Community Justice Centre: North Liverpool
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Lord McNally
No, my Lords, we will look at the impact of this centre before we would contemplate doing this in any other cities, but I take the point made by the right reverend Prelate the Lord Bishop of Liverpool that this is operating in an area of very high deprivation, which I hope will be part of the assessment which the inquiry is making, taking note that it is in a particular area.
Lord Bach
My Lords, in answering a question by the right reverend Prelate on 21 June, the Minister told the House that the evaluation that the Ministry of Justice, I think, is doing internally, would be completed later in the summer. We have had very clement weather for the last few months, but no one could say that it was still summer. Has the evaluation been completed yet? If it has not, when will it be completed, and will the results be published?
Lord McNally
My Lords, it is always dangerous to give even vague dates, like “summer”, in making commitments. The study is still going on. I am confident of the integrity of the research, which is being carried out by Ministry of Justice analysts under the Government social research code. The research will be published by the Ministry of Justice. I think the safest commitment I could make now would be “as soon as possible”
Public Bodies Bill [HL]
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Lord Howarth of Newport
My Lords, I hope that I will have the tolerance of the House if I briefly ask the Minister a question about a somewhat tangential issue. The Lord Chancellor is quoted on page 8 of today's Times as saying:
“Everyone is agreed that the priority is raising the standards of coroners’ inquiries”.
I take it that he was referring to coroners’ inquiries of all sorts.
Following the Government’s extremely welcome acceptance of the need to appoint a chief coroner, will the Minister assure us that they will also accept the will of Parliament as expressed in the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 that an office of coroner for treasure should be established? Will he acknowledge that the appointment of a national coroner for treasure would lead to the elimination of lengthy delays, excessive bureaucracy and errors, as well as to savings in overall public expenditure as the activities of coroners in 45 local authority areas would be replaced by the streamlined, specialised work of a single national coroner, probably supported by a single staff member? If the noble Lord is unable to give that assurance, will he undertake to reconsider the matter urgently, and to correct the failure by the Ministry of Justice to include reference to the treasure process in the draft charter for the coroner service?
Lord Bach
My Lords, it does not seem like a year since this House decisively rejected the Government’s firm plan to abolish the position of chief coroner by a majority of 112. It was a vote in all parts of the Chamber of which the House could be proud then and can be even prouder today. Of course I join in congratulating the Government. However, in this instance the congratulations must be slightly modified. The Government have given in at the 59th minute of the 11th hour. They deserve credit, but as the noble Lord, Lord McNally, will recognise from his position at the Ministry of Justice, there is an analogy with someone in the dock who does not deserve the credit that someone who makes an early admission of guilt deserves. This is the equivalent of a change of plea at the moment when the jury is being sworn in. It is worthy of credit, and the judge will pass a lesser sentence, but he will not show as much leniency as if the Government had given way some time earlier. It is better late than never—but it is pretty late.
Of course, this is all immensely to the credit of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay. She deserves huge congratulations on her success today. She will be the first to say that it is not just her success, but that of others as well. However, she deserves particular praise for her brave refusal to back down over this long period. So does the Royal British Legion—I declare my membership of a local branch—and other organisations that the noble Baroness mentioned such as INQUEST and Liberty, and those on all sides of the House and elsewhere who stayed firm and argued the case for the chief coroner.
Noble Lords should make no mistake—sometimes these things ought to be said—that the Government over the past 12 months used every means and blandishment, and a few extra, to persuade, if I may put it gently, those who dared stand out of the error of their ways. Individual meetings with the Lord Chancellor were not the worst of it. Seductive compromises were offered one day and a hard line taken the next. There were meetings and letters galore. I hate even to contemplate the pressure that the brave Conservative Member Andrew Percy, who dared to challenge the Government in another place, must have come under at a certain stage. I do not want to sound churlish—I hope that that is not my style—but I do not think the congratulations are quite as deserved in this case as perhaps they were earlier this afternoon.
I have no doubt that our Justice Minister, the noble Lord, Lord McNally, played an important role in this. I also am in no doubt that the Sun, which I know many noble Lords read regularly, also played a pretty important role at the last moment. For anyone who has forgotten what they read in the Sun yesterday: they will have seen a story and then an editorial that condemned the Government in no uncertain terms for the stance that they were then taking. No. 10 reacted extraordinarily quickly. The Prime Minister’s spokesman spoke early yesterday afternoon and the change was announced yesterday evening—perhaps coincidence; probably not.
Whatever the result, the Government have done the right thing. They have accepted the chief coroner. That was argued for on all sides of this House during the passing of the Act, which was only two years ago. It is a great pleasure to be able to congratulate the Government on what they have done, but I ask the Minister who will answer this debate why Section 40 on appeals is being removed. If I remember rightly, many noble Lords took part in those debates, so why is it being removed? Among the strong and powerful arguments in report after report in the past decade, and eventually during the debate on the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 for the setting up of this post of chief coroner, the possibility of appeal on a number of issues, which is not huge, was set out in Section 40(2), as it was well nigh impossible to appeal under the present system. The only remedy, as we have heard, is judicial review, which is time consuming. As the Public Law Project argued:
“The cost of bringing a judicial review claim is considerable: in the region of £10,000 to £20,000 for a straightforward case, higher for a more complex matter. If a claimant is unsuccessful, they are likely to be liable for the defendant’s costs as well as their own. They are therefore looking at a legal bill of upwards of £30,000 if they lose, and they must be prepared for this eventuality, bearing in mind the unpredictability of judicial review proceedings and costs orders”.
We believe that it would be preferable for the chief coroner to have the power that Parliament gave him or her during the passage of that Bill, which was agreed on an all-party basis. That sensible step which we all agreed should not be implemented straight away—that is perhaps the answer to the noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Sudbury—and that there should be a delay between the time the Bill was enacted and this section was implemented. There was no intention from any party that the appeals process would begin at once. If it remained in the Act it would be there if some time in the future a Lord Chancellor felt able to bring it in under the guidance of the chief coroner at the time. To abolish Section 40, which is what the Government propose, is the wrong thing to do.
If the noble Baroness were to put the matter to a vote—I can understand if she does not wish to do so—we on this side would support her. We regret that Section 40 is being taken out. However, I do not want to end on a depressing note. We are grateful to the Government for the action that they have taken.
Lord McNally
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Bach, for that non-churlish response. He must have been thinking of some earlier Administration when he talked about the main drive of government policy being an attempt to please the Sun.
