Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims (Amendment) Bill
Lord McNally Excerpts(12 years, 3 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord McNally)
My Lords, first, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Gale, for that promise of Official Opposition co-operation, and I fully accept what she said about the earlier Act. It was a unique step that broke new ground. The job of the Opposition at the time was to press the Government of the day, and the job of the Government of the day was to make a judgment about how the issue should be dealt with. The noble Baroness, Lady Gale, quoting the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Scotland, said that it would be revisited at an appropriate time. As a number of noble Lords have said, including the noble Baroness, Lady Gale, and the noble Lord, Lord Laming, when he introduced the Bill, now is the time. I am most grateful to all noble Lords who have contributed to the debate.
In his brief intervention, the noble Lord, Lord Reid, emphasised the difficulty that Ministers face in dealing with these issues. They are extremely emotive and need to be addressed with due proportionality. The noble Lord and the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and indeed the noble Lords, Lord Lester, Lord Cormack and Lord Sheikh, raised the question of whether this Bill is proportionate. I have no hesitation in repeating the assurances given by my honourable friend Crispin Blunt in the other place about co-defendants:
“If one of the defendants has been the victim of, or a witness to, domestic violence, the steps that that defendant could reasonably have been expected to take may be more limited than the steps that someone not suffering or witnessing the violence could reasonably have been expected to take. Depending on the facts of the case, the court may find that it was not reasonable for the defendant to take some of the steps that might otherwise have been available to them. The same principles will apply to the extended offence. In other words, the offence will be sensitive to the circumstances in each case”.—[Official Report, Commons, 21/10/11; col. 1184.]
That addresses the point which has troubled a number of noble Lords.
Several speeches went far beyond the scope of the Bill: stalking, trafficking, forced marriages and genital mutilation. All those are serious and important issues and none the worse for being given an airing in this Second Reading debate, but the Bill is specialist in its intention. I add my tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Laming. The comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, and others made it clear that this country is in his debt for the contribution he has made to the intensely difficult and emotional issue of violence against children and vulnerable adults. I am honoured to be part of a debate that has been initiated on an issue like this.
Likewise I pay tribute to Sir Paul Beresford in the other place. The noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, said that we are all in his debt. Sir Paul already has a very distinguished parliamentary CV, but taking the Bill through the other place and getting it this far, with all the tribulations that Jack Straw has referred to, will be a badge of honour on that CV for the rest of his life. We are very grateful to Sir Paul for the work that he has done. As for the role of the Government, I shall treasure the tribute paid by the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, and hope that it is the forerunner of many to come, but I will not hold my breath.
On the co-operation of Sir Paul, I should also put on the record that we have worked closely with him through the Commons stages of the Bill and we are satisfied that, as amended in Committee in the Commons, the scope of the offence is restricted to what is needed to fill the gap that a number of noble Lords saw and which was acknowledged in the original Bill. The original Bill has worked and it is right to extend it, and that is what we are trying to do today.
The offence in Section 5 of the 2004 Act—causing or allowing the death of a child or vulnerable adult—was introduced by the previous Government in 2003. Under the law as it then stood, if a child or a vulnerable adult suffered a non-accidental death and it could be proved that one or more members of the household had caused the death, but not which of them, none of them could be convicted of a homicide offence. As has been explained, that is what the 2004 Act addressed. The aim of the Section 5 offence was to remedy that injustice. As the noble Lord, Lord Sheikh, and others have pointed out, it was used successfully in bringing charges against those who had abused baby Peter Connelly. The crucial aspect of the Section 5 offence is that the prosecution need not prove whether the defendant is responsible for “causing” or “allowing” the victim’s death. This means that it is much harder for those co-accused of the death of a child or vulnerable adult to evade justice by virtue simply of remaining silent or of blaming each other.
However, we know of cases where, although it is clear that serious injuries short of death suffered by a child or vulnerable adult must have been sustained at the hands of one of a limited number of members of the household, there is insufficient evidence to point to the particular person responsible. In such cases, it may not be possible to mount a successful prosecution. Sometimes the victim may be too young to give evidence, or too severely injured or afraid to do so. But offenders in such cases should not be able to escape justice because the victim has escaped death. We therefore agree that it is right to extend the Section 5 offence in the way proposed by this Bill.
