecca Long Bailey) for calling this very important debate. The Government are committed to ensuring that everyone can get the timely support they need to access the justice system. We usually spend around £1.7 billion annually on legal aid, which provides crucial support for the most vulnerable in society. While that amount was lower in 2020-21 due to the impact of the pandemic—after all, the number of cases being heard collapsed for several months—we put in place measures to support practitioners and are working to reduce the court backlog. We expect to have returned to an annual spend of more than £1.7 billion on legal aid by the end of the current financial year. The Government announced £477 million of additional funding in the spending review settlement primarily for Crown court recovery, which shows our commitment to addressing the backlog. The hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mick Whitley) mentioned the Judicial Review and Courts Bill, which includes important measures that will see more cases moving from the Crown court to the magistrates court, freeing up potentially 2,000 days in the Crown court where we can hear cases. We are also carefully considering a way forward following a consultation on the establishment of an independent public advocate function, including the Public Advocate Bill promoted by the hon. Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle). Regarding civil legal aid sustainability, the Government have consulted on proposed changes to the housing possession court duty scheme—the HPCDS—to ensure the sustainability of the service and ensure that it meets the needs of the people using it. The consultation proposals would amount to a more than £7 million investment in this vital service. Officials at the Ministry of Justice are currently reviewing the responses to the HPCDS consultation, and the Government intend to publish their response shortly. We have just completed a wide-ranging review of the long-term sustainability of the criminal legal aid market and injected up to £51 million per annum into the criminal legal aid system through payments for reviewing unused material, sending cases to the Crown Court and increasing funding for cracked trials and paper-heavy cases. The Government aim to publish their response no later than the end of March 2022, alongside a consultation on related policy proposals.