Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Lord Bishop of Chichester Excerpts

Wednesday 25th April 2012 Lords Chamber

Noble Lords know that my amendments also deal with the child abuse issue in relation to the extension of the time limit. I will be asking the House to support me for one last time on this matter. The Government may have their way. This may be the final time we speak on this issue. I understand that this ping must have its final pong, but this is the last throw of the dice and it is important that we ask the Government to think again. The reason why the churches, charities and third sector organisations are all supporting this amendment is that they have to deal, day by day, with the reality of what we will do. I therefore beg to move.

[The Lord Bishop of Chichester]

My Lords, I strongly support the noble and learned Baroness in everything that she has just said. She has very starkly set out the figures and the likely impact of not sending this back to the Commons. She has quite rightly said that people could die as a result.

It is hard to engage in this discussion without having a rerun of the long debate that we have just had about the non-pursued Pannick amendment. It seems to me that we are in considerable confusion—and I have to say, with all due respect, that I do not think that the Minister helped us at all in this—about whether what is really at stake is the focus, orientation and purpose of the Bill, or whether it is a genuinely financial provision. We are really—I nearly used the expression “having the wool pulled over our eyes”. I feel profoundly unsatisfied and unpersuaded by what we heard earlier this afternoon.

This boils down to the question of what kind of society we want to live in, and that is why it was so important to pursue the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, earlier on. I know that we have lost that, but this amendment gives us one more chance to say to the House of Commons, “If we do not get this right, people—in numbers that we cannot calculate, but certainly there will be people, women and children mainly, but some men as well—who will die as a result”. I want to give the strongest possible support from these Benches to the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Scotland. I hope very much that we will support her this afternoon.

[Baroness O'Loan]

My Lords, the serious dangers of restricting legal aid in this area have been recognised by Members of this House and the other place and by the third sector as well as by the churches. The leaders of the Christian, Sikh, Jewish and Hindu communities have all written to the Lord Chancellor saying that the Bill risks leaving domestic abuse victims,

“in dire need of support but without the ‘right kind of evidence’ to secure it”.

They also warn that,

“arbitrary time-limitations on the validity of evidence risk leaving victims without access to support, even when they may still be at risk of further abuse”.

There is no accommodation for those who cannot secure admission to a refuge because it is full, or they have complex needs, or they have little boys who are older than 11, or perhaps because they fled an abusive situation, going to a friend or relative rather than to a refuge. Or even because, unable to access a refuge, they have still accessed non-residential domestic abuse services. There is no logic in excluding these women. Their need is not necessarily any less, and may indeed be greater, than those who manage to make it into the refuges.

Bringing time limitations on the validity of evidence in line with the civil standard would be an appropriate and fair move, not least, as the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Scotland, has said, because of the considerable time—if it ever happens—that it takes victims to be able to face legal process.

Without these changes our legal system will let down many of the most vulnerable people in our society. It will leave them potentially trapped in violent and abusive circumstances. The risks of that are potentially grave if not, as the right reverend Prelate said, fatal.