This has been a very useful debate and I hope that I can give some reassurances. I cannot give reassurances on the question of appeals. As my right honourable friend the Lord Chancellor said in his letter, to extend,
“the appeals system was by far the most expensive element of the original Chief Coroner role proposal”.
The noble Lord, Lord Bach, as with most of the proposals, including that in the Division we had today, is rather cavalier about costs. I am afraid that the Government cannot be. I also think that enough doubts about the idea of appeals were expressed in the responses to make it prudent not to proceed with that at the moment. We have all been in politics long enough to know that simply to leave the appeals system hanging there would almost certainly invite the next campaign on this issue to commence straight away.
Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill
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Lord Bach
My Lords, no one could have listened to the speeches made in your Lordships' House today without recognising that the Bill we are debating is of very great importance. All three parts of the Bill could be major Bills in their own right, and all three touch on fundamental issues of justice and the rule of law in our society, whether it be the new proposed offences, the replacement for IPP provisions in Part 3, or the radical changes to the conditional fee system in civil cases and the resulting shift in the balance of power between claimants and defendants in Part 2. Other issues include the fact that there is no replication in Part 1 of the duty of the Lord Chancellor in the Access to Justice Act, and Clause 12 and police stations, which the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, just spoke about.
The Government intend to cut legal aid by in effect decimating a system of social welfare law that over the past 40 years or so has cheaply and successfully helped many of the poorest people in our society to have access to justice and to resolve their legal problems. The Bill’s definition of domestic violence has been described by many noble Lords as absurdly narrow and one that will lead to many victims being deprived of vital assistance. Whether it relates to any of these concerns or all of them, the Bill goes directly to the issue of what kind of society we want to live in. The stakes could not be higher.
I of course congratulate all noble Lords who have spoken in today’s debate. This has been in many ways an astonishing debate, with a depth of knowledge and experience in this field that perhaps very few legislatures anywhere could match. However, it is surely no surprise that the vast majority of those who have spoken from all around the House are highly critical of the Bill and many of its proposals. Her Majesty’s Government must take note of this widespread sense that they have not got it right. They should be prepared to listen and, more importantly, to act on what has been argued so trenchantly and so often in the House today. We will listen with even more attention than usual to the Minister when he sums up to see whether real compromise is in the air. I hope that it is. If it is, the House will welcome it, but if it is not the House may well have to do its duty on some future occasion.
I forecast, perhaps unwisely, that there will be less disagreement around Part 3 than is usual when we discuss sentencing in this House. Of course, there will have to be considerable debate and close scrutiny as so much of Part 3 has been added so ridiculously late. Even now it is not clear that it has been sufficiently thought through. Clause 114, for example, with its mandatory indeterminate life sentence for a second listed offence, does not seem to be very different from the IPP system it is there to replace. A prisoner will still not know when he is to be released. It will still depend on the Parole Board, which will have the same information as it does for IPP prisoners now. An indeterminate sentence is an indeterminate sentence, whatever it is called, or does the clause find itself in the Bill solely to appease hard-line elements of the coalition, even though the numbers caught will be absolutely minimal? We will also want to look at bail provisions in the context of the tragic Jane Clough case and at the new Clause 130 offence of squatting in a residential building. That certainly deserves some discussion. The House will have taken special note of the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, speaking as she did on behalf of victims.
On Part 2, my noble and learned friend Lord Davidson has told the House in clear terms what our position is. Whatever view we may take of Lord Justice Jackson's report, it is clearly a prodigious personal achievement. It reminds me of a kind of magisterial work of art, large and grand, produced by eminent Victorians. However, it is no use Her Majesty’s Government hiding behind Jackson because the whole world knows that they picked and mixed his conclusions as though they were choosing sweets. If there is one thing that Jackson was clear about—he was clear about a lot—it was that his proposals were a package to be taken as a whole or not at all. To many of us, as we have heard today, one of the key findings of Jackson was that there should be no reduction in civil legal aid. Noble Lords have quoted him, but my quotation is this:
“Legal aid is still available for some key areas of litigation, in particular clinical negligence, housing cases and judicial review. It is vital that legal aid remains in these areas”.
He goes on to talk about eligibility. That is pretty straightforward but it is actually rejected by the Government. I ask the Minister why the Government have rejected what Lord Justice Jackson said so clearly about clinical negligence and legal aid.
This is a critical point because the Government intend, as part of their £280 million cut in civil legal aid, to save £11 million or £10 million—I have a figure of £17 million but that may be out of date—by taking clinical negligence out of scope. The idea that conditional fee agreements alone are satisfactory for this type of law has been ridiculed by everyone in the House and outside. Many commentators believe that a number of victims, including children, will never be able to get access to justice. Is that the sort of society in which we want to live?
That brings me to what many—and, I must be honest, I—consider the meanest and most wretched proposal of all: the decimation of social welfare law. The rest of my speech will be devoted to that part of Part 1. Whether you call it social welfare law or poverty law or the law of everyday life does not matter very much, but what matters hugely is that the Government are proposing that it should no longer be possible for a citizen who cannot afford it to get legal advice to deal with a legal problem, however complex, involving welfare benefit law. The same goes for employment law, which is completely out of scope. Much housing law will come out of scope, as will practically all debt law and some education law too. As the Bill stands today, that means that there will be no legal advice or representation, even at the Court of Appeal or the Supreme Court. Just to state that proposition shows how absurd it is.
The supposed savings are as follows: including immigration, £81 million; excluding immigration, £61 million. That means that in the social welfare area alone more than 350,000 people a year—it is much wider if you take the other parts of Part 1—will not be given the sort of legal advice that they receive today. Even where the law is still in scope, fixed fees, which are far from generous, have already been cut by 10 per cent. Anything left in scope, of course, will have to go through a mandatory phone gateway, including community care cases. One can hardly think of a sillier area of law to put through a mandatory phone gateway than community care.
Despite many progressive reforms by different Governments to simplify the legal system to make it easier for participants to access and understand, the reality remains that law and enforcement of the law is an often complex and stressful experience for many in our society. The legal aid system was created to address evident inequality in the legal system. We give legal aid contracts to law centres and CABs because they help those most in need. What is the point of legal rights if there is no ability to enforce them?
