Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Baroness Verma Excerpts

Tuesday 20th December 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Clinton-Davis]

My Lords, may I? That side has just been speaking.

[Baroness Verma]

My Lords, let us hear first from the noble Lord and then from my noble friend.

[Lord Clinton-Davis]

My Lords, I would like to ask the Government a simple question. What do the Bar Council, the Law Society and the organisations concerned with poverty with regard to legal services have to say? Have the Government taken the trouble to consult these organisations? The noble Lord says that they have. So what is their reply? They remain obdurately opposed to the principles that the Government are putting forward today. I unhesitatingly support the amendment. Pretty well all the speeches in the Committee—whether from the Conservative, Liberal Democrat or these Benches, and on the Cross Benches—have expressed opposition to what the Government are trying to do and support for what the amendment stands for.

I also unhesitatingly support the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile. He has spoken very bravely, and has been supported by several noble Lords who share his profession. A bevy of Silks have announced support for the proposition advanced by the amendment. I got involved with legal aid from pretty well the very beginning, because of a very simple notion—I thought it was imperative that ordinary people should be able to advance their cause and, where they are impaired from doing so, they should be supported by the state. That was my view then. The amendment sets out very clearly, within the constraints that are necessarily imposed upon us, the basic principles that we should preserve.

It is vital that individuals should have access to legal services, where their rights are being seriously impaired or are not being properly advanced—subject always to the provisions of the 1999 Act. There is a serious risk that both of these will occur, separately, under the changes to legal aid provision now being contemplated. I am surprised that any person of any sensitivity—and I think that the noble Lord, Lord McNally, would fall into that category—would support such changes. I have always had great admiration for the noble Lord—I do not know why, as he has done his best to impair that decision on my part. It is not a question of party prejudice at all; it is a question of downright decency and that is what I support today.

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[Baroness Whitaker]

My Lords—

[Baroness Verma]

My Lords, if we could hear from the Liberal Democrats, the Cross Benches and then the Labour Party.

[Lord Lester of Herne Hill]

My Lords, many years ago, when Lord Scarman was chairman of the Law Commission, I remember him saying that his cleaning lady came to him one day and asked whether he could help her with a social security problem. He described how it took him three days of combing through the social security legislation before he was able to help her. He told us this story because he was explaining how there was an enormous need for poverty lawyers—the ones who deal with the legal problems of the poor—to be empowered to provide those services. If a Law Lord such as Lord Scarman took three days to do what a law centre could do more quickly, it illustrated the point.

The great virtue of the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, is its conspicuous moderation and realism. I cannot understand those noble Lords who criticise him for being so moderate and realistic. The real value of his amendment is that it strengthens the hand of the Lord Chancellor and Justice Secretary in his dealings with the Treasury. Many years ago when I was Roy Jenkins’s special adviser, I remember that Barbara Castle, a Minister in the then Government, explained why she supported cuts in civil legal aid. She wrote to her colleagues saying that if she had to choose between hospitals and legal services, she would unhesitatingly preserve hospitals. It is that notion that legal services for the poor are a soft target and matter a great deal less culturally and politically than health services which is at the bottom of the problem in my view.

Successive Governments have found it very easy to sabotage civil legal aid since the original Legal Aid and Advice Act was passed. This is not a party political problem; it has pervaded all parties. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, who, unfortunately is not in his place, cut legal aid when he was Lord Chancellor, and followed a long line of Lord Chancellors in doing so. He attacked what he called fat-cat lawyers to justify some of the cuts that he made. When Lord Taylor’s memorial service was held in St Paul’s cathedral, Sir Humphrey Potts, in giving the encomium—I recall that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine, was at the front of the cathedral—made a joke at his expense, saying that he saw that he, in a fit of post-retirement remorse, was attacking fat-cat lawyers. It was a good joke but it illustrated a powerful point. It would be very easy for my noble friend Lord McNally when he replies to make some cynical remarks about his legal friends standing up for the closed shop. However, I am sure that he will not fall into this trap. As the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, has said, those of us who are here today are not in the platoons of legal services for the poor lawyers who will be most hit by these cuts, along with their clients.

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[Lord Hylton]

My Lords—

[Baroness Verma]

Perhaps the noble Lord could speak first, followed by the noble Baroness.

[Lord Hylton]

My Lords, I rise with great caution as a lay man in this very legal debate. However, I read the article in today’s Guardian by the Lord Chancellor, in which he spoke of promoting non-adversarial solutions. I therefore invite the Deputy Leader of the House, when he replies, to tell us a little about how that will work out in practice and to what extent those kinds of solutions will compensate for the very large cut that is proposed to be made to the current legal aid budget.