Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Baroness Shackleton of Belgravia Excerpts

Wednesday 7th March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Neill of Bladen]

My Lords, perhaps I may add a word to what the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, said. It seemed to me that he put his finger absolutely on the point. We are faced with a decision on whether the rule of law is being complied with in the proceedings on this amendment. It seems to me—and I have heard it from every speaker—that it is an indefensible provision. It is bound to have a terrible effect on a small group of disadvantaged people. They are required to build a case in this difficult area of welfare and social security law. Anyone who has had any personal experience of advising a litigant who is unaided and comes in saying, “Could you please advise me about this problem?”, does not need to look at the problem for more than five minutes before realising the difficulty in finding out what the law is. You have to find out the current state of the statute or the statutory instrument on which you seek to rely, which is quite a difficult area in itself with the rate of amendments that take place. Then there is the current state of case law or the latest court ruling in the relevant area, which could be almost inaccessible nowadays to ordinary people who have to have a lawyer. I am convinced by what I have heard that to segregate a group and say, “Legal aid and advice of any sort will not come to you from any public fund”, is something to which this House ought not, for one moment, lend its support.

[Baroness Shackleton of Belgravia]

My Lords, I speak in support of the amendment in the name of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, as regards delegating to the mediator whether a person should be eligible for legal aid. I speak from my interest as a practising lawyer in this area. By delegating to the mediator, the lawyer cannot possibly be encouraged to take on work which would otherwise not be fit for purpose and it will simply be too late unless someone responsible can take the case on and protect the child in question.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

My Lords, there is very little to add in what has been a remarkably unanimous debate—“Sit down”, says one voice. It is extraordinary that not a single dissentient voice has been heard in an hour and 48 minutes. I hope that the Minister, who has the unenviable task of summing up this group of amendments, will take on board the passion with which the House has spoken. Nearly everyone has been saying, in one way or another, that for us as a Parliament to legislate benefits for the most needy, the poorest, the least articulate and the most vulnerable and then to deny them the means of accessing those rights is not right. That will undermine a society which is already in tension. We live in difficult times. I put it to my noble friend, who I know would agree with what I have said, and to the Lord Chancellor, that for a Government to cut the lifeline—for that is what it is—of millions of our fellow citizens in getting the modest help that the state has provided for them must be the most bizarre form of saving.

Perhaps I can add a word about the advice centres. Not enough has been said today about the 60-odd law centres and the 100-odd independent legal advice centres. Together with the 200 CABs that have a specialist adviser, they deliver value for money which I suspect you could not find in virtually any other part of our nation state. That is because not only do they do that work for rates of pay that those of us in the private profession would spurn, but they are backed by an army of volunteers. The CAB movement has hundreds of thousands of people who turn out to give generalist advice which, frankly, does not achieve its purpose without the specialist trained advisers at their backs, who currently are getting contracts from the legal aid scheme. I realise the problem for the Government in trying to match the need for cuts with what society needs and I realise that my noble friend has already conceded the amendment which we put forward to allow the Lord Chancellor to bring back into scope legal aid areas that will be cut out by this Bill, but the profoundest issue here is the nature of the society to which we want to belong. Is it still to be a welfare state, or is it not? Is it right that a couple of years ago two bankers whom I can think of earned more than the entire sum that is being spent on legal aid for all the law centres and CABs? Is that the society that we want to be part of? No, say I; and no, I suspect, say all of us.

As a signatory to Amendment 101, I hope that, with all the difficulties, my noble friend will make some solid commitments that enable those advice centres to continue doing their phenomenal job—the CABs alone deal with more than 100,000 tribunal cases—because, frankly, if they cannot, I fear for the consequences.