Freedom of Information

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Thursday 24th January 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to be here under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. The fears expressed by the Chair of the Select Committee, the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith), about the quantity of Members in this debate have been laid to rest by the quality of the contributions. We have had three outstanding contributions by Members who are quite expert on this subject. There has also been, among the three parties represented so far, a large degree of consensus. I hope that I can make the official Opposition a fourth party to that consensus and I hope even more that the Minister will join it when she replies to the debate for the Government. I say that because I agree with what the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Sir Richard Shepherd) said. I think that he said that freedom of information was the best thing that the Labour Government did. I had written down that it was “one of the best things” that the Labour Government did. Of course, if we were here to discuss all the good things that the Labour Government did, we would use up the rest of the time, but can we at least agree on that?

I am not surprised that we are still discussing the way in which the Act works 13 years after it was passed. It took five years for it to be introduced, and I think that that was probably right. It has taken eight years, judging by what the Select Committee says in its invaluable report, to bed in, and I think that that is also right and nothing to cause us concern, because, as the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd) said, this is a major change in culture for Government—a major change to the way in which administration takes place in the public sector. It has affected, for the better, decision making, as well as the operation of the Government and the public sector.

Through the stance that the Select Committee has taken in its report but also by—if I can put it this way—flushing out the Government in their response, it has done a great service to advancing the cause of the Act and freedom of information. I find very little to disagree with on the policy issues dealt with in the report, although perhaps there is a slight degree of complacency in relation to some of the practicalities of the way in which the freedom of information system works—I have had some experience of that myself. More needs to be done to ensure that the existing system operates effectively, but before I come to that, let me just review where I think the parties are.

I looked at the manifesto commitments. The Liberal Democrats’ manifesto said that they wished to extend freedom of information legislation

“to private companies delivering monopoly public services such as Network Rail.”

That was on the same page as replacing the House of Lords with a fully elected second Chamber, but we cannot have everything.

The Conservative manifesto made no mention of freedom of information, but in some ways what it did say was more interesting. It talked about

“transforming the way the state goes about its business, using decentralisation, accountability and transparency”.

It says that

“we will bring the operation of government out into the open…we will create a powerful new right to government data, enabling the public to request—and receive—government datasets in an open and standardised format.”

It says, for example:

“We will…require public bodies to publish online the job titles of every member of staff and the salaries and expenses of senior officials”.

All of that resolved itself into one sentence in the coalition agreement:

“We will extend the scope of the Freedom of Information Act to provide greater transparency.”

What that throws up is a matter that the Chair of the Select Committee has already referred to—the difference between the voluntary publication of information and the ability of the citizen to request that information. There is general agreement that transparency and the publication of data is not only a good thing in itself, but can assist the process of freedom of information. Clearly, if more information is put into the public realm and if public authorities get into the habit of being transparent about the way they conduct themselves, that is not only complementary; it actively assists and removes some of the bureaucracy from freedom of information. However, the two things should not be confused.

It is interesting that the Liberal Democrat manifesto specifically referred to Network Rail. I had a meeting with the head of transparency for Network Rail—there is one—earlier this week, and they were gently trying to persuade me that, given that it has a proactive policy for being transparent, perhaps it did not also need to be subject to freedom of information. I do not want to put words into their mouth, because they did not go quite that far, but that was the gist of the discussion. Well, I disagree. I think that it is laudable if Network Rail has that aim, but that should not remove from it the burden of having to comply with the Act.

The Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 was mentioned. Some of the additions under that Act were simply consequential on other changes. Bringing academies into the same ambit as state schools is controversial, but it does not add much. I am sorry that we have not—

[Sir Alan Beith]

Of course, the hon. Gentleman would have complained pretty bitterly if we had not taken that action. He should be a little less churlish about the Protection of Freedoms Act, not least because, for example, it brought in the Association of Chief Police Officers, which was carrying out very significant public policing functions while also being a representative body for chief police officers. That extension was an extremely important one. I have a lot of sympathy with what the hon. Gentleman said about Network Rail, which is a very ambiguous body, created originally under the previous Government, but we are only a coalition. We get some of our proposals through, but not all of them.

[Mr Slaughter]

I hope that, rather than being churlish, I am being balanced in saying that the Government—both parties in the coalition—have taken steps on transparency and that there is an impetus from at least some parts of the coalition to move forward the ambit of the Act. I have never been able to understand why, for example, council housing departments should be subject to it but housing associations should not and why the NHS should be subject to it but Network Rail, which is also a large public sector organisation, should not. We should be resistant to special pleading from organisations.

I addressed a conference of university officials some time ago, and freedom of information was a big concern of theirs—that is, not being subject to it. I will say a little more in a moment about the research, with which I do have some sympathy, but the idea was that universities should not be subject to it because, they were saying, it costs them money and they are relatively small organisations in the great scheme of things. I am not sure that is true, for a start, but the number of requests that an organisation receives probably bears some relation to its size and therefore to its means. I suspect that many of our universities are rather bigger than, say, some small district councils.

We should therefore resist special pleading. Where there are grey areas, we should err on the side of openness rather than exemption. In particular, we should look at the points that the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills made in relation to the increasingly blurred lines between the public and private sectors.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan), the shadow Lord Chancellor and my boss, made it very clear in his Labour party conference speech last year that the next Labour Government would extend FOI to

“cover the delivery of public services”,

such as prisons, schools and hospitals, by private companies and the voluntary sector. That must be right. It is right in any event, but the contractual roles that organisations —we know the usual suspects: Capita, Serco and G4S—are taking on not only involve huge additional powers, but often mean that whole areas of Government service, policy and decision making are devolved to them.

[Mr David Amess in the Chair]

I was talking to the Public and Commercial Services Union this week about the fact that it is envisaged that the criminal fines enforcement process—collection—be passed to a private company on a very long contract that delegates not only administrative, operational and decision-making powers, but some powers that until recently were judicial.

[Mr Llwyd]

What the hon. Gentleman says is right. The transfer of public functions to the private sector may not have been uppermost in people’s minds when the Act was drafted, but it is increasingly becoming an issue. Before we know it, much of the prison estate will be privatised, so, in that regard, it is absolutely crucial that FOI structures are in place.

[Mr Slaughter]

I am grateful, I agree and I hope that the Minister will address that point directly when she responds.

I shall leave that aside, because we could all discuss for a long time the types and numbers of organisations that we want to add. I would rather talk about the other two issues I mentioned: how the Act is operating and how the ongoing policy issues are being resolved or not resolved. The report deals with those matters well.

I have serious concerns about how the Act operates on a day-to-day basis. I am a prolific but I hope responsible user of the Act, so I can say from experience that the quality of service one gets varies hugely. Some organisations are good: they take matters seriously, provide comprehensive information timeously and obey not only the letter but the spirit of the Act. Many do not.

I shall give one example. It is not an extreme example at all; it is very typical. On 26 October last year, I made a request to my local authority. I was aware that it had delegated to itself, from committee to officers, the ability to sell off property as it became vacant, but it was not reporting it anywhere. Simple questions: how many properties have you sold in the past four years and what is the value of those properties? Every two or three weeks after the 20-day deadline passed, we chased them. Nothing was done. There was no attempt to comply with the Act—“You’ll get it next week.” “We’re very sorry. Don’t you have that yet?” Those were the kinds of faux-amateur ways in which it responded.

I am sure that I would not have the answers now had I not written to the chief executive earlier this week and said that I was going to raise the matter in this debate. The very straightforward answers arrived yesterday. They reveal that over that period, more than 200 properties were sold, at a value of more than £88 million, which, in the past two years, represented more than 10% of the total stock that had become vacant. Those facts and figures are important, not only because of the amount of public money involved, but due to the policy and human implications of disposing of good quality property that could be re-let, when 11,000 people are on the waiting list and many of my constituents are being moved out of London because it is said that there is no affordable accommodation. Those data should and could be available, not in 20 days, but in 20 hours.

That is a mild example. In other cases, I have waited over two years for responses. If a public authority does not wish to respond, it can find myriad ways not to do so. To give another example, we have a proportionately large number of free schools and academies in my constituency and I wanted to see the financial base on which they were funded, the capital grants, the costs they were paying for land and matters of that kind. Two years on, I still do not have that information. The excuses I have been given vary from commercial confidentiality to the notion that it would be embarrassing for those organisations, lest they are not successful, to reveal what their basis for bidding is at the time. They have even been based on tiny semantic points. It was not one of mine, but another request asked what a particular piece of land was sold for, and at the end of the process the response came back after months of delay, “Although contracts have been exchanged, there has not been completion, and therefore it cannot be right to say that this property has been sold.” I thought that was slightly disingenuous given that the people who bought it were building on the land at the time.

I will not take up the House’s time with my private grievances, but I use those examples to show that if a public authority does not wish to follow the Act, it can find myriad ways not to do so, which can range from using unqualified staff and devoting insufficient resources to deliberate obfuscation and devious avoidance. The problem is, as the Committee correctly notes, that there is no immediate penalty and the elaborate process of review is, again, often used to delay rather than bring justice.

I hope I am not quoting out of context, but the Committee says:

“We were pleased to hear relatively few complaints about compliance with the 20 day response time. We believe that the 20 day response time is reasonable and should be maintained.”

I suspect that people are put off and do not go through an additional complaints procedure or use the process of internal review and appeal. I agree with the Committee that it is important that the process of internal review is also prescribed, so that what should be a method of redress is not used for further delay. I have taken cases to the Information Commissioner where that process has had to be gone through, and unfortunately, it can take one or two years—longer in some cases—by which time, saving the most important cases of national interest, the issue will almost certainly be dead. That, of course, is the objective of the defaulting party. I hope that there is more scrutiny, by Government and the Ministry as well as the Select Committee, of the simple procedural operation of the Act and whether its spirit and letter are in turn being obeyed.

The hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills mentioned Maurice Frankel and the Campaign for Freedom of Information. I associate myself with the hon. Gentleman’s remarks. The campaign is a fantastic organisation, which does more than anyone else to keep us on the straight and narrow. It notes that more than 44% of requests to central Government exceed the 20-day limit. That is poor, even when the correct process is followed. We could do much better.

