Legal Aid

Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde Excerpts

Thursday 10th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Howarth for obtaining this debate today. It is because he is not a lawyer that I was attracted to take part in what could be regarded, on the margins, as a debate about the technical aspects of law. However, it is not—it goes to the heart of our democracy as it is about the ability of any citizen to have access to justice, irrespective of their standing or their affluence.

The 2013 Act and the policy introduced by the coalition Government resulted in a 28% drop in the Legal Aid Agency’s budget at a time when demand was going up. Two years have passed since then. The House of Commons Justice Committee said that those changes have harmed access to justice for some litigants— those who are poorer in our community. That is supported by the National Audit Office, which also criticised the Government for not taking an evidence-based approach to this issue.

My concern in this debate is for those suffering as victims of domestic violence, children and people with disabilities, who are some of those most harmed by the 2013 Act. The Minister may well say that there is exceptional case funding which can be applied for. As my noble friend Lady Mallalieu said, the Ministry of Justice estimated that there would be around 6,000 applicants a year. In fact, of the 1,100-plus applications made, just 3% received exceptional case funding and half of those were in the pipeline before the law was introduced. Exceptional case funding needs reviewing and simplifying on the basis of the evidence that we now have of how the 2013 Act has worked and how it has, in fact, denied access to justice. In the case of families, which I am particularly interested in, there has been real hardship, real denial of access to justice and a real impact of the Act.

There has been a significant drop in mediation. The National Audit Office noted that there was a £20 million underspend on mediation. Restoring funding for initial advice is estimated to cost around £14 million. That would be neutral in cost terms, but would provide some support for the people I am talking about.

Legal aid is not available at the moment for extended family members seeking to provide homes for children who would otherwise be facing life in local authority care—and what a poor start for our children that provides. The current provisions do not allow family members—for instance, grandparents—to have legal aid support. If it were allowed, it might result in substantial numbers of those children staying within the family and being properly looked after, rather than going into local authority care with all the problems that creates. It is often not only a life blighted but a higher cost to the state.

The amendment of the domestic violence gateway needs real discussion and change. I remember the debates on the Act vividly, although I did not take part because I am not a lawyer. The opposition Benches pleaded with the coalition Government to look at domestic violence and make an exception. Those pleas fell on deaf ears, much to the shame of that coalition Government. Why not allow solicitors and other advisers approved under the legal aid contract as supervisors to have delegated power to confirm that a client is a victim of domestic violence and is therefore entitled to legal aid? I ask the Minister to answer these points when he replies.

The Act has now had time to give us an indication of whether it assists access to justice. We all accept that savings had to be made, but not by penalising those least able to cope. Those who are affluent will always have access to the law. It is the people who do not whom I am concerned about, so I ask the Minister to reply to these points.

In conclusion, as the noble Lord, Lord Cotter, said, this year many of us have been going round saying how proud we are of 800 years of Magna Carta. What a year for such an issue over legal aid. Magna Carta states:

“To no one will we deny or delay … justice”.

Today, many men, women and children in this country do not have that provision.

House of Lords: Reform

Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde]

My Lords, the sad issue of the debate over the past two days has been that, rather than having a constructive debate that takes us forward, we have seen a joining together of Members—whether they are in favour of reform, an elected House or a non-elected House—against the proposals. The responsibility for that has to fall at the coalition’s feet. The Bill is not a draft Bill for reform of the House of Lords. It spends much time talking about and providing for an elected House—whether 80 per cent or 100 per cent—and totally ignores the peripheral issues that are as important in that reform.

A number of Peers referred to the Royal Commission on the Reform of the House of Lords—the Wakeham report. I am pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, is in his place. He was a very able chairman of that commission. In his closing remarks, the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, said that the Bill builds on the Wakeham report. In many ways, the Bill does not build on that commission, of which I was a member. The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, talked about the Bill being drawn up by a group of people in a committee that contained no one from the Opposition or the Cross Benches. That is absolutely true. The Wakeham commission met for 10 months. It received more than 1,700 submissions. It held 21 public meetings in addition to visits to various parts of the country—Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales—to meet parliamentarians in those areas. There was not a majority in those meetings or from the evidence that we took in favour of a directly elected House. Yesterday, the noble Lord, Lord Ashdown, said:

“This is not about what the public want, it is about us putting our House in order”.—[Official Report, 21/6/11; col. 1189.]

A major constitutional change is proposed but the public are not at the centre of it. I find that unacceptable.

The debate today has centred on the issue of election, because that is what the draft Bill concentrates on. That is not good enough for our constitution. Many Members who have taken part in the debate, including me, have been put in the position of having to reject the proposals in the Bill because, frankly, it is an Elastoplast. It does not provide for stability of parliamentary rule in a democracy and it does not cover the essential issues. We have little coverage in the Bill of the roles and responsibilities of the new House of Lords and how they would impact on the House of Commons—and, indeed, whether the role of the House of Commons also needs to change. The noble Lord, Lord Butler, referred to that, and how right he is.

Until I came to this House, I had been elected to every position that I had held in my working life. I had no doubt where my responsibility lay: it lay with the people who elected me. If you have a House of Commons that is elected and this House becomes overnight—not by evolution or incremental steps but by a full-blown decision—an 80 cent or 100 per cent elected House, I know where elected Members of this House will think that their accountability lies. Any idea that constituents will not go to you when they have voted for you to ask you to deal with issues is cloud-cuckoo-land. That will present a challenge in a short time.

I support the content of the Wakeham commission report, which dealt with an element of elected membership. This is a missed opportunity. It could have been so different. Perhaps there is some truth in the reports that we have had that these proposals were a consolation prize for the lost political ambition of the AV voting system being introduced. If there is, that is not a service to the population of this country.

The Government have said that they will listen. What proposals will they bring forward for public consultation on their initiatives, even after the Joint Committee report? Will the Government hold a referendum on the outcome of any discussions? Will the Government use the Parliament Act if this House is a barrier to the changes that they seek? Those are not frivolous questions; they are questions that have a right to be answered.

The prelude to this debate will be the Joint Committee. I wish my noble friend Lord Richard and his colleagues the best of luck in their work. I cannot think of anyone better to chair the committee. He really has a difficult task in front of him. Try as I might, I have great difficulty in seeing it being able to deliver to the Government, to this House and, most importantly, to the House of Commons a revised Bill that will satisfy what we need in this country. That said, I wish it well and I am sure that the quality of what it produces will be much better than the draft Bill that we have before us, because I cannot think that it could be any worse.