Legal Aid

Lord Knight of Weymouth Excerpts

Thursday 10th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)]

My Lords, this is the first time I have spoken on legal aid. I normally leave that to those in this House with a wealth of expertise, particularly from the legal profession, and to those from whom we have already heard, as exemplified by the excellent speech from the noble Lord, Lord Low.

I want to take a little time to talk about the importance of access to justice. Let me talk about three people. Two years ago, I visited New Orleans for the first time. My Dorset friend, Emily, suggested meeting John Thompson. So, one afternoon, we were waiting just outside the French Quarter when John rolled up in his car and let us into his building. It was in many ways like any community building we have all visited. On the walls, however, were pictures of middle-aged black men, with their stories written below. These were stories just like John’s. He told us about his experience of being on death row as a convicted murderer in the Angola prison in New Orleans. He was exonerated after 18 years on death row. He was released suddenly—unemployable, homeless and mentally not healthy. He had to then prove innocence to qualify for compensation from the state of Louisiana. He overcame these obstacles to found his centre, Resurrection After Exoneration.

While we talking, an older man hobbled in with a styrofoam tray of fried chicken. Two months previously he had been exonerated after 30 years on death row. Almost 20 people have been victims of this gross miscarriage of justice. They were all in the wrong place at the wrong time and too poor to afford decent legal representation. All were helped by the Innocence Project New Orleans, established by my friend from Dorset, Emily Bolton. She qualified as a lawyer first in Louisiana and, subsequently, here when she moved home in 2004.

Meeting John really brought home to me the importance of credible legal aid and access to justice. Yesterday Emily emailed me. She said that,

“cuts to police and CPS are eroding the quality of prosecution evidence. In addition, the cuts to legal aid are making miscarriages of justice more likely. This is because the fee structures discourage proactive work by defence solicitors and even the most conscientious among them are unable to do the work needed to achieve justice for their clients pro bono”.

This is much as my noble and learned friend Lord Goldsmith said.

Barristers are forced to do more last-minute work because solicitors have not sought their own answers to the questions posed by the prosecution evidence and their clients. As a result, it is becoming rarer for the courts to be presented with a fair and complete picture of the case and the system’s accuracy is fatally undermined. In turn, the Criminal Cases Review Commission is working with 30% less money on 70% more applications from prisoners to have their cases reviewed. The aspirational goal is that prisoners will serve only three years before having a wrongful conviction overturned. The reality is far longer, as a period of time will pass before we correct our mistakes.

What do these statistics mean for the people who the system is designed to protect and serve? Let me tell your Lordships a little about Mr Jamie Green, a fisherman from the Isle of Wight. Jamie is a prisoner for whom these systemic dysfunctions and delays in the criminal justice system have meant that he has been waiting for more than five years to have what is now clearly a wrongful conviction quashed. As the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, was speaking, the funeral of Jamie’s wife of 26 years, Nikki Green, began. Nikki died of cancer last Monday, before her husband could be exonerated and freed. Jamie will have accompanied her coffin into the service in Newport in shackles, accompanied by security officers who will return him to prison after the service. Tonight, when we leave this House, Jamie will be contemplating all he has lost, alone in his cell. This is the human cost of trying to do justice on the cheap. Because of underfunding of the system, Jamie could not be there to help his wife through her chemotherapy or try to bring comfort to their children. He could not provide for his family during such trying times. Jamie will never again see his wife alive, as a free man.

Jamie is represented by the Centre for Criminal Appeals, a new non-profit criminal appeals practice established by my friend Emily, which is raising private grant funding and donations to cover the work that legal aid will not pay for and that the commission cannot create time for. The centre estimates that in some cases this is at least 50% of the work needed to prove that a conviction is unsafe to the satisfaction of the Court of Appeal. Every wrongful conviction which the centre gets overturned saves the taxpayer the cost of incarceration—an average cost of £25,000 per year. For every one the guilty party is free and unpunished, but of course this is about so much more than that. How many more people like Jamie and his family must be irrevocably harmed by the cuts to criminal justice funding? As we debate the future of legal aid, we must ensure that the tragedy blighting the Green family is not repeated.