I shall turn to some of the policy issues. I cannot better what the Committee said on the veto and the alleged chilling effect on policy development. The Chair would not put it in these terms, but the Committee has seen through those objections and does not recommend change. I hope the Government will follow that view. There is a risk, as the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd acknowledged, that people will try to subvert or get round the Act in many ways, and we have heard examples of using private devices or e-mails to keep things out of the public realm. The last thing that we want to do in response to that—we should acknowledge the problem and try to work out ways of challenging it—is to say, “Well, in that case, we should allow more secrecy, because that is the only way to get that balance right.” Those debates will continue, because the agenda is both moving and changing.

There are other issues, which I had hoped could have been put to rest, that the Government in their response have kept going and even revived. The first is the issue of fees. I appreciate that the Government have resisted that, which is right, and requests to cover their costs. None the less, they have introduced the possibility of fees at tribunal, which may be a slippery slope. Certainly, if a complaint has reached such a level, which is quite a challenge for any applicant to achieve, the issue of fees should be resisted.

The Newspaper Society, in its briefing for today’s debate, as well as the Campaign for Freedom of Information and a number of national newspapers, have tried to draw attention to the worrying fact that ways are being found to limit access by way of cost. Generally speaking, those are occult ways of doing it; it is not a head-on attempt to restrict. When I say occult, I am not referring to the ghosts and zombies in the Cabinet Office or in Leeds city hall. I am talking about ways that are, ironically, not open.

I have a number of questions for the Minister to answer. If the Government are thinking of reducing the number of hours beyond the marginal levels that the Select Committee proposes, what are those proposals and how can they be justified? Are they thinking of introducing the aggregate claim, whereby an individual or an organisation will only be able to put in a certain number of claims before hitting the cash limit? Moreover, in totting up the number of hours on any individual request, will the Government include thinking time? If they do, what is the rationale for that and where is the impact assessment that will show the effect that that will have? Maurice Frankel quotes an estimate that says that just the thinking time clause alone will affect 4% of requests to central Government and 10% of requests to other public bodies. Those are significant figures, but, as Maurice Frankel points out, that is based on the actual time spent and not on the estimated time, which of course could be a lot greater. Any one of those measures, let alone the aggregate of them, would have a significant effect on the number of requests that are refused on the grounds of cost, which is a route that we do not want to go down.

There is a general acceptance, I think, that there has to be a limit on costs. No one in this debate has said that the overall cost of the Act is prohibitive and I do not think that the Government have said that either. None the less, cost is a convenient way to turn down requests without having to justify things more thoroughly. As I have said, I have had every possible reason thrown at me. One very common one is commercial confidentiality, which is often presented in a nonsensical way. Let me give an example. There was a significant and controversial land sale in my constituency between two public sector bodies—part of the BBC estate was being sold to Imperial college. The whole matter was resolved; there were no outstanding issues and no ongoing negotiations. Yet both parties resisted requests on the basis of commercial confidentiality. We need to be more sceptical about some of the excuses that are used. I hope the Government will not be seduced by those arguments, and that we can have some clarity on that.

There is an argument when it comes to research. I do not accept the argument for exemption of universities, but, given what is happening in Scotland, it may well be that the Government are right on this. We want to protect genuine research, but we do not want to allow that to become a catch-all for refusal. We should consider exemptions very carefully. This is an area in which the Government, thus far, do not have a bad record.

The Minister will have heard me say very often, even in the short time that she has been in post, that the Government have a bad record on the citizen’s right to access justice and information. We have cuts in legal aid and the prospect of further cuts, the wholesale change to conditional fee agreements, a review of judicial review, and charges increasingly being introduced for courts and tribunal services. That is a poor record, and a signature of this Government of which they should be ashamed. Let us not add freedom of information to that catalogue. So much has been achieved over the past 15 years with a reasonable degree of consensus. We want to allow the citizen far, far greater access to information, and to change what has been very secretive government in this country, under all parties, into something that is genuinely open. That will be as beneficial to the Government as it will to the citizen, so let us not shy away from it now.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Tuesday 18th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

Inevitably, we cannot avoid considering all the financial issues that face the Department. We are focusing on delivering the changes that we must soon introduce on civil legal aid; a number of measures need to come before this House in the next few weeks. That, for now, is our prime focus.

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

To avoid a 12th defeat in the other place on the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill, the Secretary of State’s predecessor promised this House that he would not cut legal aid at first-stage appeal in welfare benefits cases if a point of law were involved. The proposals finally brought forward were so inadequate that two weeks ago their lordships voted them down and told him to come back with something better. Now we hear that the Secretary of State, in a fit of pique, intends to do nothing at all. Why is he breaking a promise to Parliament and to some of the most destitute and vulnerable people in the country?

[Chris Grayling]

As the hon. Gentleman will be aware, we have promised to consider the decision by the Lords. I was a little surprised to see the rather unusual step taken in the other place of voting down a statutory instrument that was granting a concession, but we will of course review the issue and decide how to proceed.

Leveson Inquiry

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Monday 3rd December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Maria Miller]

My right hon. Friend has given an example that we can all reflect on. I also bring to his attention the problems that have been experienced recently in Ireland despite the fact that it has a regulatory system, albeit light-touch, in place.

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

rose—

[Frank Dobson (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

I want to talk about costs in libel, privacy and other proceedings against the press. This is not an ancillary issue, either in itself or in the context of providing an effective self-regulatory system, according to Lord Justice Leveson. It will require fresh legislation to correct the current state of the law and to give effect to the whole Leveson framework. That is something that Leveson has said, and that the Government have conceded as well.

Prior to the enactment of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, it was possible for persons grievously wronged by the press to sue using conditional fee—no win, no fee—agreements. The McCanns, the Dowlers and Christopher Jefferies used them. On the back of spurious attacks on personal injury claimaints, the Government legislated in part 2 of the LASPO Act to remove the protection from such claimants in bringing libel or privacy claims. They claimed that they were following the recommendations in Lord Justice Jackson’s report on civil litigation costs, but they were not.

Under the LASPO Act, no win, no fee is available only if the claimant’s solicitor receives their costs from the claimant’s damages, up to 25% thereof, but the damages in libel cases are now quite low—perhaps £10,000 or £20,000—and it is not possible to run a libel case on £2,000 or £4,000. Even if it were, no claimant would risk bankruptcy, as it is no longer possible since after-the-event insurance premiums became non-recoverable to insure against losing a case and paying the defendant newspapers astronomical costs.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

Could not the independent regulator give good advice to people who have clearly been wronged and, with it, some assistance with getting recompense for the hurt that they have suffered? Going to court is so expensive for normal people, and it would be really good if the independent regulator could do something to put that right.

[Mr Slaughter]

That is what Lord Justice Leveson recommends, in a rather more organised way, but he says that it must be underpinned by statute.

Going back to my previous point, I want to quote Sally Dowler, who said:

“At the outset we made clear that if we had to pay the lawyers, we could not afford to bring a claim; or if we had any risk of having to pay the other side’s costs, we couldn’t take the chance. If the proposed changes had been in place at that time we would not have made a claim. Simple as that, the News of the World would have won, because we could not afford to take them on.”

Lord Justice Jackson said that the losing claimant should be given protection in costs—so-called qualified one-way costs shifting—but the Government ignored him. The result of that has been summed up by Lord Justice Leveson, on page 1507 of his report:

“In the absence of some mechanism for cost free, expeditious access to justice, in my view, the failure to adopt the proposals suggested by Jackson LJ in relation to costs shifting will put access to justice in this type of case in real jeopardy, turning the clock back to the time when, in reality, only the very wealthy could pursue claims such as these…An arbitral arm of a new regulator could provide such a mechanism”—

this relates to the point made by the hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart)—

“ which would benefit the public and equally be cost effective for the press”.

Those matters were discussed at length in proceedings on LASPO in both Houses. Victims of phone hacking, including Lord Prescott, raised the plight of all the victims and received this response from Lord McNally:

“I cannot imagine that the kind of issues that the noble Lord, Lord Prescott, has raised tonight will not be dealt with fully in that Defamation Bill.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 27 March 2012; Vol. 736, c. 1332.]

Yet nothing was in the Defamation Bill when it was published. On its Second Reading in this House, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) quoted Lord McNally’s promise, and added:

“Yet I do not see those issues being dealt with anywhere in the Bill. If the Government do not bring forward proposals to address this deficiency in Committee, we will have to do so.”—[Official Report, 12 June 2012; Vol. 546, c. 196.]

Indeed, that is exactly what we did. In Committee, we offered a variety of means for restoring the position of the claimants, but each of them was rejected by the Government, using what became a mantra that was repeated at all stages of the Bill, and that has been repeated today by the Secretary of State—namely, that the Government would look at the rules on costs protection for defamation and privacy proceedings when the defamation reforms came into effect. I am going to ask the Minister what exactly that means.

First, however, let me read out what Lord Justice Leveson says about costs. This is in paragraphs 68 to 72 of the executive summary:

“The need for incentives, however, coupled with the equally important imperative of providing an improved route to justice for individuals, has led me to recommend the provision of an arbitration service that is recognised and could be taken into account by the courts as an essential component of the system…Such a system (if recognised by the court) would then make it possible to provide an incentive in relation to the costs of civil litigation. The normal rule is that the loser pays the legal costs incurred by the winner but costs recovered are never all the costs incurred and litigation is expensive not only for the loser but frequently for the winner as well. If, by declining to be a part of a regulatory system, a publisher has deprived a claimant of access to a quick, fair, low cost arbitration of the type I have proposed, the Civil Procedure Rules (governing civil litigation) could permit the court to deprive that publisher of its costs of litigation in privacy, defamation and other media cases, even if it had been successful. After all, its success could have been achieved far more cheaply for everyone. These incentives form an integral part of the recommendation, as without them it is difficult, given past practice and statements that have been made as recently as this summer, to see what would lead some in the industry to be willing to become part of what would be genuinely independent regulation. It also leads to what some will describe as the most controversial part of my recommendations. In order to give effect to the incentives that I have outlined, it is essential that there should be legislation to underpin the independent self-regulatory system and facilitate its recognition in legal processes.”

He then goes on to explain, as mentioned by other Members, what the legislation would achieve and what its purpose was. The third of his three reasons is that

“it would validate its standards code and the arbitral system sufficient to justify the benefits in law that would flow to those who subscribed”.

What that means is that, as far as Lord Justice Leveson is concerned, the costs issue is at the heart of his principles and legislation is needed for it to take effect.