Broadly speaking, the Bill extends the offence by inserting references to “serious physical harm” at appropriate places in Section 5 of the 2004 Act so that the same conditions which apply in the case of causing or allowing the death of a child or vulnerable adult will also apply in the case of causing or allowing serious physical harm. In particular, the extended offence will be limited to cases where the victim has died or has suffered serious physical harm as a result of an unlawful act; it will apply only where the victim was at significant risk of serious physical harm, and only to members of the victim’s household who had frequent contact with the victim, and could therefore reasonably be expected to have been aware of a risk of serious physical harm to the victim, and to have protected the victim from such harm. The extended offence will not apply to a death or serious physical harm which results from an accident or from natural causes, nor will it apply if there was no reason to suspect a risk of serious physical harm. I hope that that gives some assurances to noble Lords who have expressed concerns about the proportionality of the Act.
The noble Lord, Lord Sheikh, welcomed the provision in the Bill for a maximum penalty of 10 years’ imprisonment for causing or allowing serious physical harm. The Government believe that this is proportionate when considered against the maximum penalty for causing or allowing death, which is 14 years’ imprisonment, and against those of other offences of grievous bodily harm.
The noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, gave a welcome tutorial on Section 6 procedures. However, perhaps I may make a small point on procedure to so distinguished a judge. There are times when I thought he thought he was appearing before the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, in that he addressed her directly when making these complex legal arguments. I know that old habits die hard. The points he made on these procedures were pertinent and I shall read Hansard carefully, take advice on them and see what we can do in response.
The evidential and procedural provisions are in Clause 2. They are similar to those in Section 6 of the 2004 Act and apply to the offence of causing or allowing serious physical harm in the same way that Section 6 applies to the offence of causing or allowing death. Section 6 of the 2004 Act modified certain evidential and procedural provisions on alternative charges in trials involving the Section 5 offence. The modified procedures apply where a defendant is charged with a Section 5 offence and with murder or manslaughter in the same proceedings and in relation to the same death.
Briefly, there are two main changes in normal trial procedures, a point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Sheikh. The first change means that during the trial a submission of no case to answer on the murder or manslaughter charge is delayed until all the evidence is heard, both from the prosecution and the defence, rather than taking place at the close of the prosecution case, again a point to which the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, drew attention. The second change concerns the drawing of an adverse inference from silence in court. Where a defendant refuses to give evidence in court, any adverse inference that may be drawn in relation to a Section 5 charge may also be drawn in relation to the murder or manslaughter charge, even if there would otherwise be no case to answer on that count.
These changes to normal trial procedure are intended to encourage defendants to give evidence and to ensure that the more serious charge of murder or manslaughter remains available if evidence emerges during the trial as to who is responsible for the victim’s death. In other words, the aim is to identify the person who caused the victim’s death or injury so that defendants can be convicted and sentenced according to their culpability.
The Bill applies similar evidential and procedural provisions to the extended Section 5 offence. However, in keeping with the extraordinary nature of these provisions, they apply only to the more serious offences that are likely to be tried with the extended Section 5 offence. So, in the context of causing or allowing serious physical harm, the procedural provision would be limited to cases where the defendant is charged with the extended Section 5 offence and with either a serious assault offence under Section 18 or Section 20 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861—another point made by the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, which, again, I would like to take advice on—or with attempted murder under Section 1 of the Criminal Attempts Act 1981. As with existing offences, the modified procedures would apply where a defendant is charged with the extended Section 5 offence and one of the other offences in the same proceedings and where the two offences arise from the same serious physical harm caused to the victim. These explanations will appear in Hansard and I hope that they will be read as being the desired but proportionate extension.
The noble Lord, Lord Loomba, reminded us of our responsibilities under the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Every time one of these cases arises it causes real indignation and often fire is directed at the authorities. I remember a director of social services who was in the centre of one of these media fire storms saying to me, rather ruefully, “You know, no social worker has ever been convicted of the death of a child and yet they have to take these awesome responsibilities on behalf of us all”. The Bill is an attempt to amend and extend a good law to ensure that those responsible for these terrible crimes bear the responsibility and face the full force of the law.
The noble Baroness, Lady Howe, said quite rightly that we have come a long way since the term “a domestic” meant that the police and the authorities did not take much interest in what was going on behind closed doors. The Bill is an extension of the increasing commitment of society as a whole to ensure that these crimes do not go unpunished and that for those who are complicit in cruelty to and abuse of a child or a vulnerable adult, to use the words of the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, there will be no hiding place.
I am very pleased to have taken part in the debate and to be able to say on behalf of the Government that we wish the Bill well.
Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill
Lord McNally Excerpts(12 years, 3 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord McNally)
I am pondering whether to say, “If the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, is playing into the Government’s hands, it would be for the first time”, but I will not. Instead, I will simply say that we have taken a decision on the shape of this Bill which we have continued to explain. We have returned to a number of issues around that, and this amendment seeks to include a power within the Bill to fund the not-for-profit sector to do work that is outside the proposed scope of the civil legal aid scheme. I acknowledge that a number of noble Lords have concerns about the sustainability of the not-for-profit sector, and I will return to that later. However, to seek to include a provision within the Bill to fund the sector for work outside the proposed legal aid scheme is, in our view, unnecessary. Not-for-profit providers have been eligible to compete for legal aid contracts since 2000, and while the proposed changes set out in the Bill will impact on the type of cases they currently handle, future contracts for work that remains in scope will continue to provide opportunities for such organisations to bid to deliver legal aid services.
It is also unnecessary to provide for such specific powers in the Bill, as the Ministry of Justice can provide grants to organisations promoting Ministry of Justice objectives. For example, both the Ministry of Justice—
Lord Goldsmith
Is the Minister able to tell the Committee whether any analysis has been done to see which areas of law are currently used to fund not-for-profit agencies, but which are now going to be taken out of scope? At the moment a lot of housing work, employment and welfare law is done. If that all goes out of scope, how will the not-for-profit agencies get any of the contracts that the Minister is talking about?
Lord McNally
They will bid for them. It is as simple as that. They are in a market where they will be able to bid for this work.
Lord Goldsmith
If the work that they are doing is out of scope, how do they get a contract? I have obviously misunderstood something.
Lord McNally
They will not get a contract for work which is not within scope of the Bill. That is why we keep on going round in circles. As the noble Lord said, he wants to put this sector back into the scope of the Bill. We do not want to do that.
Lord Goldsmith
The Minister said that the answer for the not-for-profit agencies is that they can bid for contracts. If at the moment they are bidding largely for work relating to housing, welfare and employment—things that will go out of scope—what contracts will they bid for? My specific question was whether the Minister or his department had done an analysis so that we might see what percentage of the money that the agencies have up to now received would no longer be available because it would be for work which was out of scope.
Lord Bach
The Government may not have done that analysis, but the Law Centres Federation and the CABs have. I do not have the precise figure in my head, but law centres would do about 70 per cent less work because of the matters that are taken out of scope. It would not be quite as much, of course, in the case of the CABs, but they would have a much reduced caseload which would make their existence in some cases doubtful. That work has been done by the agencies, but I agree with my noble and learned friend that the department should perhaps confirm those figures or come up with some new ones. The agencies are going to lose work.
Lord McNally
Of course they are going to lose work in the areas that are being taken out of scope. That is self-evident. I make no complaint about it, but we continually have brandished at us reports from organisations with, to put it bluntly, an interest in the issue. It can at least be examined thoroughly. Organisations which have been involved mainly in areas which are being taken out of scope will find that that work is no longer there, which will have an impact on some of them. However, they will still be free to bid for work which is within scope. We can go round that time and again.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
I know that my noble friend is trying to get into his speech but, en route, important issues come up, and one has a duty to the Committee to continue with them. Does he not appreciate—I do not think that he can—first, that local authorities, because of their financial stringencies, have withdrawn grants to law centres and CABs all around the country and, secondly, that, if the centres can no longer do the work that is taken out of scope, many if not most of them will simply shut their doors and go away? The consequence of that, my noble friend will, I am sure, recognise.
Lord McNally
Throughout the passage of this Bill, assertions are made about what is going to disappear and the nightmare of a country without CABs—to quote my noble friend. Unlike the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, I cannot airily, as he did in his intervention, say, “£20 million? That is not enough. Perhaps we should put another nought on the end”.
Lord Goldsmith
I did not say that; with respect, the Minister should listen. I said that I did not know whether £20 million was enough. That is something that I would like to hear from the Minister, either now or at a later stage of the Bill.
Lord McNally
Throughout the Bill, we have tried to restructure legal aid so as to deal with the most vulnerable in our society in a way which we think is fair. My noble friend Lord Phillips referred to the squeeze being put on CABs by local authorities. There have been squeezes on local authorities and on the Ministry of Justice. The country is having to readjust to a considerable degree to what is available for many good causes, and that is why this debate is reoccurring in Committee.
As I say, I recognise the general concern about the future of such funding. I hope I can reassure the House by making it clear that the Government value the services provided by the not-for-profit sector and are committed to ensuring that people continue to have access to good-quality free advice in their communities. That is why the Government have launched the advice services fund and a review of free advice services. The Government have set aside £20 million to support the not-for-profit sector. That is about the seventh time of announcement but, to provide clarity for the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, I say that it is still the same £20 million. This fund will provide immediate support for the not-for-profit advice service providers to deliver essential services in debt, welfare benefit, employment and housing advice. An announcement on the fund and review was made on 21 November by my honourable friend Nick Hurd MP, Minister for Civil Society, in the other place.