Social Mobility Strategy

Lord Knight of Weymouth Excerpts

Tuesday 5th April 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

My Lords, I am sure that on all sides of the House we welcome a commitment to improving social mobility. All of us who want a fairer society want more room at the top and people to succeed on the basis of ability and not birth. It is also clear that there is much to be done. The figures at the beginning of the strategy make that clear, and I agree with it that:

“The lack of social mobility is damaging for individuals”.

It also leaves the country’s economic potential unfulfilled.

The Statement says that the promotion of social mobility is,

“the principal objective of the coalition Government’s social policy”.

That is also welcome. In that respect, and in the appointment of my right honourable friend Alan Milburn to head up this work, the Government are continuing an emphasis that Gordon Brown gave the last Government when he became Prime Minister.

I am the first to say that the last Government—alongside lifting half a million children out of poverty, embedding the principles of Every Child Matters, establishing universal early years provision for the first time, and a record number of children getting GCSEs, and ensuring a record number of students going to university—could have done more on social mobility. That is precisely why Alan Milburn was commissioned to write his report at the beginning of 2009, so today’s strategy has a familiar feel to it as something of a reheat of the last Milburn report, and on that basis there is not a lot to criticise as far as it goes. On the three actions set out in the strategy, there is nothing wrong with establishing a new public body to monitor progress. I welcome the publication of indicators of progress. And, of course, the final action point of a group of Ministers chaired by Nick Clegg is bound to add significant value.

However, I am bound to ask: where is the beef? Is this it? How do these three actions counteract the damage already done by this Tory-led Government? Let us, like the strategy, take the life-cycle approach. Before a child is born, support for parents, especially the mother, is important. What will be the social mobility effect of abolishing the health in pregnancy grant? Then life begins and we find that the baby credit element of tax credit has gone, the Sure Start maternity grant is cut for a significant number of women, and the childcare element of tax credits and child benefit are gone for a growing number of middle- income families as thousands more move into the top rate of tax. Let us hope that the child is healthy, because there is a strong link between health inequalities and social mobility. Just last month, the British Medical Journal published a report saying that the shambles of the NHS reforms risks making child health worse because of the lack of access to specialist paediatricians, a general view supported by the Government’s own Commissioning Support Programme. Incidentally, how come the Government launched a consultation on these reforms yesterday, during local election purdah?

Let us hope that the child’s family does not live in private rented accommodation, especially here in London. Shelter estimates that housing benefit changes will force 129,000 children to move to more affordable homes with, as the Government’s own impact assessment says,

“an adverse impact on work to reduce child poverty and … children’s schooling could be affected”.

Before they get to school, the parents and the children might be lucky enough to get support from one of the remaining Sure Start children’s centres. Much has been made of 15 hours of free pre-school support for some two year-olds and all three and four year-olds, but where will they go for this support? Children’s centres are fundamental to the early intervention that Frank Field’s poverty report put such stress on; yet despite the Prime Minister’s spin in the other place, the fact is that hundreds are closing and thousands are reducing their services.

Then we get to school. The concept of the new pupil premium is welcome, but the reality is that, as the Institute for Fiscal Studies has noted, schools in more deprived areas will receive a smaller pupil premium than similarly deprived schools in more affluent areas. In order to pay for it, the two most successful schemes that academics tell us narrowed attainment gaps between rich and poor children, London Challenge and Extended Schools, have been either scrapped or allowed to wither on the vine. If a child is not academic, he or she will be written off and turned off school by the English baccalaureate that exclusively values academic attainment and thus incentivises schools to narrow their focus. However, if a child is not too disengaged by the narrower focus of school, will he or she stay on after 16? Some 600,000 students who would have received the educational maintenance allowance will no longer qualify for financial support, even with the new replacement scheme. That is another attack on middle- income families.

If children manage to stay on, what about university? Most universities are now trebling their fees. Despite warnings, it appears that the Government cannot afford this and look set to reduce the number of student places accordingly. What does that do for social mobility? Does the Minister really believe that families who just miss out on a bursary will think it worth encouraging their children to take on all that debt, and will not some universities go out of business? London Metropolitan University has more black and Afro-Caribbean students than the whole of the Russell Group put together. Can the Minister assure us that universities of that kind will be protected to aid social mobility?

