Civil Legal Aid (Remuneration) (Amendment) (No. 3) Regulations 2014

Baroness Deech Excerpts

Wednesday 7th May 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Deech (CB)]

My Lords, I cannot compete with the expertise of other speakers before me, but I declare a couple of interests. First, I am a regulator of the profession—but not its representative. Secondly, despite what the noble Lord, Lord Bach, said, I have been involved in several judicial reviews and have won three and lost one, albeit ably represented by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, with the noble Lord, Lord Lester, on the other side. I am in the middle of yet another. Bitter experience though it was, this does not deter me from supporting the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, in asking the Government to think again.

Why do we spend so much time in this House attempting to perfect the laws that come to us from the other place and our own? The ultimate way of enforcing them and making sure that they are good law is by judicial review—or at least the threat of judicial review. Many public bodies which make important decisions do so acting in the shadow of judicial review, expecting it to come. Knowing this makes them take much more care over how they apply our law. This House and the other House will be the losers if judicial review is restricted.

I tweeted this morning that we spent £9 billion on the Iraq war, spent £11 billion on the Olympics and may well spend £50 billion or more on HS2. Our legal system stands at risk for the sake of £200 million, which, in the global way of looking at things, is very little. I know that the Law Society and the Bar Council have put forward to the Ministry other ways of saving that money.

How will this particular reign of the current Lord Chancellor be remembered in the history books? It will be remembered as one of impending chaos. We now have a situation where, because of the attempts to save money, important fraud cases collapse because no barrister will work for the sum offered and the family courts are clogged up with emotional litigants in person thereby causing judges to have to run cases in a way that they really should not have to. Speaking as a regulator, I can say that altruistic young people, very often from black and ethnic minority backgrounds, are being deterred from taking up law as a profession because criminal law and family law will no longer offer them even the most modest of incomes with which to start out, bearing in mind that they have debts from university. I could not in all honesty encourage them to take up the profession right now. That means that 10 or 20 years down the line, there will be yet more complaints about the lack of social mobility and diversity in the profession. There will continue to be calls for more ethnic minority and female judges, and they will have been cut off right now because of these attempts—well meaning, I suppose—to save £200 million.

Why is this coming about? If one goes back a bit, the blame has to lie with the former Prime Minister Tony Blair, who made a constitutional change for which we are now paying. When I was a law student, I learned that the British constitution was never roughly pushed around; it simply inched along, changing a bit here and there, in response to circumstances. The position, however, of the Lord Chancellor was rather brutally changed a few years ago. True, the old-style Lord Chancellor offended against the separation of powers. He was a Speaker, he was a member of the Cabinet and he was a judge. But look where we are now. Our system of justice lacks a champion. The rule of law needs someone to look after it who is not looking for political preferment, looking to the next job or looking to save money and thereby garner acclaim. The system of justice needs an old-style champion complete with curly wig, stockings and all the rest of it, because that symbolised someone who was above it all, who had reached the top of the tree and whose only concern was access to justice and the smooth running of the system.

I am afraid that the current Ministry of Justice, so-called, might one day be called by the history books the “Ministry of Injustice”. What is going on is not right and I think that everyone in this Chamber, no matter what side they are sitting on, knows that very well. I support the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, and I congratulate him. I call upon the Ministry to think again.