I was unable to intervene on the Secretary of State, so I would like the Minister to address in his winding-up speech the question of what type of legislation—primary or secondary—the Government envisage introducing to deal with the costs issue, which they have been promising for about two years, ever since the misguided legal aid, sentencing and punishment of offenders proposals first came about. If the legislative principle is ceded in the process—as my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) said—there will of course be some legislation relating to regulation of the press and here is a clear example, or a central example, according to Lord Justice Leveson, providing the entry to the entire regulatory system—it is the incentive given by the arbitral system and by the cost penalties that will lead to the whole self-regulatory body operating.

If that is ceded, what problem do the Government have in ceding the concept of legislation on the other two points that Lord Justice Leveson made? The first of those is

“to protect the freedom of the press”

and the second is to

“provide an independent process to recognise the new self-regulatory body and reassure the public that the basic requirements of independence and effectiveness were met”.

At the end of the day, that is all that Opposition Members—and, indeed, from what I have heard today, many Government Members, too—are asking for. The Government are setting up straw men in order to knock the proposals down. They are colluding with the proprietors of newspapers who are talking in the most arrant and nonsensical terms about what the implications of this will be. I believe that dealing with the costs route will justify the proposals that Lord Justice Leveson has made.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice (Damian Green)]

We have heard many thoughtful contributions from Members on both sides of the House, and I am sorry that I may not be able to do justice to all of them in the time available to me.

The Government recognise the strength of feeling on these issues both in the House and more widely among the victims of phone hacking and the public. As Lord Justice Leveson noted, some of the behaviour of the press has “wreaked havoc” with the lives of innocent people and

“can only be called outrageous”.

The central issues of this debate—press regulation and the relationships between the press and the police or politicians—are central to the confidence that people have both in how the country is run and that the rule of law is being upheld with impartiality and integrity.

As the shadow Police Minister has just said, there has been a degree of consensus across the House tonight. I am glad that the official Opposition have moved from the position of the Leader of the Opposition, who said that the Leveson recommendations should be accepted in their entirety, to the position that the shadow Police Minister stated: that he would accept the core recommendations. That is a sensible move.

As Lord Justice Leveson pointed out when publishing his report, the relationship between the police and the public is central in our system of policing by consent. The media have a vital role to play in facilitating this relationship, but there is a trust that goes with that role. That trust has been damaged and needs to be repaired as quickly and effectively as possible.

On the central issue of media regulation, as the Prime Minister made clear on Thursday, we accept completely the central principles of Lord Justice Leveson’s report, namely that an independent regulatory body should be established, and it should be a body that is independent both in its appointments and its funding; it should set out a code of standards by which the press have to live; it should provide an accessible arbitration service for dispute resolution; it should provide a mechanism for rapid complaints handling; and it should have the power to impose million-pound fines where there have been flagrant breaches of the code. The culture change that my hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice) mentioned is certainly needed.

[Mr Slaughter]

What system is the Minister going to put in place to give victims of the press protection in costs—is it Leveson or something else? Does the Minister agree that this will need legislation? What is his vehicle for that—is it the Defamation Bill or something else?

[Damian Green]

I will come on to answer the point that the hon. Gentleman made in his speech, if he can be patient.

The Prime Minister made it clear that we have serious concerns and misgivings that the recommendation to underpin this body in statute may be misleading. Such concerns were echoed by hon. Members from both sides of the House, including my hon. Friends the Members for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) and for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey). They were also echoed with inimitable eloquence by my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg). We should be wary—this House is wary—of any legislation that has the potential to infringe free speech and a free press. That point was also made eloquently by the hon. Members for Lewisham West and Penge (Jim Dowd) and for Falkirk (Eric Joyce), and by my hon. Friends the Members for Manchester, Withington (Mr Leech) and for Ealing Central and Acton (Angie Bray). We should be wary about whether legislation is truly necessary on this point.

As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport said in opening the debate, it is right that we should take the time to look at the details. I agree with many of the points made by hon. Members on both sides of the House. For instance, my hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale) made a good point in saying that many of the failures were breaches of the criminal law; my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr Lilley) was right to warn against regulatory creep in these things; and the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman) was exactly right in saying that the ball is in the press’s court now, that they have to take the immediate decisions and that it is up to them.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Tuesday 13th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Grant]

I am happy to look at that if my hon. Friend writes to me.

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

On 11 October 2011, when Louise Casey, the first victims commissioner, resigned, the former Lord Chancellor said that he was urgently considering the future of the role. Thirteen months on—yesterday, in fact—was the closing date for applications to be Ms Casey’s 10-day-a-month replacement. What signal does it send to victims that this Government first doubt the need for a commissioner, then delay appointing one for more than a year, and finally make it a half-hearted, part-time job?

[Mrs Grant]

For a long time, victims have felt completely unsupported by the criminal justice system, and it is my job, as victims Minister, to try and put that right. I am glad to have the opportunity to do so. We are raising money for victims through the victims surcharge and the Prisoners’ Earnings Act 1996, and we are giving victims a louder voice through the appointment of a victims’ commissioner. I look forward to making that appointment, and meeting and working with the commissioner.

Claims Management Companies

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Thursday 8th November 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to be here under your chairmanship this afternoon, Sir Alan. It has been an interesting and well informed debate, and I thank the hon. Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price) for securing it. We have heard some eloquent speeches on this substantial problem that have called on both professional expertise and personal experience—either directly or through constituents. The hon. Lady was right to concentrate her comments on payment protection insurance because the legal ombudsman brief for this debate says that when it takes over responsibility for dealing with consumer complaints, it expects 95% of them to be related to PPI. I was alarmed to hear that that transfer may be delayed, and I hope the Minister will deal with that and tell us when it will take place.

PPI is not the only area of concern, and I will go on to mention some other worrying aspects of CMCs and their operations. There have been other abuses in the financial services sector, such as endowment mis-selling and bank charges. My hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue), who has huge experience in this area and in consumer protection through her role with the Citizens Advice service, alluded to the fact that CMCs have been let in thanks to the appalling performance of the financial services sector in this country over the past few years. If the banks had not mis-sold PPI and overcharged, and if insurance companies had not mis-sold endowment policies, there would have been no opportunities for the CMCs.

In the informative briefing that we had this afternoon, the building societies pointed out that they were responsible for a mere £200 million of mis-selling, whereas the banks have set aside £12 billion for mis-selling one financial product. That fact alone shows the extraordinary depth to which this country’s banking industry has sunk over the past few years. Effectively, the opportunity for CMCs was created by the poor regulation—and, more importantly, by the poor performance—of the financial services sector. Furthermore, the problem was also encouraged by the poor performance of the Ministry of Justice, which has not taken these matters seriously.

At the back of the debate pack are a whole series of questions that I asked in 2011 and earlier this year. In reply to one, the Minister’s predecessor, the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly), said:

“At the end of July 2011, eight employees and 39 contracted staff work in the Department's claims management regulation unit. Three employees and seven contracted staff handle consumer advice matters, including complaints.”—[Official Report, 5 September 2011; Vol. 532, c. 273W.]

That is not an adequate provision for the degree of mis-selling and abuse that has taken place. That position has now changed, and the Minister will update us on current staffing and operational levels. None the less, those previous levels reflected, at the very least, complacency on the part of all those involved.

Two consultations are under way—only one is still open—on claims management companies. The second one relates to fees, and the Government are quite properly consulting on whether regulation fees should be raised, so that the costs of regulation are better covered by the CMCs, which theoretically make substantial profits. I am also pleased that the legal ombudsman will be taking over responsibility for the matter, and I hope it will do a good job.

We have an interesting brief from the legal ombudsman laying out the various considerations and concerns. The common theme among the concerned parties who lobbied Members before today’s debate is that the Government’s consultation on the regulation of CMCs is not going far enough. It is right, as the August consultation asked, that contracts should be in writing and that CMCs should be required to inform clients of any supervisional variation to the business authorisation once in effect. It is also right that when CMCs refer to their regulatory status, they should say that they are regulated by the Claims Management Regulation unit rather than the Ministry of Justice; many have been suggesting that they have Ministry of Justice endorsement.

Although all those points are welcome, they do not, however, deal with fraudulent claims or the recycling of claims. I should like to see a requirement that claimants must disclose whether they have previously interacted with other law firms or CMCs. More importantly, the whole area of cold-calling, SMS texting and so on, is not dealt with. The main problems that have been raised this afternoon, such as the 25% to 30% that CMCs are raking off from claims—the no-sale claims—have not been addressed. In any other walk of life, it would be extraordinary for a major industry to establish itself on the back of pursuing non-existent claims. In many cases, the parties who receive the texts or respond to the adverts are not fully aware of all the issues. Part of the problem with mis-selling to people who are vulnerable—both in an orthodox and a financial sense—is that they do not have the financial education or skills to deal with the hard sell in the first place, or indeed the hard sell of the CMCs in the second place.

[Jonathan Evans]

Lest it be thought that one is against those people who are unsure whether they have PPI, the Financial Ombudsman Service has made it clear that there is an obligation on all financial services companies to respond to a request to find out whether someone had a PPI contract. Therefore, all those CMCs could easily make that inquiry first before submitting a claim.

[Mr Slaughter]

They could, but they clearly do not. CMCs see a lucrative industry, because there is relatively little cost to them. I am not quite sure what they hope to get out of it in the end, other than perhaps nuisance payments both to make the claim and to make the reference to the financial ombudsman. Given the sharp practice that is clearly involved in the sector, I am not sure whether the Ministry of Justice’s proposals are up to the mark in dealing with it. We have heard some good examples of companies that simply disappear overnight and reappear in another guise. I am not sure whether enforcement is dealt with sufficiently in the current proposals.

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

That goes to the crux of the matter. What we have before us is a tighter system of rules, but the problem is the behaviour of firms which are just going out of their way to profiteer. What does the hon. Gentleman think about the view expressed by some in the industry that responsibility should pass to the Financial Conduct Authority, which will be empowered to tackle firms’ behaviour?

[Mr Slaughter]

I am certainly happy to look at that. It is a constructive proposal that combats the sharp practice and cleverness of such firms on their own level, and that is not happening at the moment. I am afraid that those firms will always be one step ahead of the regulation unit. I hope the legal ombudsman will address that point. We need to look at these companies’ approach to advertisements, text messages and such things. I am somewhat at a loss as to why the Government have been reluctant to tackle this area more cogently. Again, I refer to a question that I asked in February, which is in the debate pack:

“How many claims management companies have had their authorisations revoked as a consequence of telephone or text message spamming since May 2010?”—[Official Report, 27 February 2012; Vol. 541, c. 75W.]

