Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Baroness King of Bow Excerpts

Monday 21st November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness King of Bow]

My Lords, this House knows that when a Bill is put before it, the Government of the day usually get some of the legislation right and some wrong. But the wrongs contained in this Bill, whether by accident or design, are monumentally devastating. They cannot be made good by the benign aspects of the Bill or written off as collateral damage to be borne by British citizens in times of austerity. The Bill undermines the very compact between citizen and state. Were it to become law, British citizens who cannot afford a lawyer will effectively lose fundamental rights they have today.

I will confine most of my remarks to the legal aid section of the Bill. Those affected could be almost anyone but they include some of the most vulnerable groups in Britain: disabled children whose lives are ruined by medical negligence, battered women who are victims of domestic violence, terminally ill patients—for example, those suffering from asbestosis-related disease—the disabled, the abused and the sick. Under this Bill these are the scapegoats for austerity Britain. What is the Government’s argument? They say they must clamp down on frivolous and trivial cases and the claim culture. We all agree with that. But how can they claim that a person dying of asbestos-related disease is a trivial or frivolous case or is part of the claim culture? I am sure the Minister does not claim that; in which case, surely he must bring those claims back within the scope of legal aid.

The same is true of domestic violence. Those crimes can never be described as trivial or frivolous. I was struck by what was said by a domestic violence survivor, Jeanie, who came here to the House of Lords to address Peers a fortnight ago. She said:

“It’s not an ideological issue; it’s one of basic fairness and justice”.

Jeanie was thrown down the stairs by her husband late in her pregnancy. She gave birth at the bottom of her stairs to a still-born child. Eventually, on a subsequent occasion when her husband cracked her skull, she received legal aid and was able to escape with her children and prosecute her psychotic husband for GBH. Jeanie says that without legal aid she would not have been able to leave her husband and he would have killed her. He might have killed the kids as well. Under this Bill as it now stands, Jeanie would not be eligible for legal aid. It is clear that these provisions must be amended because the criteria for domestic violence are now so narrow that in many circumstances even if a perpetrator admits that he has raped a woman, his own admission no longer counts in getting his victim legal aid. This is madness. It is no good asking a woman who is beaten and raped by her partner to use what the Minister described earlier as “less adversarial means” to resolve disputes. Not only is it inappropriate to ask a woman to do this, it is adding insult to terrible injury. Again, I know the Minister would never intend that so I am sure that he will want to rectify the Bill as it stands. If he is not able to give women in Jeanie’s position access to justice, I am sure he will never sleep again at night. To prevent terminal insomnia on his part and to put all our minds at rest, I ask him to abandon the narrow definition of domestic violence which is not used in other parts of Government, to lift the 12-month time limit and to ensure that no victim of domestic violence is forced to either ruin their life or lose their life because the justice system is now closed to them.

I now turn my remarks to the Bill’s impact on children. The Government have said that where children are involved, legal aid will still be provided. In the Minister’s opening remarks he said that 95 per cent of children who are currently covered by legal aid will retain that protection. First, having spoken to all interested parties, I am not yet convinced of that fact. Secondly, the Minister cannot be including within that statistic all the children affected by their parents’ or carers’ loss of legal aid under these proposals. The Minister will know that almost 150,000 children will lose civil law and family law protection provided by legal aid. Children are the main party in 6,000 cases a year that will no longer qualify for legal aid. They are financially affected by more than 140,000 cases a year involving their parents. Another obvious example, about which we heard earlier, is welfare benefit advice. Currently in tribunal appeals where the applicant has legal advice—this is an incredible statistic; if your Lordships are drifting off, I advise you to come back for this one and remember it—55 per cent of all DWP decisions to cut benefits are declared wrong and are overturned. On decisions taken to appeal, the Government are proved wrong more often than they are proved right. This means without a shadow of a doubt that low-income households will unfairly and through no fault of their own suffer when they no longer have recourse to legal aid. That includes 36,000 children every year from the poorest families who will no longer be able to appeal poor benefits decisions of this nature. A previous speaker talked about equality of arms. This is a precise illustration of how we are losing that equality of arms and how power is slipping from the individual towards the state. I do not think that this is an ideological issue, but, if it is, surely noble Lords on the government Benches would want to stop this drift of power from the individual to the state.

On the subject of children, the NSPCC unsurprisingly says that it is “gravely concerned” by the Bill and that:

“The proposals fail to protect the interests of children's welfare and the interests of justice”.

