Commentary on Sections Legal Assistance Section 2 Criminal advice and assistance: automatic availability in certain cases
12.This section amends the Legal Aid (Scotland) Act 1986 (“the 1986 Act”). Subsection (3) inserts a new section 8A into the 1986 Act to allow advice and assistance to be made available without reference to the financial limits under section 8 of that Act in such circumstances as the Scottish Ministers may, in regulations, prescribe. In those circumstances advice and assistance will be available to any person to whom section 15A of the 1995 Act (as inserted by section 1 of the Act) applies. Advice and assistance is a form of State funded legal assistance. It is currently only available to clients who are financially eligible to receive it in terms of section 8 of the 1986 Act.
13.Subsection (4) provides that regulations made under the new section 8A will be subject to the affirmative resolution procedure.