The answer is none, and yet we know that telephone or text message spamming is not only one of the most irritating ways of hooking clients in the first place but one of the most productive; clearly it is productive, or the companies would not use it.

The legal ombudsman makes the point that they should have a significant role to play in unsolicited contacts, whether it is cold-calling or text messaging, but it is not quite clear to me at the moment what that role will be. The legal ombudsman also raises another issue. Once a client is hooked and then effectively milked by the claims management company, how does one deal with enforcement if the company is to be brought to account but simply changes its name and directors, then disappears before appearing under a new guise? I ask the Minister to address those points and consider whether a more comprehensive legislative regime to counter abuses by claims management companies should be introduced.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) has done an extraordinary amount of work in this area and introduced a private Member’s Bill on it. When we were discussing the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 last year and earlier this year, both in the main Chamber and in the other place we tabled a comprehensive series of amendments to deal with the type of abuses I have been describing. I understand that the Minister was not in her current role then, but I know she took an interest in the Act. I was at a loss to see why the Government were not happy to adopt—other than that they came from us—what were very stringent restrictions on unsolicited cold-calling and SMS texting, the regulation of claims management companies and other areas to do with data selling. They were primarily restrictions on the abuse of road traffic claims, but they equally apply to the mis-selling of financial products. It does not matter whose legislation it is: again, I advise the Government to go back and look at those restrictions.

There is a myth around that there is a whole industry, including lawyers and other practitioners, that is somehow encouraging the abuses of the system, but nothing could be further from the truth. I should say that I have had representations from the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers, the Bar Council, the Law Society, as well as from major solicitors’ firms dealing with claims on this subject. I urge the Minister, having recently taken on her new role, to listen to the voices in the claimant sector belonging to some of the best informed and most knowledgeable people, who are also very angry about the abuses that take place. Perhaps she should listen to those voices more and listen a little less to the Association of British Insurers and the rest of the insurance industry, whose fingers are all over the claims management industry. Many insurance companies own or co-own claims management companies, and many indulge in practices that are just as suspect in terms of third-party capture, and which manipulate the claimant market in that way. What I hope all Members wish to see is something that protects the consumer and allows genuine and honest claims to be made.

I was grateful to receive the various briefings for today’s debate—except possibly that from the ABI. After a nod towards claims management companies, it suddenly got on to the idea of the compensation culture again. I fear that, in their legislation so far, the Government have been seduced by that argument, despite all the evidence in their own reports and reports by the Better Regulation Task Force, Lord Young of Graffham and Professor Löfstedt. All those reports found that there may be a perception of a “compensation culture” in this country, but there is no reality, and what is needed is the regulation of abuse, not of honest claims.

The Government have pushed forward very enthusiastically in LASPO with a restriction on the ability of claimants with meritorious claims to bring their cases before the courts, across the whole area of civil litigation.

[David Mowat]

I am listening very carefully to what the shadow Minister is saying about compensation culture. To pick one issue, we appear to have a massively bigger incidence of whiplash than other European countries. What is his position on that situation; why does it arise?

[Mr Slaughter]

That is a good point. We have not spent a lot of time discussing whiplash today; I had thought that we might spend a little more. The situation is exactly the same: there is fraud in the area of whiplash claims, particularly soft tissue injury claims. The figures compiled by APIL show that 80% of sufferers of such injuries either report their symptoms accurately or underplay them. That means that 20% are perhaps not reporting their symptoms accurately or are exaggerating them. That puts things into perspective. I do not believe that a massive amount of fraud is going on, but a significant amount is going on and it needs to be tackled.

[Jonathan Evans]

The hon. Gentleman gives the view of APIL, but its briefing also says that 80% of these victims have an accurate medical diagnosis. Yet the all-party group on insurance and financial services, which I chair, heard evidence from doctors saying, “You can’t diagnose whiplash. It’s actually impossible.”

[Mr Slaughter]

Some of us may have qualifications in some areas, but I have to say that I have no medical qualification and I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman has one to add to his other distinguished qualifications. We will not resolve the issue of whiplash this afternoon, but to write off soft tissue injury and say that there is no such thing is taking matters too far the other way.

I will quote one other statistic. As we know, almost 30% of claims are encouraged by insurers. I have one or two examples here from constituents of mine who had minor road traffic accidents, and who then had their details sold on by their insurers. So we have insurance companies that—presumably to make a profit—either own or co-own claims management companies, and that are selling on details and engaging in third-party capture, which of course means they are paying out money without any medical evidence whatsoever.

I am not saying this is a black and white issue. I am saying, “Let us identify who the rogues are, crack down on them and not be distracted by them from our other purposes.”

[David Mowat]

We got into this discussion because of the point the shadow Minister was making about compensation culture. Of course nobody is minimising soft tissue injuries—that would be awful—but we seem to have five times as many of them as other countries in Europe. Surely that statistic should at least have given him pause for thought before he read out the brief from the APIL.

[Mr Slaughter]

As I always do, I read out briefs from everybody, even from the ABI; I have very catholic tastes in the sources I use. Also, I think I said that fraud in relation to road traffic is an area that we need to crack down on. I am always a little suspicious when the ABI and others say, “Well, look how many road accidents and whiplash accidents we are having in the UK,” or, “Look at the concentration of where they are.” One tends to find that there is a higher incidence of road traffic accidents in congested urban areas than in rural areas, and there are more claims management companies in conurbations than in shire counties. That is probably just a truism, but there we are.

[David Mowat]

In terms of the hon. Gentleman’s brief from the personal injury lawyers, Germany also has built-up areas, and we would not necessarily expect the incidence in our country and other countries to be so massively different.

[Mr Slaughter]

I am glad the hon. Gentleman mentions Germany, because one provision in German law is that one cannot make a soft tissue injury claim—a whiplash claim—if one’s vehicle is travelling at below 8 kph. That was the subject of another of the amendments that we tabled to the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act but the Government chose not to accept.

[Mr Charles Walker in the Chair]

I am not speaking on behalf of, or indeed against, any sectional interests; they are all entitled to make their points, and, on the whole, professional organisations do a very good job in this country. What I am saying, however, is that it is easy to be distracted—often when there is a political agenda on the table—from addressing the real problems and to start addressing what are not the real problems. Where the Government have clearly got things wrong—we could spend until the end of the debate arguing about road traffic claims and probably about PPI claims as well—is in extending the attack on claimants across the board into areas such as employers’ liability and public liability insurance. Some of the changes being introduced in the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill—again, at the behest of insurers and employers—are appalling in the way they balance, or unbalance, power in the legal system in favour of employers and away from employees, turning back the clock, in some cases, more than 100 years. However, I may be going beyond the subject of the debate.

I will not detain hon. Members any further, because there is a reasonable degree of consensus on the problems we need to address. I suspect there is also a reasonable degree of consensus—Government Back Benchers may be slightly less confrontational about the way they express this—about the fact that the MOJ needs to do more to tackle what is a very common problem for all our constituents.

--- Later in debate ---

On resuming—

[Mr Slaughter]

With a short suspension of the sitting and the luxury of having another hour of the debate to go, there is always the temptation to expound more fully some of the points one is making, but I shall resist it, particularly as I am keen to hear what ideas the Minister will put forward, and I know that other hon. Members are too.

There appears to be a consensus among the parties represented here, the media and many respected and trusted organisations such as Which? and Citizens Advice that there is a substantial problem to be dealt with. Some unscrupulous companies—clearly not all or even the majority of CMCs are unscrupulous—take opportunities provided by crises or abuses in sectors such as insurance, financial services or the personal injury market to profiteer. The question for us is how we should deal with that. My contention is that the Government have dragged their feet so far, and that where they have identified targets they have sometimes been the wrong ones. It is not just a matter of regulating the way contracts are drawn up. Many of the companies are sophisticated and will find ways around that, and they often deal, as many hon. Members have said, with vulnerable people who lack sufficient expertise in such things. Which? has made several sensible recommendations, such as the ban on up-front fees. I ask the Minister to go further than that and to examine the whole process that CMCs use to engage consumers, from the initial scatter-gun approaches—the adverts and text messages—through the process of signing up, the contracts, the way people are engaged, the terms and conditions and fees, to the point when redress is sought and the ways people can escape.

I was given an example earlier today—it is an industrial injury claim, but it is just as good—in which, effectively, the CMC that had decided to deal with the claim was negligent in not arranging for issue before the limitation period expired. That might have given rise to a claim against the company for professional negligence, but by the time competent solicitors were engaged to deal with the matter, the company had decided to disappear; it deregistered and was simply not there for a claim to be made against it. That is common, and organisations guilty of one type of abuse will often be guilty of other types, which is why the Minister needs to consider how such companies operate across the piece.

I urge the Minister to look where the real villains are and not, as the Government tend to do at the moment, simply to attack lawyers because they are an easy target, or claimants because substantial lobby groups such as the insurance industry contribute funds to the Conservative party and daily whisper in its ear. She should not make decisions on that basis, but should base them on the real harm and damage that is being done to millions of people.

I have one further example, involving a constituent of mine. Normally I would be happy to name and shame the bank involved, but as I am speaking to the senior partner of its City law firm tomorrow to try to resolve the matter, I shall give it one chance and, if it does not work out, perhaps I will do it next week. My constituent had been mis-sold not just one but serial PPI policies over time, and she made a claim herself rather than using a CMC. She got judgment and enforcement, but on the advice of the bailiffs acting, she perhaps made the mistake of saying that she would go down to the bank’s headquarters in Canary Wharf and seize goods to the value of the claim. She now finds that the bank has started satellite litigation, and Queen’s counsel are employed effectively to intimidate and say, “You can’t take on the big boys and win in that way.”

I end on the point on which I began. If there was more responsibility in the financial sector and less willingness by the Government constantly to attack those who seek to represent through legal aid, through no win, no fee agreements, or simply through the advice sector, which does such a good job in this country, those who genuinely advise people in need—not the dodgy CMCs, but the people all our constituents rely on—we would not be in this mess. This is a triple whammy: there is a problem in the financial services sector with which the Government have not come to terms; there are problems in the advice and legal aid sectors, which the Government have created; and there are problems with CMCs, which the Government are going some way, but not sufficiently, towards resolving.