The value of the advice that is currently available is unchallenged. The respected academic Professor Dame Hazel Genn, in her seminal work Paths to Justice, pointed out that legal problems are not single ones, but come in clusters: it is not debt on its own, for example, but welfare benefits, debt and housing. If legal advice is given early and well, it can and does change lives. If that advice is not given, problems grow, become more difficult to resolve, and can end up in loss of job, loss of home, loss of family, social exclusion, of course, and sometimes descent into crime. All this costs everybody: the individual involved, the Government, and society too.
How can the Government justify this change to a system which—and I want to stress this point—up to now has been supported by all three main political parties in this country? The Conservative Party has a proud tradition of supporting law centres. The Liberal Democrat Party clearly does too, and I hope we do as well. This system has always been supported by the political parties. It has not worked faultlessly—of course not—but it has worked pretty well for many years.
This proposal is the exact opposite of any concept of the big society that one might want to consider. Who are the people who will lose out? We have heard about them throughout the afternoon. If there is no legal aid for welfare benefit advice, some of the biggest losers will be people with disabilities. These people often need legal advice to obtain the benefits they have a right to. The figure of 78,000 disabled people who will be denied specialist legal help for complicated welfare benefit problems is staggering. But the Government say, at the moment, “No, these people do not need legal advice. They can do it themselves. It is all general stuff. It is all comparatively easy”. Actually, the DWP guidance now runs to, as I understand it, 9,000 pages: a good deal more than the CPAG guidance that my noble friend first wrote. As the president of the Social Entitlement Chamber, Judge Robert Martin has said that where people have not had legal advice, about 10 per cent of hearing time at welfare benefit tribunals is spent just explaining what is going on. No wonder that the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Hale, said in her Henry Hodge Memorial Lecture:
“The idea that the law in some of these areas is simple and easy to understand is laughable”.
This is an example of judicial understatement if ever there was one. And yet her Majesty’s Government seem set on this course, all for an alleged saving in welfare benefits of £25 million per year. This is a Government who are prepared to pay out £250 million in order that people can have weekly rather than fortnightly bin collections and £125,000 per year to—is it 40 plus?—police commissioners around the country. This is not a sensible priority at all.
Children and young people will be losers too. As we have heard, they have civil justice problems that require advice. There is academic research to show that there is a relationship between civil legal problems not being solved and crime. This seems incredible in the year of the riots. To cut legal help for the young age group is absolutely crazy—perhaps as crazy as abolishing the successful Youth Justice Board. Both legal aid and the Youth Justice Board work as early-intervention measures to ensure that our young people have a future.
Of course we know that lawyers who work in this field are not fat cats. Many sacrifice a career in high-paid private practice because they consider that the work is so important. Their fees have been cut by 10 per cent. Further legal aid cuts will rip apart law centres, CABs and solicitors’ firms, which will have to close. I ask the noble Lord: where will people go then?
The honourable Member for Bradford East, the Liberal Democrat David Ward, made a brilliant speech on Report in another place on 2 November. I was privileged to see and hear it; I watched from our seats in the other place. He attacked these proposals with passion and good sense—and, with nine Liberal Democrat colleagues, including his Deputy Leader, voted against the Government. He made two important points. In the first, he stated:
“It is a very dangerous thing if we are going to use deficit reduction as a justification for almost everything we might do”.—[Official Report, Commons, 2/11/11; col. 976.]
His second point came in his final words. He said:
“Someone once told me that the world is divided into two groups of people. There are those who, when they see somebody walking down the street with a walking stick, believe in kicking the stick away because it will make that person stronger, and there are those who believe that if they kick away the stick, the person will just fall over. We are in grave danger of making some of those who are, by definition, the most vulnerable in our society fall over, and we will still have to be there to pick them up, at even greater cost to the public purse. It does not make sense; we should not do it”.—[Official Report, Commons, 2/11/11; col. 977.]
Then he sat down.
That is one way of putting it. Another way was expressed in the quote by the late Lord Bingham, which I will not repeat now. Both quotes, in different ways, make the point that equal access to justice is at the heart of our democracy, and that Governments should be very wary of tampering with that principle.
The Government’s proposals are deeply wrong in three distinct ways. First, they are—I choose the word carefully—immoral. They deliberately look only at the impact assessments that the Government themselves produced; and they deliberately pick on the poor and the vulnerable. Secondly, they represent a serious denial of access to justice, as the Constitution Committee powerfully argued. Thirdly, far from saving money, they will cost much, much more.
The Minister often uses the phrase, “To govern is to choose”. He is quite right. When in government we put forward proposals that would have saved much more than the cut in social welfare law that this Government propose. Our intention to cut back on the number of criminal solicitors with LSC contracts would have been very controversial—much too controversial for this Government, who chose instead to take on not powerful interests that might give them a hard time but the poor, the vulnerable and those who cannot represent themselves in court, let alone begin to fight the power of government.
I end by saying that noble Lords—I hope in a non-partisan spirit and across the House as a whole—should say that in this case the Government have made the wrong choice. If necessary the House must take up the fight and stand up for those who cannot stand up for themselves. The House has a tradition of looking after the interests of those in our society who have little power. In this of all cases, we must not let them down.
Lord McNally
My Lords, I hope that the House will understand that in a debate of 54 contributions, I am not going to be able to answer them all in detail this evening. Indeed, many of the questions will be better raised at Committee, with specific details of the Bill.
The noble Lord, Lord Rix, and the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, asked whether I would meet them on the specific issues they raised. Of course I would be delighted to do so. If they will contact me I shall fix something up. The noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, asked whether the letter from Professor Ruggie could be put in the Library of the House. I will certainly arrange that. It is already on the internet. It might be interesting to the House to know that Professor Ruggie is no longer the UN special representative for business and human rights; he has joined a Boston law firm. Whether that is promotion, I do not know, but that is the fact.
The noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, came with his proposal about amendments to deal with metal theft and the dangers it poses. I cannot give him a definitive answer at the moment, other than that there is an inter-ministerial group looking at this issue as a matter of priority, and we will look at any proposals appropriate to the Bill. I have lost sight of him again—oh my God! Thank God we did not give the Speaker more powers; he would have named me by now.
It has been a very interesting and well-informed debate. Let me take to start—because he was quoted—my colleague from the other place, Mr Ward, who said that we must not let deficit reduction dominate everything that we do. Of course, unless we address the issue of deficit reduction, many of the things that we subsequently do—
Lord McNally
I stand by that quote, then. If we are going to take that attitude, and if we are going to avoid taking tough decisions, we will face far greater economic problems. This idea that somehow we can put things off until tomorrow is perhaps why we are where we are today, and why we have to take the decisions that we will take today.