Finally, what about work? Unemployment is up 600,000 since the election; it was falling when I left office as Employment Minister. There are 60,000 more unemployed young people. Unemployment among women has risen every month for the past eight months. Graduate unemployment is at a record high. And what is the government offer on work—that most basic tool of social mobility? Well, there are some mini work experience opportunities and now some internships, including at Cowley Street for the Liberal Democrats. It is reported that these were being advertised yesterday as unpaid, as voluntary. Obviously, that is better than the Tories auctioning them off as a fundraiser, but how does it sit with compliance with the minimum wage brought in by the previous Government? How does it compare with the half a million opportunities for young people that I was responsible for? Our young person’s guarantee was scrapped. The guarantee of training, a job or work experience for 18 to 25 year- olds has gone. The Future Jobs Fund has gone.

A life-cycle approach in this strategy is welcome, but I wish the Government luck in making it work after the destruction of the past 10 months. Social mobility is an important cause for us to rally around, but I am not sure that people will take this strategy seriously. It is short on positive action and it does nothing to address the attacks on social mobility already launched by this Government. If the Deputy Prime Minister wants to be taken seriously on this, as with other things, he will have to do a lot better.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Knight of Weymouth Excerpts

Wednesday 19th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Corbett of Castle Vale]

I accept my noble friend’s point. Part of this touches on our earlier debates about the accuracy of the electoral register. It may well be that prisoners in that position should be encouraged to get on the electoral roll from the only address that they currently have, which would be prison.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

My Lords, I have added my name to my noble friend Lord Corbett’s amendment, even though in many ways I disagree with the stance that he takes on prisoners’ voting. My instincts would be to agree with the noble Lord, Lord Filkin, when he was Parliamentary Under-Secretary at the Department for Constitutional Affairs as was; when he announced that the Government of the day were appealing against the European Court’s ruling in 2005, he said that,

“it has been the view of successive governments, including this Government, that persons who have committed crimes serious enough to warrant a custodial sentence should forfeit the right to have a say in how the country is governed while they are detained”.—[Official Report, 14/7/04; col. 1242.]

That is a sentiment that I can certainly agree with. Indeed, as the Secretary of State for Justice is currently pursuing a progressive path of trying to ensure that fewer prisoners are locked up, it follows that those who remain in prison will be there for more serious offences, and in my view that in turn somewhat lessens the argument for votes for prisoners. That does not mean that I am not in favour of rehabilitation and that I do not think that there is a good principled argument to be made, but I happen to disagree with it. However, as my noble friend said, we should not rehearse the arguments at any length tonight.

However, in the context of this Bill, the Government have to allow for prisoners when deciding the boundaries for future general elections, given that the Prime Minister has said that he reluctantly accepts that he has to bow to the European court ruling in the case of John Hirst. This amendment enables me to ask the Minister a few questions that are directly pertinent to the Bill. First, the amendment refers to prisoners who are serving a term of “4 years or less”. What is the Government’s view on whether all prisoners should get the vote, as my noble friend has argued? What is their view on whether it should be given to those who are serving shorter prison terms? The amendment mentions four years but it could be two years or six months. Does the Minister think that the vote should be given to those prisoners who are coming towards the end of a sentence, however long the initial sentence was, and that that would be consistent with looking to rehabilitate them back into society?

Secondly, what is the right number of years? Does the Minister have a nice round figure that he might want to share with us, given that we have talked a lot about other round figures when discussing the Bill? My third question relates to the question that my noble friend Lady Liddell asked of my noble friend Lord Corbett in relation to the location of prisons. I hope that my noble friend gave the correct answer in that respect. When I was the Member of Parliament for South Dorset, I represented two prisons for some of the time and three prisons for another part of the time because the prison ship was located in my constituency, which meant that there were up to about 1,500 prisoners in my constituency. I would not have relished canvassing them and I certainly would not have relished the casework implications of representing the inmates in the various prisons. Some of them occasionally wrote to me. Contrary to what the Minister said about MPs representing absolutely everybody in their constituency, I am afraid that I tended to try to duck the casework involved with the issues that the prisoners raised as it would have occupied all my staff’s time and would have constituted a very slippery slope for me and for them. In addition, South Dorset was a very homogenous community in terms in ethnicity and religion with the exception of the prisoners. The majority of the inmates of the Portland young offender institution come from London and reflect the ethnicity and different religious make-up of London rather than that of Portland. Their inclusion would certainly change the character of the constituency significantly. Indeed, given tonight’s vote, there is the question of how the Isle of Wight will be accounted for in terms of the significant number of prisoners who now live on the island, and how they will be catered for.

