Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill
Debate between Lord Clarke of Nottingham and Helen Goodman(12 years, 7 months ago)
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Mr Clarke
The cases that the hon. Lady mentions do not depend on a lawyer. When the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman) was sitting behind her in the previous debate, he said that in his experience as an MP, when one discusses the matter with somebody, one gets clarity on what the real point is and how they should present it. A general adviser can help to sort somebody out in going along to argue their case by telling them what is relevant and what is not and giving them some guidance on what they should get evidence of in order to pursue their claim. That is not the same as legal aid. That is why we are producing the money for Citizens Advice and other voluntary bodies to give general advice. It is no good claiming that it is all about legal aid. Some lawyers are better at this than others. Just a friend who is a good advocate can be adequate in marshalling a case that is being argued on appeal about a question of fact as to whether, say, somebody is able to go back to work.
Helen Goodman
It would help the House if the Secretary of State could tell us what he means by a point of law. Does he mean that it is a disagreement about the proper interpretation of the rules, or does he accept that it might be about whether the rules have been properly interpreted, which is not a dispute about facts?
Mr Clarke
It would be reckless of me to try off the cuff to make a tight definition of a point of law. It is about a situation where a particular question arises out of the interpretation of a regulation and there is no clear and binding precedent for exactly what the law should be when it comes to applying it to the set of facts involved, and it is then up to the tribunal judge to decide. Following the concessions that I have introduced about upper tribunal and Court of Appeal cases, the judge will certify that a point of law is involved in a case because he thinks that it is one in which the guidance of the upper tribunal or the Court of Appeal is required on what exactly the law will say that it means. That is what is meant by a point of law. We have made considerable concessions. No one is arguing about the vulnerability of groups of people who are arguing about their welfare benefits. The Bill is about how much money the taxpayer pays to how many lawyers. We are trying to concentrate on spending that money on paying lawyers for cases in which a lawyer is required to sort out a welfare benefit dispute. That is the basis on which our amendments were produced.
Let me turn finally, and as briefly as I can, to clinical negligence and legal services for children. That has been debated throughout the passage of the Bill in this House and in another place. We have listened carefully to the concerns that have been raised about the impacts of these reforms on children. I can again assure the House that the provisions in the Bill will safeguard the vast majority of the spend on cases involving children, because we have covered all the most serious cases of clinical negligence—about 96%.
I remind people that the underlying problem in the tricky area of clinical negligence cases is that all the money that we spend on compensation, legal advice, expert witnesses and so on comes out of the budget of the national health service. That now takes up a proportion of the NHS budget of a kind that I would never have contemplated all those years ago when I was a Health Minister struggling with what I thought were difficult budgets. The more one allows to be taken out of the budget for lawyers and expert witnesses in claims for compensation, the more one cannot ignore the impact that that is having on what is available for patient spend. There is no doubt that this has been a bit of a growth industry in recent years, particularly since the changes to the no win, no fee arrangements about 10 years ago. There has been an increase of 50% or so in the number of claims in the past five or six years. The last annual report of the NHS Litigation Authority estimated that the unfunded liabilities for clinical negligence claims totalled £16.8 billion, which is a cool doubling of the figure since 2006.
The bills paid to the lawyers of criminal negligence claimants more than doubled from £83 million in 2006-07 to £195 million in 2010-11. The damages paid to claimants have gone up somewhat more slowly, but the lawyers’ bills have increased substantially. One reason for that is that the fees paid to and costs incurred by the lawyers and expert witnesses acting for the plaintiffs are about three or four times as much as the Litigation Authority, as the defendant, pays for its lawyers and expert witnesses. The costs and the claims are rising exponentially. Although this is an area that we should approach with care, the clinical negligence industry has been doing well over recent years, and that has been funded entirely by budgets that would otherwise be available for patient care.
Having given that somewhat stark background, I will turn to Lords amendment 171, which seeks to bring all such cases back into the scope of legal aid when a child is a party. In our opinion, that would be unnecessary and wasteful. As I have said, under our plans, the overwhelming majority of the existing support for children will continue. For the record, that includes child protection cases, civil cases concerning the abuse of a child, special educational needs cases, and legal aid for children who are made parties to private family proceedings.
In addition, we have made funding available in the final set of amendments under consideration in this group for cases of clinical negligence involving claims for babies who suffer brain injury at or around the point of birth. I state categorically that as a result of the Government’s Lords amendment 216, any baby who, through clinical negligence, suffers brain damage during childbirth, resulting in severe disability, will receive legal aid. The amendment provides legal aid for clinical negligence claims for babies who suffer brain injury during pregnancy, at birth or in the immediate post-natal period, leading to a lifetime of care needs. I also make it clear that if a baby were to be injured in an operation, say at six months, legal aid would be available through the exceptional funding scheme, where necessary, to ensure the protection of the individual’s right to legal aid under the European convention on human rights.
When we introduced the Bill, we believed that we had covered all those cases through the exceptional funding scheme. Doubts were expressed continually in this House and in another place about that, so we now have this set of amendments to put it beyond doubt in the Bill.
By contrast, we cannot support Lords amendment 172, as I have said. That amendment would provide public funding for the remaining minority of medical negligence claims with child claimants, despite the fact that many of them are relatively simple, do not involve lengthy and detailed investigations of the kind that we are trying to catch in Lords amendment 216, and are suitable for funding through a conditional fee agreement in exactly the same way as for adults. In line with the principles that underpin the Bill, the state should not fund cases that can be provided for by alternative means.