I heard closely what the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, was saying. Of course, it was a wonderful speech. A number of the speeches made today were wonderful speeches, if we believe that there is no limit to the amount of money that we can spend on legal aid; that there was somehow a golden age when this was all available. However, we know well—
Supreme Court: President
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Lord McNally
There will indeed be urgency and, as the noble Lord knows, we have had some very good advice on the matter from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Phillips, himself.
Lord Bach
My Lords, perhaps I may say how much we on the opposition side welcome the Minister’s response to the noble Lord, Lord Pannick. If the Government will act urgently on the point that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Phillips, has spoken about, we will do everything that we can on our side to make sure that such a matter goes through Parliament as quickly as possible. Perhaps I may ask briefly about judicial diversity, in which I know the Minister has a particular role. Are the Government satisfied that they are doing enough to make sure that our judiciary is diverse enough? Many judges at all levels have spoken about this in recent weeks and it is a matter of considerable concern.
Lord McNally
I thank the noble Lord for his initial remarks about co-operation, which will again help with the sense of urgency. On the question of judicial diversity, one of the most encouraging things in recent days is the way in which members of the senior judiciary have been going public on the need for urgency on the matter. It is a fact that four members of our 161 judges in the High Court are of black, Asian and minority background. In England and Wales, four out of 42 members of the Court of Appeal are women and we have one woman on our Supreme Court.
Legal Services Act 2007 (Appeals from Licensing Authority Decisions) (No. 2) Order 2011
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Lord Dholakia
My Lords, I welcome both orders. The Minister will recollect that when the matter was first discussed here, we raised our concern and he was good enough to say that he would take the matter back, examine it and see what appropriate action was necessary. I endorse what the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, has said. The Minister and his staff have worked very hard to effect those changes, which are certainly welcome.
The order sets out an independent appeal mechanism against a range of ABS decisions, which is right; for example, refusing an application for a licence, imposing a conditional licence, disqualifying a person from working in the ABS or imposing a financial penalty. The most interesting part is that appeals on these matters are to go to the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal. I am told that this helps the SRA to license alternative business structures from the new year onwards. I am also told that the SRA has found significant interest from organisations seeking to become ABSs. It has received over 500 inquiries. Examples of such organisations include private equity investors, claims management companies, the expansion of in-house legal departments, major retailers, accountancy firms and partnerships between non-lawyers and insurers.
I particularly welcome the second order as I am involved in promoting a Private Member’s Bill on the rehabilitation of offenders. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, hit the nail on the head in regard to this. In the end this is about consumer protection and looking at what information is available. I am delighted to support the measure because it sets out an interesting aspect in simple terms. This is a significant step in that not only will the SRA be able to issue licences, but also the Government have agreed to include non-lawyer owners and, in certain circumstances, the managers of ABSs in the exclusions of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974. That is right, and we very much appreciate the Minister’s support. Over a period of time this will ensure that all owners of ABSs will have to disclose all their previous convictions and cautions, which ultimately helps the consumer to understand what happens in this legal process.
Again, I thank the Minister for the action that he and his staff have taken on this, and we certainly support the orders.
Lord Bach
My Lords, I start by thanking the Minister very warmly for his clear and thorough opening remarks and description of these orders. I have little to say about them except to express the support of the Opposition for them both. There is no doubt that the Legal Services Act 2007 will have a major, if not profound, influence in the years to come on how legal services are delivered in this country. That was clear when the draft Bill was debated and discussed by a Joint Committee of both Houses under the chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Wirral, and when the Bill went through your Lordships’ House some time afterwards. I think we can see the importance of that Act in the orders before us. Alongside it there are many sensitivities that surround the bringing into force of various parts of this Act, whether large or small. I hope—indeed I am sure—that the Government and the ministry are aware of and alive to those sensitivities in deciding which way to go.
I shall say a word about the first order, which deals particularly with appeals bodies. On the face of it, it is a shame that there is not to be a single appeals body—I agree with my noble friend Lady Hayter on that—but I suppose that this is one of the sensitivities that I am talking about. It is interesting to see in the Explanatory Memorandum the consultation outcome in relation to this order. For a consultation outcome, this has a dramatic and rather more exciting history than is normally the case in such consultations and it is quite clear that there has been toing and froing before the Government came forward with this order allowing the Law Society its way in this instance. I do not for a moment suggest that that was the wrong decision. However, a single appeals body is an attractive proposition, and I wonder whether over a period of time events might lead to it.
As for the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974, I start by wishing the Private Member’s Bill under the charge of the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, well. It is relevant because, with a senior government Minister present, maybe the Government themselves will have to play a role at some stage in making sure that his Bill, which is much delayed—this came up under the Government I was proud to serve in—gets on to the statute book in one way or another. It may be in the form of a Private Member’s Bill with all the difficulties that that involves both in this House and in another place, or with a little help from Her Majesty’s Government. Certainly, if the Government were to put their weight behind the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, we would support it too.
However, as far as this order is concerned I am most grateful—particularly to the Minister—for describing in detail why the universal opinion of the various groups that were consulted about this was not met in terms of a slightly wider group being subject to the exemption to the existing Act. He described it very adequately. Is there any concern that by leaving out that group of people there will be some difficulties down the road? It would be unfortunate if people who should be exempted from this Act were not exempted at this stage, and if the Government had to do it on a “first today and then tomorrow” basis.
These are important issues even though they are in orders that are going through this Committee pretty quickly. I have no doubt there will be others that involve the ABS and the other important results of the Legal Services Act 2007. Bearing in mind that the Act was passed under a different Government, we will do all we can to ensure that Act comes into fruition successfully.
Lord McNally
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Bach, for that response. He is always very kind about how clear and thorough I am in explaining statutory instruments. He knows as well as I do that it is only because of the hard work of the people who sit behind me. I am very pleased that the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, and my noble friend Lord Dholakia thanked the Ministry of Justice and the LSB for their work on this. It is exciting. I pay tribute to the previous Government. The alternative business structures will produce changes which, I suspect, will be mainly to the benefit of the consumer in the provision of legal services. What we are trying to do with these orders is to put the last pieces in place to allow them to function.