Although the Minister has time, she might not wish to respond to all my points today. I am sure we will take them up in later debates. As she is coming fresh into the job and is not encumbered by some of the rather foolish statements made by her predecessor, I hope that she will look at the matter openly, in the interests of all our constituents and all those consumers who are faced with the bleak prospect of either not recovering funds to which they are entitled, or being fleeced by organisations that recover the moneys and take 25% to 30%, or simply do not recover them at all.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Grant]

We are working hard with the Information Commissioner, and I am happy to write to my hon. Friend on that point.

At a time when resources are scarce, much has been achieved. Regulatory enforcement action has increased year on year, with 150 audits of CMCs carried out, and 409 CMCs warned, suspended or cancelled over the past year. The CMR unit has also removed the licences of more than 800 CMCs, across sectors, since the start of regulation in 2007, and many others have left the market after the commencement of investigations and enforcement action.

That is where we are at, but where do we go from here? There have been calls over the years to consider transferring the claims management regulation regime to another regulator, but now is not the time for such a fundamental change. We have a big programme of reforms under way, and its central objective is to address CMC bad practices and strengthen the regulatory and complaints regimes to provide better protection for consumers and the public. Our reform agenda includes four main measures.

Following a review of the CMC conduct rules and an informal consultation with key stakeholders, we recently ran a public consultation on proposals to tighten those rules. We intend to issue a response by the end of this year. Most critically, we propose that, first, contract agreements between CMCs and consumers will have to be made in writing before any up-front fees may be taken. That concern was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock and others.

Secondly, as highlighted by my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff North, CMCs will have to refer to being regulated by the claims management regulator rather than the Ministry of Justice. The shadow Minister welcomed that proposal.

Thirdly, CMCs will have to inform their contracted client of any variation in or suspension of their authorisation; and, finally, CMCs that operate websites will be required to publish their terms and conditions online as standard, including examples of how their various costs are calculated in a specific format.

On the delay to the rules review consultation, which was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock, I can confirm that the consultation was launched as soon as possible after internal clearance of the intention to consult and the release of the initial impact assessment.

Last year, we also ran a public consultation on imposing a ban on CMCs offering financial rewards or similar benefits as an inducement to make a claim. That proposal was made in response to the recommendation contained in Lord Young’s report “Common Sense, Common Safety”. The ban will come into effect along with other amendments to the conduct rules from April 2013.

From next year, we intend to commence powers under the Legal Services Act 2007 to extend the legal ombudsman’s jurisdiction to provide an independent complaints and redress scheme for clients who are dissatisfied with the service provided by CMCs that they have contacted. Consumers will benefit because the legal ombudsman has wider powers of redress, including the ability to award compensation.

Lastly, we are implementing the primary recommendations contained in Lord Justice Jackson’s “Review of Civil Litigation Costs,” including in particular a fundamental reform of no win, no fee conditional-fee agreements and a ban on the payment and receipt of referral fees in personal injury cases.

[Mr Slaughter]

How will restricting the ability of claimants to obtain proper legal representation restrict the operation of CMCs that either make unmeritorious claims or make meritorious claims incompetently?

[Mrs Grant]

We are not restricting access to justice in any way. That is another argument I have had with the hon. Gentleman in other debates over the past year and a half. Access to justice will still be possible and meritorious claims will continue to be made.

I have sought to cover a lot of ground in a relatively short space of time, and I have talked through improvements in the way the CMR unit does its day-to-day job and its work in preparation for next year’s reforms. We remain focused on delivering a successful and strong regulatory regime. To give consumers and defendants more confidence in the system, it is important that CMCs ensure that they comply with the rules.

I reassure all hon. Members here today that there will be no let up in the CMR unit’s compliance and enforcement work, and it will do what is essential to strengthen the regulatory and complaints regimes to provide better protection for consumers and the public.

Family Justice (Transparency, Accountability and Cost of Living) Bill

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Friday 26th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Ellwood]

I am grateful for that intervention, and I think everyone would agree with his last comment, in that the Bill provides an important opportunity to debate these issues. Not all the private Members’ Bills that we debate on Fridays make it on to the legislative book, but they allow individual Back Benchers to share new ideas, test where the Government are in respect of them at the time and ensure that the public are made aware that we are debating the issues. Subsequently, the public can enter into the debate and comment. In that, the hon. Gentleman has certainly succeeded. We await the Minister’s comments—we are all salivating for them—before we find out exactly where we are from a Government perspective.

Dare I say it, there must be some sort of agreement between us and Opposition Members? My hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell made the point well—that there should be cross-party agreement on the messages we are sending out and, indeed, to some extent, on the legislation itself. I congratulate the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley, and I do not want to detract from the mammoth amount of work he has done, which needs to be acknowledged. Today’s debate is a healthy step forward, but I would like to know more about where the Government sit on a number of the issues. It is important to clarify Government thinking.

In an earlier intervention, I specifically mentioned the family justice review. This is the big piece of work being done by the Government. The foreword is written by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), and the Secretary of State for Education. The Government responded to 130 recommendations from the family justice review, which was published in November 2011. It sets out a number of reforms to public and private family law, as well as reforms to the structures and governance of the family justice system. The Government response, which I have in my hand, was produced in February 2012.

I shall not go through all 130 responses, but I would like to share my view of three of them, if I may. The first is on page 28. It states:

“Judges and magistrates should be enabled and encouraged to specialise in family matters.”

The Government’s response is:

“The Government agrees with the Review’s analysis that enabling and encouraging specialisation in family matters will improve judicial continuity and create a more experienced family judiciary. The President of the Family Division has said that he favours a more specialist bench and that consideration should be given to the merits of setting a minimum sitting requirement for family ticketed judiciary.”

That sets out a direction of travel in relation to the time taken by these processes.

The next recommendation states:

“A single family court, with a single point of entry, should replace the current three tiers of court. All levels of family judiciary (including magistrates) should sit in the family court and work should be allocated according to case complexity.”

The Government’s response is:

“The Government agrees with the Review on the benefits of clarifying and simplifying the family courts, and making their operation more transparent, by establishing a single Family Court for England and Wales.”

If I may test your patience, Madam Deputy Speaker, I shall give one more example. The recommendation states:

“There should be flexibility for legal advisers to conduct work to support judges across the family court.”

The Government’s response is:

“The Government agrees that there is scope for legal advisers, who currently work only in the magistrates’ courts, to take on some of the judiciary’s quasi-administrative functions across the whole of the Family Court once it is established.”

I have quoted just three of the 190 recommendations in the family justice review, but those who read the whole document will see that the Government accepted the majority of them. That is a very positive result, but it has yet to be turned into legislation, which is, of course, the next step.

Part 3 deals not with court procedures but with a related but separate subject, namely energy and fuel poverty. As I made clear in an intervention earlier, there is a connection between the amount of energy that we create, where we get that energy from, how we use it, and how much we charge the nation for that process. I agree with what my hon. Friends have said today. Until we make those big decisions about new nuclear build, it will be very difficult for us to ensure that there is security of supply, and without security of supply we shall not be able to control the costs of the power that we generate. We shall have to import more energy, in which event we shall be governed by prices that are fixed outside this country. The consequences of that will affect fuel poverty; indeed, they will affect us all. That is why the Prime Minister announced the week before last that the tariffs would be looked at. I am pleased to see a smile of approval on the face of the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter).

The tariffs need to be set in a certain way. First, they must be made far simpler, so that all users can recognise the tariff that they are on if they want to switch. Secondly, people must be encouraged to be on the lowest tariff. The present system is very confusing. I believe that there are 124 tariffs across all the energy boards, and that is far too complicated.

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

We have gone from “will be” to “might be” to “could be” to “will be encouraged to be”, and now the tariffs are to be “looked at”. Does that represent another step back from the Prime Minister’s position of two weeks ago?

[Mr Ellwood]

I can use the first words quoted by the hon. Gentleman: the words “will be”. The Government and the Prime Minister are absolutely firm about their intent. I can write the hon. Gentleman a letter and include those words so that the position is unequivocal.

It is clear that people are being obliged to pay far too much for their energy, and that the process is far too complicated and needs to be simplified. The hon. Gentleman quibbles about the words used by the Prime Minister, but, dare I say it, his Government had 13 years in which to gain control of energy policy and develop an energy strategy. They did very little about it, and we are now having to deal with the consequences. Unbelievably, a third of our coal requirements are met by Russia, which is a bizarre state of affairs in a nation that ought to be able to generate its own power. The important aspect is that we keep the cost of energy and its generation down, which will have a knock-on consequence for all users, including the most vulnerable.

The Bill deals with the building regulations for social housing. It desires a reduction in fuel use, which would mean that fuel bills would be lower. That would be a positive step forward, and the proposal makes sense. However, it ignores the fact that building regulations have changed and are changing. An awful lot of powers are bestowed on local authorities to make these very decisions, rather than to have them made nationally. There is a commitment to introduce a zero-carbon requirement for all new homes built after 2016. [Interruption.] I am glad that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley has come back into the Chamber, because he may wish to comment on this. The Bill would require that new dwellings comply with the level 6 standard—a very high standard. He may be aware that the Government’s standard is level 3. What is the difference between the two? Level three is deemed as providing the necessary insulation that will save on fuel costs, whereas levels 4, 5 and 6 take us into the bells and whistles. Those levels dramatically increase the cost of the build by about £30,000.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

We have had a wide-ranging debate on a wide-ranging Bill, and I hope that my comments live up to the expectations raised by the hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) on all these issues, on which I can show off my expertise.

I pay genuine tribute to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming), who has been contentious sometimes and used colourful language on this issue—not today, because he has been on his best behaviour, in trying to get Government support. However, no one can doubt his passion or, indeed, his knowledge, which he has ably demonstrated on all the issues in this detailed and wide-ranging Bill.

As the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) pointed out some hours ago, it is a heterogeneous Bill—it has many elements—and it shows off that detail, but the danger, as the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley has realised, is that although some parts of it might please some people, it is unlikely that all of it pleases everyone. I therefore note his plea to the Government in particular that they could fillet it if only they would let it go to Committee. I suspect that my response on behalf of the Opposition will be similar—we like some parts of the Bill very much; we are ambivalent about other parts; and we have doubts about some parts—but if it does get to Committee, we will certainly consider it constructively and seek to amend the parts that we do not like.

