Legal Aid

Baroness Turner of Camden Excerpts

Thursday 4th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Faulks]

It used to be a convention that judges did not criticise politicians and politicians did not criticise judges. I do not propose to depart from that convention. What I can say is that both those litigants have in fact been able to get legal aid. There remain the exceptional funding provisions under Section 10 of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act, which apply to cases in which there is said to be a violation of the convention or an EU provision. In fact there is a difference, and one should not conflate this, between scope and eligibility. Usually there is scope for these things, but the individual applicants nevertheless have to satisfy the tests of eligibility.

[Baroness Turner of Camden (Lab)]

My Lords, is the Minister aware that the Bar Council has recently reported, after a review of LASPO, that the Act means that poor people generally speaking cannot get their cases heard in courts at all? Many of them try to represent themselves, though not very effectively. It is not a very good way to celebrate Magna Carta, as we shall be asked to next year, when we have a situation in which poor people simply cannot get their cases heard at all. This is particularly true as far as employment issues are concerned.

[Lord Faulks]

Litigants in person have always been a feature of the legal system. Clearly, any judge—I speak as someone who has sat as a judge—would much rather have a case in which both parties were represented by highly competent lawyers. Unfortunately, we have had to make certain cuts. The cuts, when fully implemented, will reduce the amount that we spend from £2 billion per year to £1 billion. This still makes us one of the most generous countries in the world. We are of course listening carefully to any anxieties that people have about there being injustices. We have committed to review LASPO on a period of three to five years.