The noble Lord, Lord Bach, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, both expressed the concerns that were reflected during the last debate—that we have not got a single route here, in that the solicitors have decided to have their separate body. Whether it will cause the problems of a lack of consistency, we will have to see. What I can assure noble Lords is that the LSB will be carrying out further work, and looking at appeal arrangements, and the MoJ will be working closely with the LSB in relation to this. I also understand the question put by the noble Lord, Lord Bach: have we gone too narrow in this extension? As I explained, I do not think we have. However, let us see. The concern expressed last time was that the alternative business structures may allow criminal elements in that would corrupt the new structures. We listened in this Committee and have brought forward extensions, and now think that we have got things right. Again, the LSB will follow the new structures as they go in. So far, only one new alternative business structure has been announced. The Co-op has beaten Tesco; perhaps it should now be called Co-op law rather than Tesco law.
This is an exciting development for which the previous Administration can take credit and which we have been pleased to help bring into being. We will discuss legal services in general in more detail when we get to the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill in a short while. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Bach, and I have discussed before, legal services in general are in flux. The ABSs will provide an exciting new dimension to them.
On the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Jones, I can only draw his attention to the fact that the consultations were carried out by the Legal Services Board for England and Wales and the Law Society of England and Wales. I am sure that both bodies carried out their consultations across the geographic areas of their responsibility. If he can draw to my attention the case for them not doing that, I will be happy to follow it up. However, since they are both bodies that have an England and Wales dimension and were both charged with wide consultation, my understanding is that they will have consulted in Wales.
Prisons: HMP Wandsworth
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Lord McNally
I am not quite sure whether the system that the noble Lord refers to is still in action, but I know that Amy Rees, the new governor, has the clear direction to move with all possible speed to implement the action plan. It would be inconceivable if the Secretary of State and Ministers in the Ministry of Justice did not pay the closest attention to making sure that the recommendations made by this report are implemented with all possible speed.
Lord Bach
My Lords, this is obviously a significant and worrying report and I am sure that the House is grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hurd, for raising the issue this afternoon. As I understand it, Wandsworth has a larger number of prisoners than any other prison in Europe—some 1,665 at the date of the report. Can the Minister either tell the House today or perhaps write to me telling us how many of those prisoners are doubled up in cells at present? Perhaps I might briefly broaden my question. Can he confirm that capital investment in the Prison Service is generally going down heavily, year on year, and that in fact there will be no capital investment by 2013-14? In the light of the fact that the largest number of prisoners ever is in prison today—the figure on 5 November was 87,749—and in the light of cuts to prison staff, and particularly to probation staff, can he tell the House how the rehabilitation revolution is going?
Lord McNally
We will return to the rehabilitation revolution on 21 November when we discuss the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill. I hope that the noble Lord will help me then with the fact that the Ministry of Justice, as part of our deficit reduction programme, has to find £2 billion in cuts. In a department that spends money only on prisons, probation, court services and legal aid, tough decisions have been made. Today it is prison spending cuts that the noble Lord does not like; I suspect that, the next time he gets up, it will be legal aid cuts that he does not like. To govern is to choose, and we have had to make some very tough decisions.
On the question of doubling up, again one of the problems for Wandsworth is that a prison built for just over 1,000 people has 1,600 prisoners. You can work out the number that are doubled up in cells. About the only good thing that I can think of in that circumstance is that they all have in-cell toilet facilities, but even that makes you squirm with horror when you think about sharing a cell containing those facilities.
Crime: Self-defence Homicide
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Lord McNally
My Lords, as always, there is a great deal of wisdom in what the noble Lord says—and a great deal of accuracy as well. We intend to provide greater clarity with this new guidance and through the clauses in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill, which will be coming before this House shortly. It is certainly true that, in so doing, we will be bringing into statute what is already a very fixed principle in our common law.
Lord Bach
My Lords, Clause 131 of the Bill that the Minister just mentioned is the one clause that deals with this issue of self-defence. However, what is not clear about the law as it exists at present? That feeling is quite widespread across the House. Why does it need another clause in another long Bill?
Lord McNally
I think that the answer to that was indicated in the previous question and by the fact that the noble Lord has tabled this Question today. There are newspaper articles and general assertions made about what is right or wrong. Under our common law, home owners, small shopkeepers and householders can use reasonable force to defend themselves or their properties and will not be prosecuted. My right honourable friend the Lord Chancellor has made clear that he believes that the current law is broadly in the right place. However, we believe that it does no harm, in the light of a lot of these questions and articles, to make it clear in the forthcoming Bill. I think that it will do a lot of good in establishing where people, including the police, are positioned in this. It will also deter any thought that we are drifting towards any kind of endorsement of vigilantism or keeping a six o’clock special under the pillow. This is a consolidation measure to clarify the law.
Coroner Service
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Lord McNally
I do not have those figures, but I will write to the noble Baroness. Everything we have done in studying this process is aimed at improving the efficiency of the system. I do not think that the simple removal from the reforms of the single post of chief coroner removes the fact that we are implementing the Coroners and Justice Act 2009. We have reviewed very thoroughly. We have consulted very thoroughly, as the noble Baroness knows very well, and we believe that our reforms will bring the improvements that the original Act sought to do.
Lord Bach
My Lords, just two years ago, the consensus in this House and in the other place was that the chief coroner was an essential part of a new coronial system. In spite of the views of this House, and of many outside, including the Royal British Legion, why are the Government still insistent on not appointing a chief coroner, who would be an important part of the reforms that Parliament agreed by consensus?
Lord McNally
A Government is allowed to look at an issue, examine widely, listen, consult, and then make a decision in the context of the financial circumstances it finds at the end. My right honourable friend the Lord Chancellor has decided that the immediate appointment of a chief coroner is not justified in the present circumstances. After listening to the various representations, we left the title of chief coroner in Schedule 5 to the Bill when it returned from the other place, and that will allow this House, the other place and the outside organisations to judge whether we are still able to carry through the bulk of the 2009 Act without the chief coroner. We believe we can, and by our deeds you can judge us.
Elections: Registration
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The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord McNally)
My Lords, the Government’s approach reflects the fact that it is not an offence not to be registered under the current system. This will not change under the new system. The offence of not providing information to an electoral registration officer—for example, when making a household enquiry—will be retained. It will not be extended to require an individual to apply to be registered.
Lord Bach
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his Answer, as far as it goes. He will know that at least 3 million of our fellow citizens, and probably more, already are not registered to vote at all. The independent Electoral Commission is of the view that if registering to vote becomes a voluntary activity, as the White Paper proposes, the result could be that up to 10 million people will fall off the electoral register, and that rates could fall in some areas from 90 per cent down to 65 per cent. Up to 35 per cent of the adult population could be disenfranchised. Is such a consequence acceptable in a mature democracy? Does the Minister agree that if such an event were to happen, no longer could we claim to the world, as we can today, that in Britain we live in a democratic country?
