Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Debate between Lord Clinton-Davis and Lord Pannick

Monday 12th March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pannick]

My Lords, I support the amendment. I am concerned that in the Minister’s letter dated 1 March to all noble Lords he said that the Government were removing legal aid for what he called “routine” immigration matters. I have to say to him that there is nothing routine about many of the cases for which legal aid would be denied.

Many of these cases have two important characteristics. First, they concern issues of fundamental importance to the individuals concerned, as well as to society. There are few issues as vital to an individual as whether they should be deported from this country, or whether members of their family should be able to join them in this country. The second characteristic is that many of these cases are of extreme legal complexity. The noble Lord, Lord Bach, has already quoted what the Court of Appeal said last week; and those words would be equally true of very many areas of immigration law. Yet legal aid would not be available for appeals to the immigration judge, or on points of law to the Upper Tribunal, the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court. The UK Border Agency will of course have the benefit of lawyers to argue its case on such appeals.

I understand the need for cuts in public expenditure, but this proposal to remove legal aid in immigration matters is proceeding on the fundamental misapprehension that these cases are somehow routine—they are not.

[Lord Clinton-Davis]

I will not detain the House for long, but recall only too well the situation posed when I was an MP conducting surgeries on Friday nights. There were many occasions when I had to go to Heathrow to see people who were being deported. They were desperate. They had no alternative. I would not like the situation to be repeated, but I fear that it will be. The Government have to convince this House that desperate people are not to be accommodated at all. That situation is impossible to defend. The proposals being put forward by the Government today are so reckless that they ought to be defeated. It is absurd that ordinary people who are so desperate should have no alternative. That situation should not be encountered at all.

Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Debate between Lord Clinton-Davis and Lord Pannick

Wednesday 1st February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Clinton-Davis]

Does the noble Lord agree that it is common practice for one solicitor to transfer a case to a solicitor in another part of the country? Speaking from personal experience, I quite often had to deal with cases in London that were transferred from the north of England because it was more convenient to deal with the insurers in that way.

[Lord Pannick]

Yes, I agree. Of course, the Bill will not in any way prohibit such transfers; it will prohibit only payment. However, prohibiting payment will deter what may be a very sensible economic arrangement that provides an incentive to the first solicitor to transfer to the second solicitor a case which the second solicitor can deal with far more efficiently—in the interests of the client; that is the point. As I say, all these matters are properly regulated by the SRA. If the SRA is not properly regulating it is not doing its job. I ask the Minister why and also whether there is any evidence that the SRA is not doing its job properly in regulating referral fees in relation to transfers between solicitors.

Public Bodies Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Clinton-Davis and Lord Pannick

Tuesday 23rd November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pannick]

I am grateful to the noble Lord. Of course, that is precisely what Parliament did in the 2006 Act. As I have sought to explain, the reason it did it in that legislation, and the reason it should do it in this legislation is because this Bill is so exceptional—it seeks to give a degree of power to Ministers which requires that the constraints are set out in the Bill in the clearest possible way in order to give confidence to those public bodies which may be the subject of orders made in the future. Regrettably, there is still doubt about whether proportionality is a general legal principle that applies to the exercise of all administrative functions.

I was dealing with the Minister’s amendment, which accepts that necessary protection includes the independence of the judiciary within the meaning of Section 3 of the Constitutional Reform Act 2005, and that is very welcome. However, Section 3 of that Act states that all Ministers of the Crown,

“must uphold the continued independence of the judiciary”.

It does not merely say that Ministers must consider upholding the independence of the judiciary, or that Ministers must not take any action which they consider would conflict with the independence of the judiciary. This is important because the constitutional principle is that it is the duty of Ministers, and all others concerned with the administration of justice, to observe the independence of the judiciary.

As so many of your Lordships explained on Second Reading, particularly the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, if Ministers are to be granted those broad powers to make orders—a matter to which I am sure that we will return later in Committee—it is vital that those powers are as circumscribed as possible. They must not trespass on the independence of the judiciary and on other fundamental principles, or undermine the functions of bodies whose task is to scrutinise government conduct and give impartial advice to the Government.

I very much hope that the Minister will feel able to accept Amendment 1. If not, I very much hope that the noble Lord, Lord Lester of Herne Hill, will regard this as a matter of considerable importance as we begin Committee and will seek the opinion of the House.

[Lord Clinton-Davis]

If the Government were to prevail so far as the amendment was concerned, could the issue be raised again in the courts? I think it could.

[Lord Pannick]

I am sure that there would be ample room for argument in the courts. I am concerned that we do not leave matters of this importance, in relation to a Bill that confers such exceptional powers on the Executive, to legal argument for the future. It is our task and our responsibility to ensure that these matters are clearly stated in the legislation that we are considering.