King’s Speech

Lord Bach Excerpts

Wednesday 24th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bach (Lab)]

My Lords, I should declare my interest as the unremunerated chair of the board of Leicester Community Advice and Law Centre. I particularly welcome the two Ministers who are speaking for His Majesty’s Government today. They both come with great reputations.

It may not surprise the House that my remarks will be devoted to an issue that, frankly, has not yet arisen this afternoon and does not receive anything like the notice and interest that it should, because it focuses on fundamental issues of access to justice and the rule of law: namely, the manner in which our system of early advice and social welfare law has been effectively trashed and almost destroyed over the last decade as a direct result of government legislation.

The LASPO Act removed from the scope of legal aid a huge amount of law, with the result that early legal advice, assistance and representation were no longer available in cases of debt, housing, welfare benefits, employment and immigration. Add to all that the removal of legal aid in private family cases. I am not exaggerating when I say that the consequences have been disastrous, especially for citizens who are poor and simply cannot afford to assert their own legal rights. The number of legal aid cases to help people to get the early advice they need and are entitled to dropped from almost 1 million people in 2009-10 to just 130,000 people in 2021-22.

The number of people having to go to court without representation has trebled. The number of advice agencies and law centres doing this important work has fallen by 59%. We all know that advice deserts now exist in many parts of our country. It is estimated that the number of people helped by legal aid in that period has dropped by 4.5 million. Not surprisingly in that context, by next year, according to the Law Society, a single person will not be eligible for legal aid unless he or she earns less than £9 a day, or £268 a month. That is 81% below the minimum income standard.

Over the years, the coalition parties that forced LASPO through Parliament have, to varying degrees, seen the errors of their ways. The Liberal Democrats have recanted completely, which is excellent, and from the Conservatives I want to pay credit to the last Lord Chancellor and the last Lords Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Bellamy. They began the process of mitigating the effects of the 2012 Act.

I was privileged to chair a commission that reported in 2017 in a Fabian Society report entitled The Right to Justice. Its central recommendation was the establishment, perhaps in the long term, of a right to justice Act that would set up a new individual right to reasonable legal assistance without costs if they cannot be afforded. It also proposed shorter-term policy changes to LASPO that could alleviate the cruel effects of that Act of Parliament. These proposals are still necessary and relevant today, and many go to the idea, which I think we all approve of, early legal advice. If put into effect, they would save overall public expenditure as well as an enormous waste of court time.

I am particularly pleased that under the gracious Speech legal aid will be available to victims of disasters or state-related deaths. I know that the legacy bequeathed to the Government means that they have to be very cautious in this area, as in others. However, it is worth remembering that it was Labour and other Members, the Cross-Benchers in particular, who fiercely opposed LASPO and who predicted accurately its dire consequences. I ask Ministers to take this issue back to the Ministry of Justice and invite the department to look at The Right to Justice report I have mentioned, and other excellent reports that have been produced, including one by the noble Lord, Lord Low, with a view to considering putting right the worst elements of the present system. To do so would not only save overall public money but would be further evidence that we now have a Government who believe in access to justice as an essential part of the rule of law.