Legal aid

(Limited Text - Ministerial Extracts only)

Tuesday 14th December 2010 Westminster Hall

[The Solicitor-General (Mr Edward Garnier)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) on introducing this most important subject to Westminster Hall this morning. As the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) has said, she is the founder and chair of the all-party group on legal aid and I am sorry to hear that she is stepping down from being chair of that group. However, I hope that she will continue to take a close interest in this area of public policy.

I am speaking in the absence of the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly), but I think that it is fair to say that legal aid is an acutely difficult area of public policy. Everyone who has spoken today—those who have spoken directly and those, such as my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), who have intervened—approached the debate with no sense of political malice.

I think that in all our constituencies we find areas where there is a huge need for legal assistance; both legal advice and legal representation. My reply to this debate will be incomplete and will not come with the knowledge that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State would have brought to it, since I have taken on this—I was going to say “case”—reply for the Government from another Department, which is normally a rather non-speaking Department.

Nevertheless, I hope that hon. Members will understand that we are at the very beginning of the consultation process, which will end in February, as the hon. Member for Hammersmith said. So I urge all those who have spoken in the debate and all those who have listened to it to participate in the consultation process. I also urge all those who have contacts with others outside Westminster Hall to encourage them to participate in the process, too. It is a deliberately lengthy consultation process, so that the Government can receive the benefit of the advice and the experience of those who know a great deal more about the matter than I do, and who provide advice and assistance.

The hon. Member for Westminster North and many other Members have today praised—quite properly and justly—the work of their citizens advice bureaux and not-for-profit advice providers in their constituencies. One that does not have to represent a constituency such as those of the hon. Lady or that of the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) that, on the face of it, is challenged economically and socially to know the importance of those providers. One can represent a constituency such as mine that, on the face of it, appears to be prosperous but that has pockets of deprivation and great need for social welfare.

[Guto Bebb]

I would like to associate myself with many of the comments that have been made, especially those of my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland). However, one particular issue that concerns me as the MP for a very rural constituency is the real possibility that we will end up with the hinterland of my constituency of Aberconwy not having any legal aid representation whatsoever, with people having to make round trips of 40, 50 or 60 miles to access support. Will my concern be addressed by the Ministry of Justice?

[The Solicitor-General]

I am sure that the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon, will ensure that the Ministry of Justice addresses those points and I am certain that my hon. Friend the Member for Aberconwy (Guto Bebb) will want to participate in the consultation process.

Another point that occurred to me as I listened to the debate is that none of the arguments that I heard this morning is new. Indeed, I was making some of them myself between 1997 and 1999 as the Opposition spokesperson for the Lord Chancellor’s Department, when Geoff Hoon was the junior Minister dealing with this area of public policy. He was introducing proposals that turned into the so-called Access to Justice Act 1999. At the time, I suggested to him that those proposals would have had Attlee spinning in his grave.

However, to be in government is to have to make decisions and choices. The main factor that we have to address at the moment is the economic difficulties that the national budget faces. Every day, we are paying £120 million in interest payments alone. Would it not be better if we could spend that money on legal advice and representation? However, we have to make choices and I do not think that the hon. Member for Westminster North ducked that issue. In essence, she said that she accepts that choices have to be made, and that reductions in public expenditure have to be made. It is the pace with which and the areas where the cuts are made that she finds controversial.

[Stephen Timms]

The Solicitor-General is right to praise the work of citizens advice bureaux. However, the National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux says that at the moment, a quarter of its funding nationally comes from legal aid. That funding will be entirely lost if these proposals go through unamended. Are the Government looking at an alternative way of funding welfare advice services across the country?

[The Solicitor-General]

I want to make two points. First—yes, of course the Government are doing so, and that is the point of the consultation. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will participate in that consultation. Secondly, citizens advice bureaux are funded not just by central Government, but by other funding streams. Some are funded by as many as 15 funding streams.

That is not a complete answer to the right hon. Gentleman’s question, but I will throw back to him, as a former Treasury Minister, a question: where do we find the money at a time when we are spending £120 million a day on interest alone? We have to make difficult choices.

I accept that none of the answers that the Government come up with during this period will provide anybody with complete satisfaction. Nobody will leave this debate and go home for Christmas dancing in the streets about what I have said. However, we have to be realistic and face the hard choices that the previous Government have left us.

[Ms Buck]

I thank the Solicitor-General for giving way. I was in error in my introduction to the debate in not welcoming him, given that he has graciously stepped in to cover the Minister whose area of responsibility legal aid is, the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly).

I would just like to ask the Solicitor-General to ensure, when he passes the message about this debate on to the Under-Secretary that he says that I would like an answer to one of the questions that I posed. The assumption underlying the Green Paper is that there is some mythical capacity in the voluntary and pro bono sector to deal with the areas of service where legal aid will be withdrawn. If we accept that there are cuts that will have a major impact on services, does the Solicitor-General agree that we have to be honest about the implications of those cuts and not effectively massage them away by saying that, somehow, somebody mythical will pick all this up? What estimate have the Government made of that capacity?

[The Solicitor-General]

The Government have commissioned an impact assessment, which I believe was published at the same time as the Green Paper. However, let me do a deal with the hon. Lady. First, of course I accept that we are facing difficult choices and I do not shrink from them. Secondly, however, does she accept my point that not every problem in life that our constituents face and that we encounter as constituency MPs has to be dealt with by a lawyer? Not every problem—be it debt, housing, family-related or some other area of dispute—has to be tackled by a lawyer. We need to refocus our attention to find solutions.

I do not shrink from saying that this is a difficult area, or from saying that sometimes the state will have to provide legal assistance. However, we have to narrow the scope or ambit of the taxpayers’ responsibility for providing legal advice and legal representation. That does not mean that others in other parts of the community cannot come forward and provide the assistance that, as has been so clearly indicated by other Members, is so desperately needed.

I am sorry that this type of debate really requires rather longer time than we have had today. Nevertheless, I hope that the hon. Lady will take the debate outside into the wider community, so that the Government can have the benefit of hearing her views and those of her colleagues between now and next February.