Thirdly, if registration is based on the home address, as has been suggested, what would the Minister do to ensure that we avoid fraud in postal voting? That may become a sensitive issue as regards prisoners having postal votes given that postal voting has raised enough difficult issues as we have extended the opportunities for people to vote by post. It would be useful if he could tell us what arrangements will be made to enable candidates to canvass prisoners. Finally, what is the timetable for changing the law in respect of prisoners getting the vote, as that is critical for the Bill?

[Baroness Smith of Basildon]

I listened with great interest to my noble friend’s questions on this issue. It helps to understand the complexity of the issue facing the Government on giving prisoners the vote. I add a further complexity to the issue and the questions that my noble friend is posing. In this country, we allow those who are citizens of this country but who live overseas to register as overseas voters. Would we allow those serving sentences in prisons overseas to vote, and what arrangements could be made for them?

[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

My noble friend Lady Smith of Basildon asks a fine question, which I had not previously thought of. However, I am sure that the Minister will have done so, will not need to think on his feet at the Dispatch Box and will be able to give us a precise answer.

On the question about the timetable, it is highly pertinent whether it coincides with the Boundary Commission review period to agree the boundaries for the next general election. If it does not, which arrangements will stand the test of time in respect of prisoners getting the vote?

[Lord Thomas of Gresford]

The noble Lord has eschewed acting on behalf of the interests of prisoners in his constituency. Who acted on their behalf in the absence of the noble Lord? To which agency was it left to represent them in any of the problems that a Member of Parliament might normally address in any constituency?

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

Can I help?

[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

My noble friend can help me in a moment, once I have had a chance to help myself. The noble Lord, Lord Thomas, raises a question that is right at the heart of the legal case as I understand it and as interpreted by the BBC. John Hirst, who took the case to the European Court said:

“I’d read books that said if you want to change something you start up a pressure group, and then you put pressure on MPs and then you get things changed in parliament. Well that’s alright if you’ve got the vote and you’ve got some clout behind you. When you’re a prisoner, the only thing you can do if you want to complain and no-one listens is riot and lift the roof off—which isn’t the best way of going about things. Because we didn’t have a vote, there was no will in parliament to change anything”.

That is at the root of why he brought the case and, I guess, why he won it.

If a prisoner who had been a constituent of mine, or whose address was in my constituency, had written to me with a case when I was a Member of Parliament, I would have taken it up on their behalf, but I was unwilling to do so for people who happened to be resident in my constituency at Her Majesty’s pleasure. That was most difficult in respect of the large number of foreign nationals who were in Verne prison in my constituency. It was very difficult for them to get anyone to listen to them. It would have been a significant resourcing issue for me if word had got around the prison that they had a local MP who was willing to do all their legal work for them.

[Lord Thomas of Gresford]

Never mind the resources—is the noble Lord saying that he was happy that there were people in his constituency, whether they were there at Her Majesty’s pleasure or whatever, who had no political representation or access to Ministers through a Member of Parliament? Was he happy that people who had no home addresses that they could give to the constituency MP where they had formerly lived were left without any resource or recourse at all?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

I would not have been happy if that situation had existed. I sought to do my duty, as I saw it, to my constituents, whether they were in prison in other constituencies or not. The local prison for my constituency was Dorchester. The right honourable Oliver Letwin would, I am sure, have wanted me, rather than him, to deal with my constituents. I am sure that prisoners will have listened to the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, and will now be writing to him at the House of Lords to take up their issues if they seek representation.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

I had a fairly large prisoner mailbag. Prisoners get full service from Members of Parliament. Not only did they get full service, I visited prisoners from outside my own constituency on several occasions, including some of the most violent of offenders. Their stories were absolutely fascinating. It is a very interesting area of political representation.

Public Bodies Bill [HL]

Lord Knight of Weymouth Excerpts

Tuesday 11th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newton of Braintree]

My Lords, I had not thought of declaring my disability as an interest but, in view of what the noble Baroness has said, perhaps I had better. I certainly sympathise with some of the points that she has made.

