Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Lord Faulks Excerpts

Tuesday 10th January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Woolf]

My Lords, as is always the case, the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, has summarised the arguments in support of the amendment with admirable clarity. There is very little that I can add but, looking at these provisions, I should have thought that the Minister—although he may prove me completely wrong—would say, “Of course, that’s exactly what I will do. I will see that the person appointed as director has the qualifications that I consider necessary. How could I do otherwise?”. Likewise, I should have thought that he would say that of course the director must be independent. However, I urge the Minister not to be led astray by some argument on those lines. It is significant that the committees have expressed the concern to which the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, referred with the view that the position should be clearer. I say respectfully that the committees were right to take that view. We are concerned here with access to justice, which is a fundamental constitutional right. Where a right of that sort is involved, it is appropriate that the position is dealt with clearly.

The issue of what sort of civil servant would be appropriate to fill a particular role is always difficult. I remember a time when it was automatically assumed that any Permanent Secretary in what became the Lord Chancellor’s Department would be a qualified member of the Bar or a qualified solicitor. That no longer happens; the days when a barrister or solicitor would perform that role are past.

It is a different type of task that the director will perform. He will have the say-so in determining who is given access to justice—because without legal aid there may be no access to justice, and we all know that that would be a very worrying situation. Therefore, perhaps the Minister will recognise that, irrespective of the good intentions of an officeholder, sometimes it is of benefit if the person concerned is familiar with the subject involved. The experience of senior civil servants filling roles of this sort is that often departments do not feel comfortable with the independence of one of their civil servants who has been—if I may put it this way—seconded for a time to fill an office such as the one about which we are talking. In that situation it is very easy for a department to start giving instructions to “one of their own”—a civil servant whom they see as belonging to the department.

I hope that the Minister will forgive me if I give an example that occurred just before Christmas in connection with the Bill and which caused me to write to him on behalf of two of my noble friends who, with me, wanted to get the assistance of the chief executive of the NHSLA, Steve Walker. A later amendment suggests that there should be a process and a safety net to ensure that, where there might be a claim for medical negligence, a medical report should be obtained prior to litigation being started. We wished to have the advantage of the great experience of that official but were told politely and courteously that he would not be able to give us that assistance because the subject was too political for him to become involved with. I was very surprised and I am now glad that the Minister has properly responded to my concerns—although I have not received his letter—and that the position has been rectified. However, it illustrates how easy it is, when a senior civil servant is on attachment in a role such as that of the director, for those who are experienced in a department not to appreciate how important it is not to interfere with the independent way in which the individual performs their functions. Therefore, these amendments are sensible and I hope that the Minister will feel able to accept them.

[Lord Faulks]

My Lords, I, too, support the amendments. I will be brief, as the reasons were so admirably summarised by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, and by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf. The post of director will be critical for the preservation of whatever is left of legal aid. The concern of the committees was that there was at least the potential for conflict, as has been outlined, because the director might seek to follow the direction of the Lord Chancellor and not be suitably independent.

May I give your Lordships an example of how important the director’s powers may be and of how important it is that he or she should be seen to be independent? He will have to determine whether a case falls in the so-called exceptional cases category under Clause 9. I understand that the Minister may well be telling us in due course that this category and the availability of legal aid for exceptional cases is an effective answer or partly an answer to the apparent deprivation of access in relation to clinical negligence. I think that some of your Lordships may need some satisfying in this regard, but that I believe is one of the answers to the apparent lacuna.

Whether a case falls within the exceptional case category is bound to be somewhat controversial. Even the current decision-making exercised by the LSC is not short of critics. However, if a director is seen simply as doing the bidding of the Lord Chancellor at the relevant time, confidence in his independence will be significantly undermined. If a Lord Chancellor—not this Lord Chancellor, of course—were to decide that too many claims were being brought against government departments or the NHS, he could, at least in theory, give some rather firm guidance to the director on the process of determining such exceptional cases. Therefore, I suggest that it is vital that decision-making about the availability of legal aid should be seen not to have even the appearance of being at the whim of the Lord Chancellor or Cabinet colleagues but rather to be the proper determination by a suitably qualified director on grounds not of political expediency.

I dare say that this is very much what the Government’s true understanding of the director’s role is, in fact, to be, in which case I hope and expect the Minister to welcome these amendments, which set out, I hope in clear terms, what may be the underlying intention of the Government about the role of the director and his or her independence.