I will say a little, perhaps not so much as the hon. Gentleman did, about the Bill’s detail. It brings to the fore some of the overarching—one might say, eternal—themes in the justice system, the first of which is openness. The word “transparency” appears in the short title. Openness will be a contentious issue on the Floor of the House this autumn, when the Justice and Security Bill arrives and we will see what the Liberal Democrats do in relation to that matter.

Openness in the family courts is a difficult issue which requires a balance between what should always be the presupposition in English courts—that matters should be transparent, that the public should have admittance and that matters should be publicly available—and, obviously, the protection of children in particular and of sensitive and personal matters. I am not persuaded that some of the Bill’s provisions contain sufficient safeguards to prevent matters from becoming public which, perhaps, should not become public. I shall say a little more about that and talk about some of the individual clauses.

The second theme is equality of arms. There is an implication in everything that the hon. Gentleman has said about the Bill that there is an imbalance of power between the family on the one hand and the local authority on the other hand. To some extent, that is common sense. There is a difference in resources always. The local authority sometimes plays a dual role. Although it might be a party in proceedings, it has been judge, as well as a party, in its previous dealings with the family.

What concerns me particularly with the legal aid brief for the Opposition are the changes in the family law that are taking place as a consequence of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012—the LASPO Act—and the fact that although legal aid is protected for public law, there are such swingeing cuts in legal aid for family law that the availability of family lawyers, representation and firms that have such expertise is threatened. That is a part of the de-professionalisation of the courts that the Government are overseeing in many different aspects. They say that that can be replaced with mediation in some instances. They say or at least imply that many cases can be conducted by litigants in person.

I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman had regard to those matters in proposing the Bill. His solution appears to be that untrained people—McKenzie friends—or some form of non-professional advocacy and support can in some ways replace the help and assistance that the legal profession can provide.

[John Hemming]

The idea is to have someone there to provide people with psychological support. Everyone else is not associated with them. They may have solicitors there as well. For instance, the mother of a 17 or 18-year-old young mother could be there, or an embassy representative could be there for foreign citizens.

[Mr Slaughter]

I see the hon. Gentleman’s point, and no one would disagree that it might be important to have someone to give emotional support to litigants in a time of great stress—most litigation is a time of great stress, but particularly family litigation. I understand the examples he gives, but he does not deal with the problem that occurs in many cases, namely the inequality and imbalance of arms in private family law, let alone in public family law. That problem is not addressed in the Bill.

The third theme is costs. I noticed with interest clause 8(3), on the risk of costs in judicial review proceedings. The hon. Gentleman will be aware that, as a consequence of part 2 of the 2012 Act, no win, no fee agreements will not be available in all cases—they will not be available in judicial review, and nor will qualified one-way cost-shifting. It is therefore very likely that judicial review will be restricted for persons who do not qualify for legal aid. I suggest he looks at draft regulations on the future provision of legal aid, which suggest that all other remedies will need to be exhausted before legal aid is available in public law proceedings in judicial review cases. The Minister is looking up and showing some interest—

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Jeremy Wright)]

indicated dissent.

[Mr Slaughter]

Perhaps it was just an involuntary reaction. The Minister might want to consider that point, because those regulations are likely to be debated in Committee within the next few weeks. If we are to have a wholesale restriction not only on those who do not qualify for legal aid, but on those who do, the availability of public law remedies will be severely curtailed. In that respect, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley could have gone some way further on how litigants in family proceedings—we are talking about family proceedings, but it will apply to proceedings more widely—could ensure that they can get access to justice and some protection in costs, particularly when they are up against public authorities.

On the detail of the Bill, the points in part 1 are well made, but I somewhat doubt that the hon. Gentleman’s remedies, which in most cases are statutory requirements on the courts and the fettering of the discretion of the courts, are the right way to proceed. We probably disagree on the family justice review. David Norgrove’s review, which was commissioned under the previous Government but published by and responded to by this Government, is an impressive piece of work. On family group conferences, which are dealt with in clause 1, the review said that

“the benefits of family group conferences should be more widely recognised and their use should be considered before proceedings”.

Separately, the family justice review found that both children and adults are “confused” about the family justice system—a point the hon. Gentleman made well. He and I would agree that family group conferences have an important role, and perhaps a bigger role, to play, but whether there should be a requirement is another matter.

On clause 2, more was said about grandparents than about any other single issue. I suspect there will be very little dissent from any party from the point that the role of grandparents in both contact and proceedings can be important. However, the family justice review and the Government’s response say that the leave requirement should remain, because it acts as an important safeguard for children and their families, and that that is consistent with the principle that the court’s paramount consideration must be the welfare of the child.

The Government said that they were

“committed to ensuring that children have meaningful relationships with family members who are important to them”,

including grandparents. That really moves us on to the issue of sheer parenting, and the balance between the rights of family members and the rights of the child. The hon. Gentleman will be well aware of what the final report of the family justice review said on that:

“the core principle of the paramountcy of the welfare of the child is sufficient and…to insert any additional statements brings with it unnecessary risk for little gain.”

That is a point on which the Government disagreed, but with which we find ourselves broadly in sympathy.

Clause 2 raises the issue of academic research. All that I would say on that—this point was raised by other hon. Members—is that there is a will in the courts to move away from a proliferation of expert reports. The hon. Gentleman says that those will not necessarily be reports given in evidence; I am therefore not entirely sure what the role of additional experts will be, or, if the reports are not given in evidence, how the provenance and authority of experts’ opinions will be judged. I agree with the point made by, I think, the hon. Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Stephen Barclay), who said that we would be better employed in ensuring that a single expert gave good advice than in looking to second-guess or challenge that advice in a variety of perhaps only semi-formal ways.

[John Hemming]

Will the hon. Gentleman say how we can ensure that an expert is giving good advice without having peer review at some stage?

[Mr Slaughter]

That is a problem that the courts have to tackle in not just family proceedings but in all types of proceedings. One has to look at the qualifications, experience, expertise and record of experts who come before the courts. In my time in practice, there was a strong trend away from everybody coming along with their own expert—as soon as there are two experts, there are three opinions, if not four or five—and towards trying to focus on a single expert, either agreed by both sides or independent, depending on the nature of proceedings, on whom the court would rely. Moving away from that trend would produce a lot of additional costs and confusion.

The principle behind clause 3 is that for children in care, particularly when it comes to hearing their voices and their serious complaints—this, of course, is a matter of contemporary public concern—there must be an independent voice. The issue really is whether the independent reviewing officers are sufficient. That was considered back in 1989 when the Children Act was introduced. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley doubts that they are sufficient. I note that the opinion of the family justice review is that, provided that independent reviewing officers are sufficiently independent, it is appropriate that they should be employed by the local authority. There is a danger of setting up entirely new parallel processes, public bodies and authorities, and quangos to oversee them. Given his criticism of many of the existing quangos and satellite bodies surrounding the courts, I urge caution in setting up additional ones.

On clause 4, the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to say that good practice should be that where adoption without consent occurs, clear reasons are given. It is important that when traumatic decisions of that kind are taken, they are fully explained. The Court of Appeal has stressed that that should be done. Putting requirements on the courts to do the same thing in all cases, and fettering and removing judicial discretion, is a habit that the House gets into too often.

To sum up my view on part 1 of the Bill, it is spot-on in identifying issues, but it may, perhaps intentionally, be looking to apply slightly over-prescriptive remedies to achieve the hon. Gentleman’s aims. The hon. Gentleman will find me more sympathetic on part 2, where many of his proposals are sensible and identify matters long overdue for consideration. In clause 7 there is no definition of “wrongdoing”, which may be an omission. I am sure he will say that that is a point for Committee, but it is a rather broad term. In the light of every current event from Hillsborough to Savile, the principle of increasing the ability to and facility for whistleblowing and the ability of responsible authority, including Members of the House, to take those matters up is right.

On the subject of scandalising the court, the hon. Gentleman will not be surprised that in the light of what happened to my right hon. Friend the Member for Neath (Mr Hain), I think he is right about that, but I think I am right in saying that the Government have given undertakings that they will re-examine that during the passage of the Crime and Courts Bill through the House of Lords.

As I said, the hon. Gentleman does not go quite far enough in what he says about costs and judicial review. I am sympathetic to what he says in relation to clauses 9 and 11. Lawyers have a habit of relating anecdotes about their own practice, which is often not broad enough to be able to draw general conclusions from, but I dealt with many cases involving the Official Solicitor and the issue of capacity, and often came to the same conclusion as the hon. Gentleman—that there is insufficient scrutiny of those bodies. It is taken for granted that when a decision is made that the Official Solicitor should be involved or the matter of capacity needs to be dealt with, one moves on and deals with the situation as it is, without sometimes questioning whether those decisions have been properly made or whether those bodies are conducting themselves as well as they could.

I have sympathy also with what the hon. Gentleman says about obtaining transcripts, but his solution is not the correct one. The idea of people going into proceedings with their own recording devices, producing their own transcripts, no doubt in good faith, and those having to be subject to the same rules of confidentiality and presumably to the rules of reporting, is not practical. However, he presents a problem that needs to be looked at—the cost, the ease and the speed of obtaining transcripts of proceedings.

On part 3, I shall be brief. Unlike the prisons Minister, I am not an expert on passive flue gas technology, so I shall just make one or two general comments. The only time today that we got into a bit of party ruckus was on fuel poverty. For the record, it was an issue that the Labour Government took extremely seriously from the time that they introduced winter fuel payments onwards, and on which a great deal was done. I agree with the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley and I disagree with what the hon. Member for Bracknell (Dr Lee) said. Fuel poverty is still a serious problem and it should not be a serious problem in the 21st century. Energy pricing and the role of energy companies are matters on which the Leader of the Opposition has taken the lead.

The Prime Minister may have been panicked into a response when he said that everybody was going to be on the lowest tariff, but I hope that when he refines his ideas, we will see some positive movement towards ending profiteering by the cartel of energy companies, and ensuring that, in particular, those on low incomes and those who are vulnerable by reason of age or disability have the funds to heat their properties and that those properties are as weather-tight as possible. In that broad sense, I welcome the fact that he managed somehow to slide those issues into the Bill.