However, I had been going to declare two other interests in a speech which I do not think will count on the McNally scorecard, partly because it is not related to his department and partly because it will be as neutral as I can possibly make it. One interest is that I must have been the Minister responsible for disabled people at the time when DPTAC was established—albeit not by what was then the DHSS, or the DSS; I have forgotten which. I was certainly the Minister responsible, as Secretary of State, for creating the disability living allowance in its current form and therefore for establishing the advisory committee. I do not regard either of those points as an argument for me to defend the status quo without regard to what has happened in the intervening period, but it clearly gives me an interest in the matter.

I am bound to express some caution, particularly in respect of the Disability Living Allowance Advisory Board, when I am told that one reason why it is thought to be no longer needed is that its function is to give advice only when asked for by the Secretary of State, so that when the Secretary of State decides that he does not want the advice—which may well be because he knows what he is going to get but he does not want it—it should become redundant. There appears to be a certain amount of circularity about that argument, which I hope that my noble friend from the DWP will be able to deal with.

As to DPTAC, I understand that some alternative arrangement is to be made, but no one knows what that will be. I hope that we can be told today but, if not, we are back in the situation of the previous debate. As the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, said, all of this would be much easier if the Government came clean and said, “We need something. It isn’t this, but this is what it is”. What we are being told time after time is, “We don’t need this. We know we need something, but we don’t know what it is”. That is very unsatisfactory indeed.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

I support the amendments in my name and that of my noble friend Lord McKenzie. There is not much that I want to add to the excellent case made by my noble friend. In some ways, I want to echo the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Newton. These are two advisory bodies affecting disabled people and there are some fairly standard questions about both of them that it would be useful for the Minister to answer. How are the bodies being replaced? How much money, if any, is being saved by their abolition? Given that these are advisory committees made up of people with disability, rather than people who might describe themselves as experts in matters of disability, how will the Minister ensure that the voices of people such as my noble friend Lady Turner, who spoke of her own experience of being disabled, are heard and that people’s experiences of the transport system in relation to the disability living allowance are properly heard by Ministers as they make their decisions?

More specifically, I note that the Disabled Persons Transport Advisory Committee has as its aim that,

“disabled people should have the same access to transport as everybody else”.

On its website, it says:

“We want this to happen by 2020”.

Why not let it run on until 2020, when it thinks that it might have achieved its aim? Why not give it that target and that very clear end date? The chair of the committee, Dai Powell, in response to the announcement by the Government that, under the Bill, DPTAC would be abolished, said:

“I and the Committee consider there is still so much to be done, the transport system is still inaccessible to many people, and we have more work to do with our stakeholders (not least the Olympic Delivery Authority)”.

If the Minister is not willing to be as generous as 2020, would it not be sensible at least to be clear, here and now, that he will not use the powers that he is seeking in the Bill to abolish DPTAC until after the Olympics? Then at least it could continue the good work that it is doing with the ODA to ensure that the Games and the Paralympic Games are successful and accessible for people with disabilities.

Finally, in respect of the Disability Living Allowance Advisory Board, clearly the Minister shares our concerns that consultation is important and has been consulting over the changes to disability living allowance to create the new personal independence payment. However, is the normal, statutory consultation process enough? Is he getting consistent expert advice from people with disability, given how regularly problems around DLA are in the news? Within the last month we have had the Public Accounts Committee report on 16 December, which said that the appeals procedure needs improvement. Already this month we have had reports that the new payment may be in breach of people’s human rights. Clearly, as we move from one system to another, there are going to be sticking points and difficulties. It would seem sensible for the Minister to seek advice from the advisory board that he has at his disposal to try to iron out some of those difficulties as we move from one system to another. If, after that, he thinks that he can make a good case for getting rid of the board, perhaps he should seek to do so at that point.

[Lord Low of Dalston]

My Lords, I should like to say a few words about these two amendments. In so doing, I declare my interest as a recipient of disability living allowance. The noble Baroness, Lady Wilkins, had very much hoped to be present to speak to these amendments this afternoon but, sadly, she is not well and very much regrets that she cannot be here. However, she has asked me to say that she would like to be associated with my remarks.

