Legal Services Commission

Baroness Hollis of Heigham Excerpts

Tuesday 29th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord McNally]

My Lords, again, I emphasise that the RCJ CAB was able to apply to the Advice Services Transition Fund and this has helped it to continue. How many times can I say this? I look at a budget each day and I see that hard decisions have to be made. Hard decisions are being made by charities and we have tried to give them help in the transition. Quite simply, the days when large amounts of government funds were available for these bodies are over and we all have to face that fact.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

My Lords, why do those hard decisions have to be at the expense of the very poor and those needing help and advice? As my noble friend Lord Bach said, from next April, and particularly from next October, a brand new architecture of benefits—universal credit—will roll out to people who will, simultaneously, be losing large sums of money. Moreover, their claims will not be paper-based but will have to be online, even though something like a fifth of claimants do not even have access to a computer. As a result, they are going to need extensive help, support and advice at the very same time as the noble Lord is taking 40% of funding away from CABs across the country.

[Lord McNally]

The legal aid welfare spend will still be some £50 million. We are also in talks with the legal profession and with charitable organisations to help them with adjustments. The noble Baroness is right that we are talking about the poorest. Two years ago, when I announced this exercise, I said that if you cut a programme designed to help the poorest in our society then you will hurt the poorest in society. We are doing what we can to concentrate limited funds on the needy, but it is simply not good enough for the Opposition continually to be willing to sign every blank cheque and never tell us how they would save the money.