Mr Clarke
Babies, yes, although exceptional funding rules will apply to other serious cases involving children. Under the European convention on human rights, one must plainly provide someone with access to funding to have a fair resolution of a dispute. We therefore think that we are covering most cases. The amendments that I am suggesting that the House should disagree with cover all kinds of routine cases. They state that simply because a person is under a particular age, they should get legal aid in cases for which an adult would not receive it.
Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill
Debate between Lord Clarke of Nottingham and Helen Goodman(13 years ago)
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Mr Clarke
Those who can remember Second Reading will know that the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon and I kept stressing that we accept the need to maintain the funding for many voluntary agencies, particularly citizens advice bureaux, which give not only legal advice, but general advice to people suffering from problems of debt, housing and so on, which we all know are bound to get worse in these rather difficult times. A total of £20 million has been allocated to these bodies this year and we are looking ahead at how to continue that support.
I should point out that our legal aid changes will not take effect for a couple of years, so none of those bodies has lost any legal aid funding at the moment. What we are doing is finding money to make up for reductions in grant to those bodies that are largely from local authorities. The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (Mr Hurd) is about to announce how we will distribute the £20 million. I know that he is in touch with my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye (Amber Rudd) and expects to be able to make the announcement imminently so that we can get on with that.
I have left the debates on legal aid to the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon because, as everyone has seen, he is a walking expert on the subject. There seemed to be no point in my taking part in debates on amendments and having to turn to him if a particularly difficult question was asked. However, I have been present throughout the debates and listening to how Labour Members have tackled the matter. They seem to have lost all touch with common sense. When in government they were reducing expenditure on legal aid, or trying to and failing. In their manifesto they committed to reducing spending on legal aid, stating:
“we will find greater savings in legal aid.”
As recently as January this year the leader of the Labour party said, in relation to reductions in legal aid:
“Labour has shown it is ready to make difficult cuts that we believe are necessary for the long term health of our economy.”
As far as we can work out, the various amendments tabled by the Labour party in the course of our debates on the Bill would add £245 million to the legal aid bill, compared with the Government’s proposals.
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
Evidently, some of the amendments we tabled were not reported to the Secretary of State, because we also tabled amendments intended to speed up the collection of fines, on which the Ministry does not have a good record.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Lord Clarke of Nottingham and Helen Goodman(13 years, 2 months ago)
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Mr Clarke
This is a difficult subject, and it certainly needs to be looked at all the time. I agree: my experience in my part of the world is that many Travellers do not travel as frequently as they are supposed to, and they are fond of occupying vacant land and building houses on it, while still describing themselves as Travellers. The subject is more complex than that, and if we can make any improvements to the law that protect the legitimate interests of society as a whole, we will certainly do so.
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
Last week, the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly), defended the Government’s narrow definition of domestic violence in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill with these words:
“We are concerned that to include admission to a refuge in the criteria would be to rely on self-reporting…We are not persuaded that medical professionals would be best placed to assess whether domestic violence has occurred. Although they may witness injuries…nor would the fact of a police investigation without more evidence provide sufficient evidence”.––[Official Report, Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Public Bill Committee, 6 September 2011; c. 359-60.]
Women in this country will be appalled by those remarks. Would the Under-Secretary like to take them back, and also change his definition in the Bill?
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Lord Clarke of Nottingham and Helen Goodman(13 years, 4 months ago)
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Mr Clarke
We all wish to give support to the many people who, through voluntary or charitable activity, try to help society as a whole by tackling the reoffending and rehabilitation problems of ex-offenders, so I shall certainly consider my hon. Friend’s interesting suggestion. I would love to give Lord Chancellor’s awards to a large number of worthy people, but unfortunately, the financial crisis that the Government have inherited does not enable me to give an instant response to his idea.
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
Surely the Secretary of State has gone backwards. He has done a U-turn on early guilty pleas; he is reviewing his review on indeterminate imprisonment for public protection; and he has made massive cuts to probation services. I have had letters from probation services, and in Gloucestershire the cut is 7.9%, in West Yorkshire, it is 9.8%, and in Kent, it is a staggering 13.6% this year. How can we have a rehabilitation revolution if there are no community resources?
Mr Clarke
As the hon. Lady knows, we are debating the Bill tomorrow, which is enormous—I apologise for that—and has huge implications, but we are having to reform fundamentally a criminal justice system that does not help society as it should, because it does not cut reoffending. We are having to reform on a very wide scale a legal aid and civil justice system that encourages unnecessary litigation and is not particularly user-friendly. We have taken over a mess, and we are going in for massive reform of it. We may have changed quite a lot of proposals in light of consultation, but the underlying need for a balanced package of radical reform is certainly there, and we will tackle it.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Lord Clarke of Nottingham and Helen Goodman(13 years, 10 months ago)
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Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
In view of the serious riot at Ford open prison, does the Minister wish to revise the statement issued by the Ministry of Justice when announcing its public spending cuts—including a reduction of 10,000 in the number of front-line staff—which said that by taking such “tough decisions” it will be able to
“punish and rehabilitate offenders more effectively”?
Mr Clarke
The National Offender Management Service is undertaking a full investigation into what happened at Ford. Obviously, the behaviour there was deplorable and we must learn every lesson we can about what happened and how we can minimise the risk in future. So far as I am aware, the prison was staffed at its normal level and we had made no changes since we took office to the arrangements under the previous Government. We should not start leaping to conclusions about whether anything was at the heart of these events other than the appallingly bad behaviour of people who had been acquiring alcohol in the run-up to new year’s eve. We are looking carefully at all the circumstances and will draw the proper lessons from that.
Helen Goodman
Of course it is important to wait until the inquiry, but does the Secretary of State honestly think that Ford would be adequately managed if the number of staff on duty were reduced to four or five to supervise 500 people each night?