The Disability Living Allowance Advisory Board seems already to have disappeared. Its website has been removed and the telephone numbers associated with it are now being answered by other DWP staff. This might be thought to be jumping the gun somewhat. DLA, as we know, helps many thousands of disabled people with the higher cost of living as a disabled person, but, as we have heard, the Government have announced that they wish to make significant changes to the benefit. The June emergency Budget announced plans to cut working-age DLA expenditure and case load by 20 per cent. This would represent well over 360,000 disabled people aged 16 to 64 losing their disability living allowance. The Government opened a formal consultation on this proposal in December, but have indicated that they are considering extending the changes to children and to people over 65, potentially affecting many more thousands of disabled people and their families. However, the consultation is full of inaccuracies. One example is the repeated claim that there is no process to check that awards remain correct, but the DWP can require a review with an independent medical adviser of any DLA award at any time. The Disability Living Allowance Advisory Board would, of course, have been able to advise the department on this issue, had it been asked.

The October spending review also made it clear that the Government want to end mobility payments to disabled people in residential care. This has been particularly controversial. Not enough detail is yet available on this proposal, but the DWP has already had to recalculate its figures on how many disabled people will be affected. Originally, the Government suggested that it would be about 50,000 people, but they now suggest that it will mean 80,000 disabled children, adults and pensioners losing benefit. One might have thought that, in the context of such significant DLA reform, an independent expert advisory body would have been useful to the Government and could have helped to ensure that reform was effective. Instead, it is apparent that the Government made their DLA pledges without expert support or full consideration of the impact. An adequately resourced DLA advisory board properly involved in policy development could have saved the Government some red faces. Axing the body risks undermining the Government’s ability to understand the benefit and provides ammunition to those who suggest that the Government’s plans are unfair. The inaccurate statements and the need to revise figures on the numbers of people affected only add weight to the belief that quango reform has been botched, as the Public Accounts Committee has suggested.

The Minister for Disabled People has now convened, as we have heard, a new expert panel to help to design a different DLA assessment procedure and to facilitate a new stakeholder group on DLA reform more generally. I believe that the work of these groups could have been informed, if not led, by the advisory board, possibly, as has been suggested, in a revised form, and I hope that the Government will reconsider abolition.

On Amendment 34, DPTAC has a strong record of bringing about change in a considered and measured way. Its influence can be seen across all forms of transport, from bus design specifications to guidance for the aviation industry. By recognising the constraints and characteristics of transport industries, it has been able to win over those in that sector who might otherwise have been resistant to change and it has ensured that the transport needs of disabled people are better met. For example, features that we now take for granted on buses today, such as colour-contrasted handrails, bell pushes that can be reached by passengers in wheelchairs, clear information displays and so on, were all introduced as a result of the work of the committee. The DPTAC spec, as it came to be known, was a standard accessibility specification for the bus industry and to this day remains a central part of the Public Service Vehicles Accessibility Regulations.

Of course, one cannot make a case for retaining a body on the basis of past glories alone, but in recent years the Department for Transport has, I am sorry to say, lost its focus on transport and disability issues, as witnessed by the complacent attitude that it has adopted towards the development of so-called shared surface schemes, in which pedestrians are expected to take their life in their hands and mingle indistinguishably with motorised traffic as all pavements and security barriers are dismantled. This has come about as a result of the closure of the specialist unit in the department, which had for 20 years led on these policy issues and provided secretariat support to DPTAC.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Lord Freud)]

My Lords, this group of amendments would remove the Disability Living Allowance Advisory Board and the Disabled Persons Transport Advisory Committee from the list of bodies to which the Public Bodies Bill applies. I can see no circumstances in which this would be desirable. Both these bodies were set up for very good reasons but they no longer reflect the world in which they operate.

Let me first turn to the Disability Living Allowance Advisory Board. The board was established in 1991 to provide advice to the Secretary of State on matters relating to disability living allowance and attendance allowance. I am delighted to thank members of the board for the advice that they have provided over the years, which has contributed to policy debate in the department. However, as other noble Lords have pointed out, it should be noted that the board has not been asked to provide advice since November 2008 by the present or the previous Administrations.

Medical experts in the department are already providing the department, including disability living allowance decision-makers and departmental medical officers, with medical advice and medical input into policy decisions. When required, the department can obtain expert medical advice in specialist medical fields using “task and finish” groups. Members of Equality 2025, a public body, are well placed to provide personal insight into the effects of policy initiatives.

One of the things that has changed since 1991 is the creation of the Office for Disability Issues. The fact is that it has managed to organise a much wider range of channels from disabled people’s organisations and groups which completely changes the environment in which this advisory body, among others, operates. It is in that context that we should look at this step.