Lord McNally
My Lords, of course it is not acceptable; but neither is it acceptable for a mature political party to go round shroud-waving on a conclusion which involved joint deliberation by the parties that the old system had become increasingly distrusted and that voluntary registration—which would eliminate, or do a lot to eliminate, fraud, and create greater public confidence in the system—should be the way forward. The way forward proposed in the White Paper gives enough guarantees and assurances to show that the kind of language that the noble Lord has just used is, quite frankly, scare tactics which are not worthy of him or his party.
Community Legal Service (Funding) (Amendment No. 2) Order 2011
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Lord Bach
That a Humble Address be presented to Her Majesty praying that the Community Legal Service (Funding) (Amendment No. 2) Order 2011 (SI 2011/2066), laid before the House on 24 August, be annulled, on the grounds that the reduction in civil standard and graduated fees for Legal Help and Help at Court will seriously undermine access to justice because it threatens the financial viability of already hard-pressed community legal practitioners who carry out an essential service to those least able to afford it, including the most vulnerable in our society.
Lord Bach
My Lords, in moving this Motion, I make it crystal clear that we on this side believe that there must be cuts to the legal aid budget. Over the past 30 years or so, perhaps until a few years ago, the amount spent on legal aid went up a great deal, year on year, and that was particularly true in the criminal legal aid field until the amount spent on criminal legal aid, compared with civil legal aid, was totally out of kilter.
As part of the necessary cuts, we, when in Government, took action to reduce legal aid spending and I do not apologise for that. Almost the last act we took in government, before the general election of 2010 was called, was to cut criminal legal aid advocates’ fees in the higher courts over a three-year period. It was not popular but it was necessary. Incidentally, that gives the lie to the present Government’s claim that we, the previous Government, were not prepared to tackle the deficit. If we had won that election, we would have cut further. My personal view is that there are large savings indeed to be made in our whole criminal justice system. In any event, we had published a White Paper, Restructuring the Delivery of Criminal Defence Services, which, if followed through, would have made considerable savings.
However, there are two considerable differences that exist between our proposals and those of the Government. First, Her Majesty’s Government are intent on cutting legal aid much too far and much too fast. They have not given any—certainly not enough—thought to the consequences of their policies, either in human or in financial terms. That leads me on to my second point. One of the areas in which they have chosen to axe legal aid, take it out of scope altogether and make savings in fees, is precisely the wrong area of law. They intend to remove welfare benefits advice and representation at all levels, including up to the Supreme Court; employment advice; much housing advice and even more debt advice; and some community care advice and education advice—in other words, advice to the poor and the vulnerable. They intend to save the sum of about £50 million per year through those cuts. Today, of course, we are not strictly debating the rights and wrongs of such an approach, but we shall be able to do that in short order when the Bill, currently in another place, comes to this House.
Tonight we are debating an order that in one fell swoop cuts 10 per cent from all—I repeat, all—civil fees, including family fees. To describe it as a rough and ready figure would be a gross understatement. It is a crude and ill thought-out measure with no evidential justification whatever. Although I am particularly concerned with the 10 per cent cuts to social welfare and community lawyers, the lowest paid of all the lawyers who do civil and family work, I acknowledge the powerful case put forward by other civil and family lawyers to me as a result of my Motion being tabled. I thank all those who have made their case. There may well be champions for them tonight, although I know that because of the lateness of the hour, various noble Lords whose contributions would have been very welcome on all sides have not been able to stay.
Interestingly, there are no comparable cuts on the criminal side—for example, in the sister order that accompanies this particular statutory instrument. This shows that the Government are quite ruthless when it comes to civil and family legal aid and as soft as butter when it comes to criminal legal aid. It is as though they have no sense at all of the fantastic value social welfare law has in our society, allowing, at comparatively cheap costs, early legal advice for many of those who could not possibly afford to get it, with the result that issues are solved and the courts are not full of hopeless cases and litigants in person. Noble Lords will perhaps have seen the concern of some Justices of the Supreme Court in the newspapers this morning. For some reason, the Government are determined to decimate social welfare law and drive out those hard-working, dedicated and, I would argue, poorly paid lawyers who practise in this field.
Who are these lawyers? They are often the not-for-profit sector; they work in law centres, citizens advice bureaux and other advice centres. Some are solicitors and barristers in private practice. Many, wherever they come from, sacrifice more lucrative legal careers in order to practise this type of law. If they do not practise it, who will?
Their fees are fixed fees brought in in October 2007 and raised by 2 per cent in 2008 but untouched since then. They are not overgenerous. We as a Government brought in the fixed fee and it undoubtedly caused problems in itself. We set up a study with many experts from this area of law to look into those problems, and we produced a document entitled a Study of Legal Advice at Local Level in order to attempt to tackle them. We as a Government refused at any time, and particularly during the recession, to cut legal aid spending on social welfare law. We increased it significantly from £151 million in 2007-08 to £208.4 million in our last year, 2009-10. We increased eligibility by 5 per cent, bringing in 750,000 more people, and increased the number of new matter starts. I am proud of what we did.
The proposed fees are set out in Table 1 of the order, to be found on page 4. These cases often take many hours’ work. They involve face-to-face contact. Often the lawyer, having seen the client, has to speak to third parties in order to resolve the problem. They are by no stretch of the imagination well paid. There is an exceptional threshold, but a case has to be very long indeed and very complicated to come into that category.
There are currently 52 law centres in England and Wales. They are not profit-making. They have had to make efficiency savings with the introduction of the fixed-fee system. Many rely heavily for the excellent work that they do on legal aid. Eight generate over 70 per cent of their income through legal aid contracts. None of these law centres has a 10 per cent surplus and at present they monitor cash flow on a weekly basis. There is no fat to them at all. All eight are at risk of closure. Four centres are particularly vulnerable, two in London and two outside the capital. Eight hundred thousand pounds is immediately to be taken from law centres’ funding overall by the 10 per cent cut. In the medium term, the combined effect of the 10 per cent cut plus the proposed scope cuts is that £8 million out of the £9 million in legal aid contracts that law centres enjoy will disappear. Eighteen law centres out of 52 will just not be viable—it may be more. Where, I ask, will people go to in order to get their legal issues sorted out?