Before concluding my remarks, I want to mention one or two of the other contributions we heard, because they were all interesting. My hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Middleton (Jim Dobbin) used his local knowledge and his expertise to talk about the terrible events in Rochdale, which perhaps were the most serious child welfare cases that have occurred recently.

Many hon. Members spoke from experience about cases in their constituencies. The hon. Member for North East Cambridgeshire and several others mentioned the important role of grandparents, which I think we all agree on, although I certainly agree with the comments about the paramountcy of the welfare of the child and the need to avoid the proliferation of experts.

The hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley had more than ample support from his friend and neighbour the hon. Member for Solihull (Lorely Burt) on most parts of the Bill, but did not perhaps enjoy the same level of support from the hon. Member for Bracknell, who treated us to an interesting televisual spectacle. I do not think that he was entirely frank with the House when he said the he had watched only one episode of “The Waltons” during a spare hour, because he went on to mention several other episodes and showed a rather prurient and extensive knowledge of the series, which I was a little worried about. However, it seems the only other programme he watches is “Jeremy Kyle”, so perhaps he should stick with “The Waltons”. Madam Deputy Speaker pulled him up at that point—when he started to wax lyrical about how we should ban benefits and unban handguns, it was felt that he was straying somewhat from the themes of the debate.

I am afraid that I do not recognise the pattern the hon. Member for Bracknell described of people on benefits living in luxury and poverty no longer existing in the way it had years ago, and I do not think other hon. Members, including those on the Conservative Benches, do either. If we have made significant improvements in relation to fuel poverty, it is thanks to previous Governments, including the previous Labour Government, and the consensus that existed in this country about the safety net and the welfare state.

However, it is incontrovertibly true that more needs to be done, and I am sure that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley would agree, drawing on the experience from his own constituency, that it is shameful to see families relying on food banks and, as I encountered in the past couple of days, having to pawn their possessions and sell their furniture simply to make ends meet. In particular, it is shameful that, because of the extraordinary rises in energy prices, elderly people still have to decide which of the basic things in life, including warmth, they are able to provide themselves with over the winter. For that reason, I am pleased that he mentioned fuel poverty along with the many justice and family law issues he raised today.

The hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) treated us to an account of his appearances on Radio Solent and the collectivist ideal of penguins. We were getting close to the time the Government had set for the debate to end, if I may put it that way—we always know when we are getting to the thin end of a debate. We of course then had still to hear from myself and the Minister. I will therefore take the hint and hand over to the Minister. I look forward to his comments with enthusiasm and to hearing which parts of the Bill the Government will take through because, whether or not they wish the Bill to proceed to Committee, I am sure that there are ideas and principles in it that should find their way on to the statute book. Whatever the Bill’s short-term future, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley has raised a number of serious and important points.

Policing

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Wednesday 24th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hanson]

My hon. Friend is absolutely correct. Many superintendents at senior management level, who bring a great deal of experience to policing in this country, are being squeezed and losing their posts. This level of cuts is pushing forward a privatisation agenda, and I feel that we need to say clearly—let us be blunt—that we do not want private companies patrolling the public streets of Britain. We want police officers and police community support officers doing that job. The Government should have learned the lessons of G4S during the Olympics rather than rushing forward with plans for large-scale contracting out. Although public-private partnerships are valuable, we must ensure that new contracts pass tough key tests on value for money, resilience and security, transparency and accountability, and policing by consent.

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend mentions superintendents. In London we are likely to lose seven borough commanders, with large boroughs, including my own, having to merge and having no accountability at the top in local policing. We have already lost neighbourhood team sergeants. If that is the example being set in London by a cutting Tory regime—that is what we have under the Mayor of London and his new deputy mayor for policing, who has already cut services in my borough—then the rest of the country should take note, because they are simply cuts from the top to the bottom of the police service.

[Mr Hanson]

Now that the Boris bung has worn off and the election is over, the people of London face real policing cuts, and my hon. Friend is right to point out the real concerns there will be. It is not just a question of policing cuts, because on top of all that the Government, despite their rhetoric, are actually making it harder for police officers to do their job. They are not only cutting budgets, but removing crucial tools the police use to catch offenders and tackle crime, including reducing CCTV and DNA evidence and abolishing antisocial behaviour orders.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Tuesday 18th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Grant]

The Ministry of Justice acted quickly to put a plan in place when it became obvious that there were performance problems. We are not being complacent and we will continue to monitor performance, but we are seeing some substantial improvements. The framework with ALS is intended to provide better value for money. It also provides an opportunity to reduce a great deal of the administrative burdens that were placed on the justice agencies under the old system. The contract is also expected to save the Ministry of Justice in the region of £15 million a year.

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

The Minister must be irritated to be spending her first few days in office reading NAO reports detailing her predecessor’s cock-ups. Does she agree with the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee that the NAO inquiry into the language service contract has uncovered some shocking failings which have had a dreadful impact on clients of the Court Service and people who work in the interpretation service? If she does, will she now suspend the contract with Applied Language Solutions, or is she happy to see interpreters with no experience, qualifications or criminal records checks being used in serious and sensitive criminal cases?

[Mrs Grant]

I do not agree with that. We are seeing significant improvements—

Oral Answers to Questions

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Blunt]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right: such sentences consume substantial resources, not just in the offender management system but in the Parole Board and elsewhere. The prison system was having to manage a potential future disaster in the ever-increasing number of indeterminate sentence prisoners. We have finally got a grip on the problem and are now addressing it.

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

In trying to save money, the Minister misses the point. Without indeterminate sentences, some of the most violent and dangerous criminals—rapists, armed robbers and those who prey on the weakest and most vulnerable—will be released from custody against the professional advice of the probation service and others. Will that make the public more or less safe?

[Mr Blunt]

The shadow Minister is wrong because indeterminate sentences remain—they are called life sentences. There will be mandatory life sentences for the kind of offender that he described.

Family Courts

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Thursday 24th May 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

I am delighted to respond on behalf of the Opposition to this debate about the Justice Committee’s report on the operation of the family courts and the Government’s response to it—not least because I am doing so under your chairmanship, Mrs Osborne. I congratulate the Committee on the production of such a thorough and detailed response to what is clearly one of the most important areas of our legal system.

I am sure that the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd), who was here for a short time, is a valuable member of the Committee. Having spent several months working with him in Committee on what became the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, I know that he is assiduous and shows great integrity. Also, unusually on that Committee, his rhetoric matched his voting record, which was not often the case for Government Back Benchers.

I also thank the Chair of the Select Committee, the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith), for his speech, which, although made in his usual gentle way, was still forensic. It raised a number of issues, to which I am sure the Minister will respond. His points about delay, shared parenting and the evidence base were all well made and are all substantial concerns.

All I would say about the right hon. Gentleman’s comments on secrecy in the courts is that we were expecting some news about that today, with the introduction of the Justice and Security Bill in the House of Lords. The right hon. Gentleman is right that the balance between the protection of the interests of open justice and those of participants is a fine one in all cases, including those in the family courts. It is a pity that the Government are struggling once again to bring forward legislation, even when it has been announced in the media the week before.

I want to comment on another issue that the right hon. Gentleman mentioned—restrictions on advice and the increase in the number of litigants in person. I should say that I am grateful for briefings for the debate from the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, and Resolution, which also raised those issues. First, however, I want to make some general comments.

The importance of the review cannot be stated more clearly than by citing one of the facts in it—that 36 children were killed in 2009-10 by their parents; and that, between 1995 and 1999, in

“80% of all homicides where the victim was an infant under the age of one, the killer was a parent, and in ‘virtually all’ the remaining 20% the killer was a family member, friend or someone who had care of the infant”.

I am sure that everyone present today will be able to name at least one high-profile example of a child tragically killed by those who were supposed to be looking after them. Furthermore, even when a child is not physically harmed by their parents, a violent relationship between parents has been found to have a significant long-term negative effect on the child’s emotional well-being.

The courts therefore have a crucial role, not just in trying to ensure that a child has access to their parents on terms that are acceptable to both and also beneficial to the child, but, all too often, in ensuring that children in dangerous situations are given adequate care and protection. It could not be more important to get this matter right. The previous Government took great steps towards ensuring that the family courts were more accessible and came to more informed decisions, and that alternatives to the adversarial nature of court hearings were found.

We should also acknowledge that in some areas the Government are continuing in that vein, thanks largely to the Justice Committee’s report and the family justice review carried out by David Norgrove. Both identified weaknesses in the operation of the family courts, and the Government’s willingness to consider at least some of the recommendations made in them, and the move towards increased mediation and a more child-centric system, are to be commended.

Unfortunately, however, as with so much to do with the Government, seemingly well meant policies have potentially severe consequences, and, as ever, there is a catch. In their response to the Justice Committee’s report, the Government promised that legal aid would remain for cases where there was evidence of domestic violence. Yet they had to be dragged kicking and screaming through, I think, two lost votes and one tied vote in the House of Lords, during the passage of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, to acknowledge properly a definition of domestic violence that would give the protection of legal aid to those who so badly need it, and to extend the evidential criteria. Eventually, there was substantial movement on that, but there were still glaring omissions. Therefore there are clear cases where victims of domestic violence will not continue to benefit from legal aid, including in private family law cases.

The Government are right to believe that mediation is preferable, and keeping family law cases out of the courts through an agreement between parents is always to be encouraged. Yet for those people who cannot achieve that, and who need legal assistance, the 2012 Act again reduces their chance of receiving proper legal representation. To complicate matters further, the increase in the number of litigants in person, the Government’s replacement of face-to-face services with telephone advice and the dramatic decrease in counter hours—by two thirds, in many cases—mean that the amount of support available has decreased.

I have seen—in part of the Resolution brief for today’s debate, I think—a letter from Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service, dated 9 January. It advised that the measures such as the curtailment of the counter service and so on had been implemented without

“any significant issues being raised by our court users”.

However, as Resolution points out, it has been informed by many court users that phone calls and e-mails are “regularly” not answered. We have the Kafkaesque situation in which no longer having a service available means that complaints and queries are not being registered and dealt with. For an individual already faced with the daunting prospect of representing themselves in legal proceedings, that removal of a source of advice could be the difference between a decision that benefits a child and one based on the inability of one side adequately to represent themselves.

