Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Lord Judd Excerpts

Wednesday 18th January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

I certainly saw the amendment as broad as that, and they may very well be able to do it through the employment tribunal. The great problem is that the employment tribunal will no longer have legal aid.

[Lord Judd]

I warmly commend the amendment, which I think will receive strong support from all parts of the House. The Bill in general is open to the awful charge of shifting the burden of our economic difficulties on to those who already in their lives face disproportionate difficulties and hardship. This is a particularly nasty and mean provision within that general strategy. These people are victims. They are not people who have just transgressed the law; they are victims of cruel, harsh and cynical treatment. If this country stands for anything, it must surely stand for ensuring that such people get some kind of justice after the experiences to which they have been exposed.

[Lord Avebury]

I would like to say a word on migrant domestic workers. First, I congratulate the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, on the wonderful work that she does on the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Human Trafficking, which has been influential on helping to shape government policy on trafficking, which has as she said made enormous strides in recent years.

The particular case of migrant domestic workers is subject to a consultation being undertaken by the Home Office. From what I have heard, the Government are moving towards ending the special status of migrant domestic workers on the basis that, as the Home Office considers, employers who want to have domestic servants should employ people from the European Union and pay them the national minimum wage. This is a fantasy when you consider that many lawyers are at present already breaking the law by bringing in people under other headings, such as students, and then transferring them to domestic slavery.

The particular case that has been drawn to our attention many times by Kalayaan, the organisation that defends the rights of migrant domestic workers, is that of people who bring in domestic workers as visitors accompanying them when they enter the country. They get leave to enter for six months, which in many cases is enough to meet the needs of the employer, but in some cases they remain on as overstayers after that period. If the Government move in the direction that I have suggested, there will be an enormous increase in the number of people brought in illegally by the employers in this way. They will really need the support that they can get only from having access to legal aid, because by definition if they manage to escape they will be destitute. They will have the support of NGOs such as Kalayaan, but without access to the courts they will be deprived of remedies that we think are their rights.

I very much welcome the amendments tabled by the noble and learned Baroness and hope that if the Government cannot accept them in precisely the form as they are tabled today, they will find some way in which to meet this need.