Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Debate between Lord Boswell of Aynho and Lord Avebury

Monday 12th March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Avebury]

My Lords, perhaps I may mention one point which has not been raised so far. I refer to the effect of this provision on the workload of Members of Parliament in another place and of some of your Lordships in this House. Many of us already get letters, e-mails and personal approaches from immigrants asking for advice. Obviously, we are exempt from the provisions that apply to other not-for-profit agencies. Under the rules that determine who is legally able to do so, we cannot say that we are not qualified to give advice, but people will no longer be able to go to, for example, citizens advice bureaux. I know from personal contact with the citizens advice bureau in Southwark that it has one person who is trained to give advice at level 3 on immigration cases and it has very few lower down who are even able to advance advice to their clients on level 1 cases.

Do your Lordships not think that the consequence of the Bill, when enacted, will be that, as people will not be able to get advice elsewhere, they will come in their droves to the doors of Members of Parliament, they will clog up the advice bureaux and they will turn to your Lordships? We will be completely overwhelmed by the volume of cases, as well as being unable to deal with the complex cases to which the noble Lord, Lord Bach, referred in his introduction. We all know that some immigration cases are simple and can be dealt with very easily by a person acting on his own behalf, but that does not apply to the vast majority of cases, as we have heard today. I think that there is enormous merit in the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Bach, and I certainly hope that my noble and learned friend on the Front Bench will have been thinking carefully about how he is going to reply at the end of this debate.

[Lord Boswell of Aynho]

My Lords, I have listened with interest to this debate as a lay person who has not been much engaged on the Bill in the past. However, like my noble friend Lord Avebury, I had constituency experience and was always impressed by the complexity of the cases brought to me. I am also impressed by the volume of evidence and comment made, not least because I currently happen to be one of the officers of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Migration. I am not in any sense taking its brief but I feel that this matter needs very careful and continuing consideration.

I well understand that there have been cases of abuse in the past. These may have involved overt or self-styled professionals, and they may have involved bad practices by others, including third parties, who run the immigration cases. I also well understand the point about the cost that the Minister has already made to us in correspondence. I would go beyond that to comment that we really cannot meet all the objectives which his department needs to meet in order to balance its budget if we make wholesale concessions on every single aspect of concern where pressure is developed.

These are complex cases. My difficulty in saying that we need to keep them within scope is—thinking aloud—in determining how one would find a basis for doing so without, as it were, pre-hearing the merits of the cases and without necessarily being able to predetermine the degree of legal complexity in those cases unless and until they had been examined. I know that those are difficulties and I know that the cost is a difficulty, but I say to my noble and learned friend that I do not spend my life rebelling and I do not intend to do so tonight for some of the general reasons that I have given about the need for rigour as we take this Bill through. However, I think that these cases are particularly difficult. If he takes them out of scope now, I think that he will need to keep the whole area under review. In future, he may need to consider at least some residual discretionary fund which can be applied to cases of particular interest or importance or where justice is most engaged. It is on that qualified basis, but in anticipation also of his response, that I may be prepared to tender my vote in his Lobby tonight.