That is a damning critique. The Children’s Society is equally concerned and says:

“Taking whole areas of legal matter out of scope will inevitably affect the poorest, most vulnerable and marginalised families”.

So let us add those vulnerable families to the other specific groups targeted by the Bill: the disabled, the abused and the sick. There must surely be a better way of reforming legal aid than making life unbearable for those on the margins.

I was so concerned about the proposals in the area of medical negligence that I wrote to all Peers on the subject before the summer. I was overwhelmed by the responses that I received from all sides of the House. Your Lordships clearly do not think that it is wise or just to remove legal aid in medical negligence cases. I am sure that the Government will want to listen intently to the will of the House by accepting an amendment on this subject at an early stage.

My last sentence on this matter returns us to the victim of domestic violence, Jeanie, whose husband’s violence killed her child. Jeanie named her daughter, who was stillborn at the bottom of her stairs, Hope. She found the courage to protect her children and save her own life using legal aid. Jeanie is relying on us, on the Minister and especially on Peers on the government Benches to ensure that other lives are not ruined by a legal system where justice is denied.

Civil Legal Aid

Baroness King of Bow Excerpts

Thursday 19th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness King of Bow]

My Lords, in the time available I want to make three points about the proposed cuts to civil legal aid. First, the cuts target the poorest but reduce standards for all of us. Secondly, the cuts in their present form actually increase costs to the taxpayer. Thirdly, not only do they restrict access to justice but, as we have heard, they specifically remove legal aid from children who are victims of medical accidents or negligence.

I find that almost unbelievable. Who in their right mind would think that it was an acceptable idea to remove legal aid from a child who had been disabled for life due to a medical accident or, still worse, negligence? I have written to all noble Lords asking them to write to the Prime Minister on this point because I feel so strongly about it. Regardless of our politics, I do not believe that there is a single one of us in this House who thinks that that is a good and proper thing to do. I hope all of us believe that Great Britain should be a country that provides legal aid to children who are victims in these circumstances, not one that would deny those children any recourse to justice.

Giving Members on the government Benches the benefit of the doubt, what on earth is this about? Even more perplexingly, this is not just about saving money; if it were, the Government would welcome the Law Society’s proposals with open arms. These cut more than the Government’s £350 million cuts to legal aid. The Law Society, playing an excellent hand of poker, has raised the Government’s cuts and said, “We’ll cut even more”. So, if this is about saving money, why cannot we take on board the expertise of those who actually work in the sector? Critically, the Law Society’s cuts do not involve removing recourse to justice from the most vulnerable.

Coming to perhaps the most salient point, it is not just the poorest who will suffer. We will all suffer. If we do not have legal aid to challenge Rachman-type housing, for example, housing standards will not improve. If we do not have legal aid to challenge medical negligence, care in the health service overall will not improve. We see how case law in Britain protects all British people. Look at the Hillsborough disaster, the thalidomide case and the Clapham rail crash; all involved elements of civil legal aid and led to safety improvement, whether for healthcare, stadium safety or transport. Therefore, although evidently only the poorest qualify for civil legal aid, the resulting case law protects us all. We will be worse off if this goes through as currently planned. I ask the Government to think again and for intelligent cuts. None of us thinks that no cuts should be made, but they should not be self-inflicted cuts that will wound this country grievously.

I ask the Minister to reply to me on a particular point to clarify the Green Paper, which says on page 172:

“We propose to retain the current scope of Legal Help and Representation”,

covering legal aid for medical negligence. It uses a few more words than that but that is essentially what it says. It goes on to say:

“We propose to remove all Legal Help and Representation”,

around medical negligence, again using a lot more words. Which is it? I know the Government have said that it was an accident and that they did not mean to give children that cover. However, the good thing about such a contradictory Green Paper is that the Government can do a U-turn and say, “Oh, that is what we were thinking all along”. That is what I hope they will do. Please step back from these proposals. It is bad enough to remove help from the most vulnerable, but to do so when it seems clear that it will increase costs to other departments is frankly insane. I shall write to the Minister with a full list of examples of how costs will increase in other departments.

I fully realise that in this House a law we often pass is that of unintended consequences. However, here the consequences are clear. I implore the Minister to commission an impact assessment before going further with something that could severely damage this country’s fantastic justice system.