Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill
Debate between Andy Slaughter and Ben Gummer(13 years ago)
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Mr Slaughter
I hope that we can make some progress in this debate now. This is not helping—[Interruption.] The Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly) is laughing. I hope that he is not going back on his earlier promise that we would make progress today. Had the hon. Member for Ipswich (Ben Gummer) been here earlier, he would have heard me deal with that point, in terms and at length, in response to an intervention from the Chair of the Select Committee. Will he stop wasting time?
Ben Gummer
The hon. Gentleman is a little previous. Had he allowed me to continue my point, as I had asked, he would have heard me address exactly what he said. I did hear what he said, albeit outside the Chamber. Let me deal with this point about the Opposition. If they are to be credible, they have to make alternative proposals for cuts to legal aid, which they promised in their manifesto and have promised since, to this Chamber. A few months ago, during the Public Bill Committee, they clung to the proposals made by the Bar Council and the Law Society, until those proposals fell apart. They fell apart to the extent that the Bar Council and the Law Society have had to revise them in a resubmitted document provided earlier this week. That was the Opposition’s first cost-reduction plan and it was not one of their own making—it was made by others.
Some £245 million-worth of amendments were tabled by the Opposition in the Public Bill Committee, along the lines of those proposed by the hon. Member for Makerfield, but with no suggestions as to where cuts might be made elsewhere. So we get to a point where there is a complete absence of the other side of policy from Her Majesty’s Opposition—it might provide some credibility to what they propose—until perhaps today, when the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) appears before the House saying, “We are going to bring in accelerated competitive tendering in criminal defence work.”
Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill
Debate between Andy Slaughter and Ben Gummer(13 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Slaughter
If he wishes, I will give the Minister the opportunity to intervene on me, and to reply to the hon. Lady, or he may wish to deal with the matter subsequently. I have nothing like her experience, but I have had the experience many hundreds of times of explaining undertakings and their seriousness to clients. She is absolutely right. In law, there are clear differences, but in practice the effect of an undertaking is the same in relation to perpetrators as the outcome of a trial in terms of the penalties available against them. Excluding undertakings is a huge and glaring omission from the Bill.
The other criteria are
“a letter from a social services department confirming its involvement in connection with domestic violence…a letter of support or a report from a domestic violence support organisation…or…other well-founded documentary evidence of abuse (such as from a counsellor, midwife, school or witnesses.”
Ben Gummer (Ipswich) (Con)
On paragraph (j) of the hon. Gentleman’s amendment, I can see where he is heading, but would that require a state registry of domestic violence organisations to exist so that they could be validated in order to put in a claim legitimately?
Mr Slaughter
I think the hon. Gentleman is trying to be helpful, but he is over-complicating matters. He is also missing the central point, which is that our issue is not, as the Mayor of London’s appears to be, with self-referral or with the Minister’s point about false claims, but with the scope for evidential support. We believe that organisations, whether they be medical or domestic violence organisations should be sufficient to be regarded as evidence, just as they often are in trial processes.
Ben Gummer
I am genuinely trying to helpful, though I know that the hon. Gentleman might find that difficult to believe. All his other examples—general practitioners, hospital doctors, undertakings from a court, social services departments—are instruments of the state, as it were. I would be happy for many organisations in my constituency that support women in a domestic violence situation to give evidence to a court, but that does not mean that all organisations that claim to speak for women should be able to do so.
Mr Slaughter
The hon. Gentleman is being a little pernickety. It is a practical reality that in many cases voluntary organisations, which have vast experience of supporting women, will be providing that support, not only in an emotional and a practical sense but in an evidential sense.
Ben Gummer
Again, the hon. Lady speaks with far more experience than I on this matter, and I was getting to her point. I am merely suggesting that the idea that we can address all these problems of domestic violence through an overheated politicised discussion about where the Government are heading on this Bill not only misses the point, but will damage the cause at hand.
On amendment 74, which was tabled by the shadow Minister, I return to the point I made in my intervention. I regret the fact that he said that I was being pernickety, because many of the things that he is driving at have reason and substance behind them. However, there is a problem if we include, within a list of organisations that would help women to report, a general definition of
“a domestic violence support organisation”
without providing clarification about the efficacy of that organisation.
Mr Slaughter
The hon. Gentleman clearly was not listening when my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) pointed out that that definition is perfectly acceptable to the UK Border Agency, as are the others. It is a composite of definitions acceptable to Departments, so that is a rogue point. May I add that he is doing no service to this House by padding out this debate, as the hon. Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland) did, when we have several other serious debates to come? If the Conservatives are afraid to debate social welfare legal aid, they should say so. Otherwise he should get on with it and allow the House to debate these important amendments tonight.
Ben Gummer
The right hon. Gentleman misses my point about the Public Bill Committee. There are many issues that needed to be raised that we could have fleshed out at greater length, but the Opposition tabled so many specious amendments, many of which were completely contradictory—largely in the name of the shadow Minister, not that of the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green), who is shaking her head—that we did not get to the meat of some of the issues in the amendment we are debating. Had we been able to discuss sub-paragraph (10)(j) of amendment 74, which the shadow Minister has tabled, we might have been able to improve the Opposition’s amendment so that it could be acceptable to Members on both sides of the House. Instead, we have an amendment that was tabled a couple of days ago with aspects that clearly would not hold up to further legislative scrutiny. It is a pity that we did not have that discussion in Committee instead of discussing a series of amendments, some of which I doubt the shadow Minister had even read before he started speaking to them.
Putting all that aside, a principal issue for me is that many of the amendments tabled by the shadow Minister in Committee would have committed his party to spending increases costing £245 million, but whenever I or other members asked whether the Opposition had any alternative spending plans, they told us to look at the Law Society’s plans. Unfortunately, the Law Society has had to revise its plans, which were found wanting.
Ben Gummer
I am just coming to that if the hon. Gentleman will listen.
When they table amendments, the Opposition have a duty to explain how their changes would be paid for and what balances would be made elsewhere in the Bill, but so far we have had nothing to substantiate how they would do that, and neither do we have any idea how their changes would fit into the general pattern of the Bill. I cannot therefore vote for their amendment or that of the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion—amendment 113 —as neither is complete and nor have they been properly discussed.
In conclusion, I hope that we can continue our proceedings without trying to politicise the issue of domestic violence. I hope we can discuss the precise provisions in the Bill without throwing what I feel have been intemperate and sometimes misjudged accusations at one side purely because they happen to disagree with the assertions put by the other.