I could make the same points about CABs, the citizens advice bureaux, which have a very high reputation, as do law centres, in Parliament and outside. Obviously CABs do not rely so heavily on legal aid, but many still rely on it, and at a time when local authority funding is, frankly, declining, CABs will also close as a consequence of this order. Noble Lords will remember that a few months ago there was news from Birmingham about the state of CABs in Britain’s second largest city.
Private sector firms that do this work also work on the same legal aid rates. All day long I have been receiving e-mails from solicitors who do this work. Sometimes, of course, other parts of these firms subsidise the social welfare law part of a firm, but I have been told that the amount of money that legal aid lawyers of many years’ standing get per year would make an extremely interesting database. It is much less, of course, than that of a solicitor who does not do that work and compares extremely badly with other professionals—very badly indeed. Those who practise in this field and who do this absolutely invaluable work do not expect enormous rewards, but nor do they expect to be penalised even further.
I end with the story of Law For All. Law for All was in west London, and many noble Lords may have heard of it. It was quite a large organisation. It provided legal help in the fields of debt, employment, family law, housing and welfare benefits. It also provided representation for many people over many years. However, it has now been forced to close down in anticipation of the reduction in the fixed fee and, of course, the fact that 90 per cent of their work is being taken out of scope in the Bill that is currently going through Parliament. This is a tragedy for local people, who received legal help in 1,500 cases last year. The local authority in that part of west London is generous, but the Government’s proposals have meant that Law For All has closed its doors. I have spoken this afternoon to the chief executive —or should I say ex-chief executive?—who confirmed that the 10 per cent cut that we are debating tonight and the taking out of scope have driven it to close.
It is important to point out that even where the area of social welfare law is not to be taken out of scope altogether, such as in some housing cases and some debt cases connected with housing cases, the order that we are debating tonight means that the continuing work in housing, for example, will be reduced by 10 per cent. All housing work that stays in scope will be affected.
Noble Lords may want to know how much this will save. It is estimated that the saving from the whole order, including the 10 per cent cut in civil and family legal aid across the board, is worth £45 million. The cuts as they affect social welfare law fees are all of £5 million. That is a figure that the Legal Action Group has confirmed. Of course it is a rough figure but it shows just how much or, rather, how little will be saved by this order. Saving £5 million in fees when Her Majesty's Government intend to spend £250 million on ensuring that there are weekly rather than fortnightly collections of rubbish is absolute nonsense. Have we not got our priorities entirely wrong?
In the Hansard published today, the Minister has answered a Question that I asked him. The information is that:
“In cash terms, spending on legal aid in 2010-11 was … some £66 million (3 per cent) below provision”.—[Official Report, 25/10/11; col. WA 137.]
Yet the aim is to save £5 million by cutting these fees by 10 per cent.
I am not allowed to seek to amend this order and I therefore have to pray against it as a whole. Whether I vote against it tonight will depend on what other noble Lords say in the course of the debate that I hope will follow and, of course, particularly on what the Minister says. I beg to move.
Baroness Deech
My Lords, I declare an interest as chairman of the Bar Standards Board. The Bar Standards Board is the regulatory arm of the Bar Council, not the representative one, and I have no direct concern with the pay that barristers earn. My job is to further the objectives laid down for the Bar in the Legal Service Act 2007. There are eight in Section 1, including protecting and promoting the public interest, improving access to justice and encouraging an independent, strong, diverse and effective legal profession. What I have to say tonight when I encourage your Lordships to annul this order is based entirely on the application of those objectives in the regulation of the education and working lives of barristers.
Last Sunday, an advertisement appeared in the Sunday Times headed,
“Helping the most vulnerable in Society”.
It was for a new chief executive of the Legal Services Commission, which hands out legal aid. I quote from the ad:
“Our role is to ensure through our providers that independent, high-quality legal advice and representation is available to vulnerable people who cannot afford it themselves. We enable people to protect their rights and defend their interests”.
This order flies in the face of the aspiration in that advertisement and of the achievements of the objectives in the Legal Services Act and the profession.
Let me turn first to the effect it will have on women and black and ethnic minority barristers. This is a central plank of the work that we do at the Bar Standards Board in encouraging and retaining those very barristers. The effect of this order is to cut the rates payable in family advocacy by 10 per cent. It will be felt hardest by women and black and ethnic minority barristers, who are disproportionately represented in dependence on legal aid, while white men are the least dependent sector. There has been considerable government pressure to open up the legal profession still more to entrants from all backgrounds, albeit that it is already a very diverse profession.
Alan Milburn’s report of 2009 singled out the legal profession in his survey of social mobility, even though the Bar and solicitors go to enormous lengths to explain and reach out to young people all over the country. The Bar has a record to be proud of, with over 15 per cent of pupillages going to black and ethnic minority students in a very competitive market. The cuts in fees in this order undo all that work, and make the Government appear two-faced.
Sixty per cent of the family Bar are women, and they do 66 per cent of legally aided children work. Half the family Bar relies on public funds for more than 60 per cent of its turnover. From their gross earnings, modest though they are, barristers have to pay overheads to chambers and clerks—typically 20 per cent—and in addition meet their own pensions, illness and professional insurance cover and expenses. The King’s College London survey of barristers in 2008-09 indicated that 80 per cent of them intended to abandon legally aided public work. This generation of young people have university tuition debts and huge fees at Bar school, and the modest but reliable income that was once their support in the early years at the Bar is now to diminish to such an extent that they cannot earn a living. There is no point in the great efforts put into outreach in this situation.
It continues on into the judiciary. The noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, reported on judicial diversity in 2010. A less diverse profession means a less diverse judiciary, and fewer women judges. The diminution of the profession also means more litigants in person taking up more court time, not less, with problems being stored for several years down the line because they cannot be settled in court in a proper and timely way.
As with other demanding professions, women are being lost to the Bar after five to 10 years in practice, because of the costs of childcare. It is unaffordable and will be even more so. Twice as many women leave the Bar as do men for that reason. The cut in fees in this order will weaken retention. It will also damage the children who are the subject of court orders, because now the experts who give evidence in child cases are placed within this table of reduced fees, and the fees are set at below the level needed to maintain their practices.