I disagree a little with the comment by the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed that sometimes legal aid can create an imbalance. That may be so in a minority of cases, but on the whole, the impecunious party—the party more in need of representation and not able to afford it, who is often the mother—needs access to legal aid so that both sides can be properly heard.

I practised for only a short time as a family lawyer, but I cannot think of any other area of law in which I practised where the intervention of advocates often resolved cases. Quite often the parties going to court would go not only as other litigants in person do, with an imperfect understanding of procedure and the law, but with a real animus against the other side and almost a willingness to continue the family argument through the court process. In the vast majority of cases, the intervention of lawyers—sometimes at an early stage and sometimes at the door of the court—is a way of drawing up consent orders, of resolving matters that otherwise and in the future would have to go before the judge.

One of the crucial points raised by both reports and various others over the years is the importance of limiting delays. A recent survey of Resolution’s members found that when one party is representing themselves, cases usually take longer. Indeed, 48% of respondents said that it can be more than twice as long as when both parties have legal representation—a point borne out anecdotally by the comments of the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd.

The removal of access to counter services cannot possibly improve that situation and will almost certainly lead to even longer delays. Further delays will be caused by the fact that counter services will no longer be available to check applications—a major issue, given that incorrectly completed applications are often rejected by the courts. Aside from those delayed decisions, which were described as “unacceptable” by the Government in their response to the family justice review, it is easy to see how that could also lead to a delay in identifying a child’s safeguarding issues.

My colleagues and I have been approached by representatives from a number of organisations with concerns that mirror the Opposition’s fears on these issues—that one cannot hope to improve services while simultaneously taking an axe to budgets across the board. The Government can talk all they want about a commitment to limiting delays and improving the service provided by family courts, but those improvements will not be found if the crucial background services, such as counter services, are removed.

I will not repeat the many excellent points made by the Chair of the Select Committee; I am sure that the Minister heard them and will respond to them. I hope that he will listen to the comments of the Select Committee and those that I and others with an interest in these matters have made, and will feed them back into the Government’s ongoing development of their justice policy.

The Opposition will not unnecessarily oppose anything that will genuinely improve the operation of our family courts, but the Government need to take notice of the many organisations that have expressed concerns that further delays will ensue as a consequence of the steps that they have taken and that those measures might be counter-productive. The Government should be working to ensure that the family courts work for everyone, not just those who can find a resolution to their problems before coming to court or those who have the means to pay privately for legal advice.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Djanogly]

The right hon. Gentleman makes a fair point. This was what came up in Australia. The Government have looked carefully at the lessons of the Australian experience of legislating in this area, which was highlighted by the family justice review. Direct comparisons with the experience in Australia are misleading; it is certainly not our intention to mirror the structure of the Australian legislation or to create new layers of complexity in our existing system.

Contributors all mentioned the importance of early intervention. I agree with my right hon. Friend that it is an essential component in solving this issue. The Department for Work and Pensions, the Department for Education and the Ministry of Justice are working closely together on this so that a parent’s first port of call will be an online hub that will provide practical information and advice and will signpost appropriate services.

We have introduced measures to strengthen consideration of mediation and to explore how that can work alongside parenting programmes and other interventions to help parents focus on a child’s needs. I will say a bit more about mediation later. In addition, we are working to develop parenting agreements as a tool to help parents agree arrangements that are child focused and practical.

The DFE is providing an early intervention grant worth about £2 billion, which is flexible funding for local authorities to spend on their early intervention priorities from Sure Start through to crime prevention. The Justice Committee will know about the Youth Justice Board and the custody pathfinder projects, which give pilot areas custody funding up front for the under-18s. That will incentivise local authorities to intervene early before young people become serial offenders.

Many other cases could be settled away from court. Too many people go to court to resolve their private disputes and fail to grasp the fact that the court is required to focus on the child’s welfare needs. That may mean that neither parent is happy with the decisions that are made. For many such parents, the family courts are not the best way of settling disputes about a child’s future. Mediation can be quicker and cheaper, and can provide better outcomes, especially if compared with drawn-out court hearings. It is important that mediation is considered at the earliest opportunity before positions become entrenched. An amicable solution is better than a litigious one.

Referrals to mediation in publicly funded cases are up by nearly 12% since the introduction of the pre-application protocol last April. However, I remain concerned about the protocol’s effectiveness in privately funded cases, and there is a need to tackle inconsistencies in approach across the courts. That is why we will make statutory changes to make it a prerequisite that anyone who wishes to begin court action must first attend a mediation information and assessment meeting to find out about and consider mediation. We remain committed to make public funding available for mediation through legal aid for those who are eligible and expect to fund an additional £10 million for mediation services.

I should point out to the hon. Member for Hammersmith that the Government have no plans to stop making available legal aid for children where they are a party to family proceedings. Various hon. Members mentioned litigants in person. We accept that the reforms will mean an increase in litigants in person. However, unrepresented parties have always been a feature of the justice system—some because they cannot afford representation and others because they choose not to be represented. Paying for a lawyer, whether out of private pockets or public funds, is not always necessary. Judges make significant efforts to assist litigants in person, explaining procedures and what is expected of them. We estimate that about 40% of private law children’s cases involve one or more litigants in person. The proportion in divorce cases is much higher than that.

[Mr Slaughter]

Will the Minister accept that replacing advocates with litigants in person can typically increase the length of a case by up to 100%? If he does not accept that there is robust evidence of that, should the Government not collect such evidence and make their assessment of what the changes will mean for the length and cost of a case?

[Mr Djanogly]

From a review of the literature, we know that sometimes these cases can take longer, but not always. Sometimes they are actually quicker. The picture is complex. However, we expect fewer cases to come to court in future because there will be 10,000 extra family mediations, which will help offset any additional burdens on the courts from dealing with litigants in person. Overall, we do not expect a likely increase in litigants in person to lead to significant additional burdens on the court.

In recognising that there is an existing problem with litigants in person—no matter what happened in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill—we are seeking to improve the system by introducing single family courts, which will provide one route into the system that people can understand; by changing court processes so that they are easier and quicker to understand; by introducing a new child arrangement order; by creating processes to deal with breach of order more quickly and effectively; by simplifying and streamlining the divorce process; and by improving the information made available to the public. In addition, support for separated and separating parents will be provided through new web and telephone services led by the Department for Work and Pensions, which will provide trusted independent information suited to people’s needs. The web service will be commissioned in 2012 and the telephone service in 2013.

Other practical steps include welcoming the Civil Justice Council’s report on self-represented litigants that was published late last year. It contained a number of practical and pragmatic recommendations, many of which are applicable to the family as well as the civil courts. We are working with the CJC and the Family Justice Council on how to take these matters forward. Recommendations include guidance to court staff on how to deal with unrepresented parties and information about pro bono assistance. We have also made funding available to support this work, some of which is being used to support the expansion of the Personal Support Unit, a charity based in the Royal Courts of Justice, which provides volunteers to accompany people to court and to fund guidance produced by not-for profit organisations specifically tailored to unrepresented parties. We envisage the funds being used on online tools, guides to the court process, including on video content, and other initiatives, and we are working with relevant organisations such as the citizens advice bureau to that effect. These will all be in place before the legal aid reforms take effect. These changes are radical and cannot happen overnight, nor can they happen in a family justice system that lacks leadership and coherence.

We agree with the family justice review and with my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed that transferring CAFCASS to the Ministry of Justice will bring court social work closer to the courts and make it easier to improve the whole system’s performance. We will transfer the sponsorship of CAFCASS from the Department for Education to the Ministry of Justice by the end of this spending review period. I should say that CAFCASS’s performance has improved significantly in recent times, but I agree with him that moving CAFCASS will not be enough; integration of services will be key.

Crucially, we are already putting in place the governance arrangements that will drive those changes. We have established the Family Justice Board, which brings together senior figures in the core organisations within the family justice system. The board will give family justice national leadership and visibility, and will be led by an independent chair and supported by a performance improvement sub-group and a young people’s board. We are also establishing new local family justice boards to drive momentum at a local level. The new national governance arrangements will provide a more joined-up family justice system and ensure consistency between national strategy and local delivery. Together, the new structures will have a clear remit to focus relentlessly on system performance.

[Mr Joe Benton in the Chair]

In taking forward work to improve the system’s efficiency and effectiveness, we must not overlook the need to make it more responsive. We are considering how we can simplify processes further and provide practical information to help unrepresented parties navigate their way through the system, as I described earlier.

My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley mentioned CAFCASS and guardians, in the context of the child’s voice being heard. We agree with the FJR’s strong views on the centrality of children’s interests and endorse the panel’s proposals on listening to children’s voices and ensuring that their wishes and feelings are taken into account. We will put the child back at the centre of the system. We take seriously our obligations to promote and implement the UN convention on the rights of the child, and throughout our proposed reforms, we will introduce practical measures to ensure that children’s voices are heard. The Family Justice Board will have a key role to play in supporting children’s right to have their voices heard, which is why one of its sub-groups will be a young people’s board, building on the benefits gained from the CAFCASS young people’s board.

There has been considerable debate over the years about the opening up of family courts. Slightly different positions have been stated today by right hon. and hon. Members, who I accept all care passionately that we get it right. Understandably, there are many different views on the subject, and there is a balance to be struck between confidence and privacy on one hand and publicity on the other. The challenge is balancing the need for public scrutiny with the parties’ need for privacy. I accept that the current position is unsatisfactory.

The Government’s response to the Justice Committee’s report last year, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed restated today, accepted the recommendation that the provisions in part 2 of the Children, Schools and Families Act 2010, which allow for greater reporting by the media, should not be enacted. As the Committee recommended, one lesson learned from the outcome of the last attempt to achieve transparency in the family courts is that a solution to this important and contentious area of policy should not be rushed. Given the issues at stake, we will work to find ways to achieve greater transparency in the family courts.

The work that the Government are doing to implement change in response to the Justice Committee’s report and the recommendations of the family justice review represents a broad and ambitious programme of reform, as I hope I have explained to some extent today. The programme that I have outlined shows our commitment to providing a modern family justice system where delay is the exception rather than the norm; one in which people are supported to resolve disputes themselves as early as possible and away from the court if possible; one that is coherent and well led by the Family Justice Board, with buy-in from all partner agencies: in short, a family justice system that children and families can trust and rely on. I know that all right hon. and hon. Members share that objective, and I am grateful to them for their contributions to this debate.

Question put and agreed to.