I turn now to a specific point raised by the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, about the reform of the DLA and the involvement of experts in that reform. We have a group of independent specialists in health, social care and disability, as well as disabled people. The group includes individuals from a range of professions such as occupational therapy, psychiatry, physiotherapy, social work, general practice, community psychiatric nursing, and representatives from RADAR and Equality 2025. We are pulling in from widespread channels a huge variety of relevant expertise.

A question was raised by the noble Lords, Lord McKenzie and Lord Knight, about the length of the consultation period. We did consult widely with disability organisations, letting them know our thinking well in advance of the publication of the consultation, and we will continue to work with and involve them in the overall process going forward.

Let me finish my remarks on this particular board. This is a classic example of a body that was set up for a very good reason, but which has now outlived its useful life. Things have moved on since 1991 and the Public Bodies Bill will allow the Government to reflect those changes by abolishing this body.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

I am grateful to the noble Lord. Can he tell us how much he is saving by getting rid of it?

[Lord Freud]

This is not a change being made with any view to making savings because I think that this board does not cost anything at all. I believe the services of the board members are given on a pro bono basis, for which we have been very grateful. Neither of these are money-saving measures since in money terms these bodies are rather inexpensive sources of advice, but the point is whether they are a relevant and necessary function in a changed environment.

Let me turn to the Disabled Persons Transport Advisory Committee. The Government’s approach to disability and transport has moved forward significantly since 1985 when the committee was established and the important issues of disability equality are now a core element of departmental policy and delivery. At a practical level, although there is still more to be done about the kind of improvements that still need to be made—no one would disagree with the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Turner, and the noble Lord, Lord Low—nevertheless it is the case that access to all modes of transport has been transformed over the past two and a half decades. Rather than seeking access for disabled people as a specialist topic, transport operators across the sector are now expected to incorporate their needs into the mainstream of transport planning and delivery. All public bodies have a statutory duty under the Equality Act 2010 to take equalities issues into account in their decision-making. Against this background, and while recognising the valuable work that the committee has done for the department in areas such as accessibility and mobility policy, there is scope to reform the way in which disability advice is delivered to increase flexibility and accountability to the taxpayer.

The question was raised by a number of noble Lords about what or whether anything replaces the DPTAC advice. We intend to commence a consultation in the near future on successor arrangements to DPTAC in order to ensure that we continue to get the advice that we need, thus improving accountability and flexibility and, therefore, value for the taxpayer. It is worth noting that the policy divisions within the Department for Transport increasingly seek advice from specific modal groups. For example, in aviation the department tends to use sources of information closer to the aviation sector—airlines, airports, the CAA, and so forth. The question of timing was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Knight, particularly in relation to the Olympics. DPTAC continues to exist until such time as it is abolished by order and this is unlikely to occur before 2012. Therefore, the Olympic work will carry on as routine.

The noble Baroness, Lady Turner, raised the point about whether local authorities would continue to perform their duties in this respect. No local authority should ignore the needs of disabled travellers. Local authorities are subject to clear equalities duties and, as such, should be actively promoting equality for disabled people. All transport operators within local authority areas are subject to provisions under the Equality Act 2010.

Let me pick up one or two other points. First, moving back to DLA and the mobility component, local authority contracts with care homes oblige those care homes to make sure that their clients or inhabitants have access to doctors, dentists and other local services and to help residents pursue their independence. That is part of the confusion of obligations that we are trying to disentangle and will do so under the DLA reform that we are undertaking.

Secondly, to pick up the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Low, on the replacement of DLA with PIP, or personal independence payment, about 14,000 people on DLA have never had their claims looked at since getting the benefit in the period from 1992 to the present day and around 20 per cent of people on DLA have not had any contact with DWP in 10 years. The reduction in the forecast working age expenditure, which we are looking at in the DLA reform, effectively brings expenditure in 2014-15 back down to what it was in 2009-10. We are talking about a cut in a projection, not an absolute cut.

I close with our reason to abolish DPTAC. The Secretary of State for Transport and his department will continue to ensure that transport policies promote equality. We will also, as I said, be taking forward a consultative process on successor arrangements to the committee in the coming months. As part of that process, the Department for Transport will of course publish the full impact assessment. Given that, I ask the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, not to press the amendment.