Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Debate between Baroness Doocey and Lord Howarth of Newport

Monday 23rd April 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Doocey]

My Lords, I speak in support of Amendment 168B. I share the view of the noble Lord, Lord Bach, that the Government’s concessions are not an adequate substitute for the loss of legal aid.

The Government have acknowledged the fundamental principle that civil liberties are nothing if you cannot enforce them. If you do not have the money or the knowledge to defend your rights then, sadly, these rights become meaningless. That is where the legal aid system is so important, particularly for the many disabled people who depend on welfare benefits in order to survive.

The Government seem to support this principle in theory but not in practice. The Secretary of State’s statement that such legal aid should be available only on a “point of law” offers little in the way of practical help for disabled people appealing against incorrect welfare benefit decisions, the majority of which are then overturned on appeal. The difficulty is that it is completely unrealistic to assume that people with no legal knowledge whatever will be able to understand what a point of law is. I believe that many people will not even bring an appeal because they will not have the knowledge or the confidence to do so without legal advice.

The Government’s belief that their advice services fund is an adequate substitute for legal aid is groundless because it will not mitigate the cuts in legal aid. The fund was hugely oversubscribed, and in this financial year less than a third of the money has been allocated to organisations delivering advice on welfare benefits.

The Government have announced a further £20 million of funding for the next two years, and that is of course most welcome. However, this is likely to be spent plugging the gaps in generalist advice services caused by cuts to other funding sources, leaving specialist welfare benefits advice unfunded. Once legal aid cuts are introduced, the advice sector will lose at least £100 million a year, so the £20 million fund will make only a very small dent in this shortfall.

The inadequacy of the funding is exacerbated by the rising demand for services that most charities are facing. A recent survey carried out by Justice for All found that nearly 90 per cent of advice charities had more people coming to them for help in the last year, yet over 80 per cent of the same charities also predicted that, despite this increase in demand, they will be able to help many fewer people next year.

Discretionary funding is no alternative to retaining legal aid because it imposes no duty on the Government to fund specialist services and will guarantee nothing for advice agencies. Unless welfare benefit advice is retained within the scope of legal aid, it will limit access to justice and the right of people to enforce their freedoms.

The Department for Work and Pensions already reimburses the Ministry of Justice for the cost of running the tribunals, which was necessary after the huge increase in appeals caused by the introduction of employment and support allowance. It is unclear to me why this approach cannot be extended to cover the cost of independent advice to improve the effectiveness of these same tribunals.

We must do everything possible to protect the most vulnerable people in our society. I therefore urge the House to continue to press the Government to give more concrete assurances that disabled people will be able to access legal aid advice when appealing welfare benefit decisions.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

On 17 April, the Lord Chancellor said to the House of Commons:

“There is no doubt that the present level of legal aid provision is on any measure unaffordably expensive ... Even after our reforms have been carried … we will still have by far the most costly legal aid system in the world. It is almost twice as expensive as that in any other country per head of population”.—[Official Report, Commons, 17/4/12; col. 217.]

The amendments that the other place addressed on 17 April concerned civil legal aid, and I would be grateful if the Minister would advise us as to which common law jurisdictions in other countries actually spend twice per head of population on civil legal aid that we do. I recognise that our expenditure on criminal legal aid is very high by international standards, but the Government have not chosen to reform criminal legal aid. We are dealing here with the reform of civil legal aid. I wonder whether what we are being asked to accept is based on a false premise. I very much doubt that it is correct that our expenditure on civil legal aid is so enormously out of line as the Lord Chancellor suggested. I am very willing to be corrected.

At all events, my noble friend Lord Bach ventured an estimate that the cost of the amendment that we are debating now might be some £15 million. Again, I ask the Minister whether he believes that, in the context of public expenditure of the order of £100 billion per year, the expenditure of £15 million to provide legal aid to support welfare benefit claimants in cases where there is real reason to doubt whether the assessment or the adjudication that has been made of their case is appropriate is unaffordable or disproportionate.

The Lord Chancellor last week in the House of Commons put the figure at £25 million, so £15 million or £25 million in relation to social security expenditure of £100 billion does not seem inordinately expensive. Yet, he said:

“we cannot afford provision in an area of relatively low priority”.—[Official Report, Commons, 17/4/12; col. 224.]

Is it appropriate to describe such an area of expenditure as a relatively low priority? We are dealing with cases of people in poverty. There would be no question of their being eligible for welfare benefits unless they were on low incomes. The risk for them, if they are not awarded benefit, is that they will be cast into abject poverty. For them, this is not a matter of relatively low priority, and nor should it be for us.

The ration that the Legal Services Commission offers of £160 in legal aid to support advice and assistance in welfare benefits cases at an early stage is by no means extravagant—indeed, it represents very good value for money—and may make all the difference to people who may be awarded legal aid or benefits from organisations funded by legal aid as to whether they can lead decent and proper lives, reconstruct their situations, support their families and live other than in poverty.