The Government have given no evidenced reason for cutting by 10 per cent, and they have not waited for the outcome of the Family Justice Review, chaired by David Norgrove. In March of this year, its interim report commented on the adverse impact that cuts would have, the lack of data about case-handling and flow through the court, and the contribution made by the lawyers in the cases. In the 2009 study Family Law Advocacy by the very experienced researchers John Eekelaar and Mavis Maclean of Oxford University, it was shown that where lawyers were involved in family law cases concerning money and children, the majority of cases were resolved without court process or contested hearing. Even where the cases went to court, in the highly charged emotional atmosphere that one would expect, the presence of specialist family lawyers enhanced the prospects of resolution and shortened the court process, for they are minded to act collaboratively and in the interests of the children. Additional damage has already occurred to women and children through the closure, because of already instituted cuts, of the advice agencies Refugee and Migrant Justice, the Immigration Advisory Service and Law for All, as the noble Lord, Lord Bach, has just mentioned.
There are more constructive ways to save money. First of all there is too much judicial review, now used as the citizen’s right of appeal. I was surprised to find when I was the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education, running an alternative dispute resolution service for students, that those students obtained legal aid to challenge our decisions. There should be a push back against the notion that human rights mean that any and every decision can be judicially reviewed at great cost to the public. As for human rights, the real denial of those is to the middle classes, who are neither poor enough to be eligible for legal aid, nor can afford to go to law at their own expense. They are therefore the real victims, who cannot access justice.
The other substantive reform needed is to bring certainty into the law of maintenance on divorce. An obvious model for this is the continental European system of community of property, to which the Scottish system is similar, which entails a fixed fifty-fifty split of post-marital property and little ongoing maintenance. Broad-brush justice it may be, but it is cheap and efficient to arrange. As long as we have our Rolls-Royce discretionary system of settling property issues on divorce, couples will continue to waste sums they can ill afford—sometimes amounting to as much as the property in dispute—on deciding who gets what.
This order should be annulled. The Government should await the Family Justice Review report and change substantive law to get a more efficient system without damaging the profession and its diversity.
Lord Bach
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate, and especially the Minister for his winding up. I will give the House the good news, which is that I certainly do not intend to divide the House. I would very much like to, particularly given the degree of support for my Motion from around the House tonight—I am most grateful to noble Lords who have supported me—but it is too late to call a vote tonight, and in any event I am not certain that it would be the right thing to do, given that the Bill is due to come to this House next month. I will not be calling a vote, so anyone who wants to go now, please feel free.
I am afraid, though, that it was not the Minister’s arguments that persuaded me not to call the vote—indeed, if he had gone on much longer I might have been tempted to call it in any event. I shall make a few points and then the House can move on. Some very good speeches were made, if I may so. The noble Baroness, Lady Deech, talked about the Bar with great experience and knowledge. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Scott of Foscote, made some very important points, one of which I will come back to at the end of what I have to say. The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Ripon and Leeds were both right on the spot with their concern for children law, if I may call it that. My noble friend Lord Beecham, with his experience, made very telling points as always. Last, but certainly not least, the noble Lord, Lord Newton of Braintree, made a very telling contribution, and one to which I think the Government side should listen with some concern.
As to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Marks, of course I admired his loyalty, perhaps rather more his loyalty to the Government and to the Minister than to his party, which as I understand it has already made it clear at conferences twice this year that it does not like the way in which the Government are behaving towards legal aid. He asked me to state which cuts my party would have made in Government. I am not sure that he was listening with his usual care to what I said in my opening remarks, which was that the Labour Lord Chancellor and myself put out a White Paper called Restructuring the Delivery of Criminal Defence Services, which we would almost certainly have put into effect had we been elected—which we were not—and which would have saved a great deal of money. It would have been controversial and I have no doubt that there would have been debates in this House too in that event.
I did notice that in his interesting speech there was nothing at all about social welfare law and nothing about whether he felt it was right to attack social welfare law. What I had to say earlier was very much based around that part of the order. He said very little about criminal law, either, and about whether savings might be made in that field. He quoted figures and speeches that I had made, in which I, like legal aid Ministers down the years—as they no doubt will in the future—had said how generous our legal aid system was compared to the ghastly rest of the world. I did use those phrases, and there is some justification in them, but to be honest, not perhaps quite as much as I used to think when I spouted those words. For example, we compare ourselves with New Zealand, another common law country, and say, “My gosh, New Zealand gives a much smaller amount for legal aid than we do”. However, the situation in New Zealand is quite different. There, for example, there is no liability compensation, which costs a great deal in this country. There are other considerations as well.
Let me be frank: when we were in Government, I have no doubt that we made mistakes in this field. I am sure we did. There is no doubt in my mind that his Government are making mistakes now as well. Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Marks, will remember next time he speaks to the House on these matters that we are dealing with what his Government are intending to do, not with what my Government did or did not do when they were in office.
The Law Society has suggested savings of up to £350 million as an alternative to the legal aid cuts that the Government are putting forward. As we did not hear it tonight, we look forward very much to hearing what is wrong with the Law Society’s—
Lord McNally
What is wrong with the Law Society’s figure is that it does not save public expenditure to shuffle costs around Whitehall to other departments or to propose extra taxation on alcohol. That is not saving public expenditure; it is shuffling the pack.
Lord Bach
If the noble Lord is right, perhaps he will explain this decimation of social welfare law, with its few savings for the Ministry of Justice, and how it will cost infinitely more to the state as a whole when problems are not solved, people are chucked out of their houses, debts grow bigger, families break down and children commit crime. Other departments will have to pick up the pieces for the paltry savings that the Ministry of Justice will make. Please do not give us that stuff about public spending. The truth is that these Ministry of Justice savings—we have said that we accept that the MoJ has to find a number of savings—will cost the state and the community much, much more.
As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Scott of Foscote, said, civil legal aid is not an optional extra. The concern is that this Government are treating it just as an optional extra and the cost will be much greater. We could see which way the Government were going on legal aid way back in June or July 2010 when out of the blue they removed the grants that were given by the Legal Services Commission for young legal aid lawyers to get legal contracts with legal aid firms. It cost a few million pounds a year, if that. But the Government abolished them at the start and we should have been wise as to what they were planning to do now. There was absolutely no reason for doing that and there cannot be any reason for doing what they are intending to do now to social welfare law.
Legal aid in the civil field is well worth protecting. I shall end with a quote from Supreme Court Justice Lewis F Powell who spoke about the American system but it could just as easily be applied to the British system. He said:
“Equal justice under law is not merely a caption on the facade of the Supreme Court building, it is perhaps the most inspiring ideal of our society. It is one of the ends for which our entire legal system exists … it is fundamental that justice should be the same, in substance and availability, without regard to economic status”.
He was right. I hope only that the Government change their mind. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.