It is important to recognise that legal aid is only one of several funding streams that not-for-profit organisations receive and that the future sustainability of the sector is a cross-government issue which this Bill cannot be expected to solve on its own. Accordingly, alongside the advice services fund, the Cabinet Office is conducting a review into local advice provision, looking at the funding environment for these services, likely levels of demand and how government can play a positive role. The Cabinet Office will work with other departments that either fund advice services or whose activities have an impact on advice services, such as my department, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, the Department for Work and Pensions, the Department for Communities and Local Government, and the Treasury.
The House may also be reassured to know that both the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister are taking a keen interest in these reviews. Stakeholder events with representatives from the sector, to gain their input into the review, have already been held by the Cabinet Office. I urge the House to await the conclusions of that review, which is expected in the spring. My officials are working closely with colleagues across government to support this important work. I hope this will reassure the Committee that I and my colleagues in government are united in our efforts to support the not-for-profit sector while it adapts to difficult changes in the funding landscape. I therefore urge the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Thomas of Gresford
My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken in the debate and I accept all the criticisms that have been made as no doubt very well founded. In his reply, my noble and learned friend—
Lord Thomas of Gresford
No—but you will be by the time I have finished.
In his reply my noble friend said that we must await the conclusions of the group that is looking into this matter, which has already taken advice, as I understand it, and carried out various consultation processes. I want to know when it is going to report. I have discovered that in government departments the spring can turn quickly into the summer. The Bill will be through this House by the middle of March and we would all be much happier if we were assured by that time that the future of the CABs, the law centres and so on is secured to give precisely the advice for which the grant was announced in November—for welfare, for employment and so on—as the noble Lord said.
I am anxious that the group should get a move on and that we should receive these reassurances so that we can be confident that the gap that will arise through the withdrawal of legal aid will, to a degree, be filled. I understand the position of the noble Lord, Lord Bach. He does not want anything to interfere with the general thrust that everything in social welfare law should go back under Part 1. Indeed, voices on my Benches have made exactly the same comments, including me. However, if that is not to happen we must be sure that there is a source of advice in these very important areas which will be available to the citizens of this country. At the moment, I ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, in principle I welcome the notion of a review and some of the provisions that are effected in the amendment clearly make sense. However, despite the most distinguished provenance of the amendment I am left in doubt as to some of the wording and/or implications of what is proposed.
To begin with, the only duty on the Lord Chancellor, apart from initiating the review, is to lay a report before Parliament. There is no obligation for him in any sense to implement the review or to make changes having regard to the review. One fears that such a report might meet the fate of the infamous Black report—or the famous Black report that was infamously treated—in 1980, which some Members of the Committee will recall was published just before a bank holiday and disappeared from view thereafter. In other words, all we are getting is a report.
Moreover, the report, although it talks about the procedures and costs of claims, apparently is not required to deal with the funding of such claims. It talks about the costs but does not direct the person appointed to carry out the review and to report or comment on funding mechanisms—as I read it. The noble Lord, Lord Phillips, may put me right when he replies. It is quite sensible to have a provision that the reviewer may propose a,
“voluntary scheme or schemes as he or she shall see fit”,
but I am not quite clear what is meant by “voluntary scheme”. Is it a voluntary scheme of advice, or of conducting cases?
Subsection (6) defines “claims” as meaning,
“claims and complaints made by patients receiving services provided in the United Kingdom and commissioned in England”.
I am not quite sure what that means. Is it a reference to the Welsh situation? Does it mean that a clinical commissioning group, or indeed that a claimant of the nature of a private patient seeking treatment in a hospital in another part of the United Kingdom, would be subject to review in this report even though a claim might arise outside the jurisdiction of the English courts? It certainly is not clear to me quite what is intended, so although I certainly support the principle I am not sure that what is being sought here in detail quite meets the aspirations of those who drafted the amendment—let alone being sufficient to secure the support of the Minister. He will no doubt tell us what he thinks shortly.
If this matter is going to be pursued, it really needs some further thought and elaboration. If it is brought back at Report, it might be better to do so in a clearer form and, in particular, not to create a situation in which all that is produced at the end of it is a report which can be kicked into touch.
Lord McNally
My Lords, I would hope to persuade the Opposition not even to support the principle of this amendment, which says:
“The Lord Chancellor must, before the end of the period of one year beginning with the day on which this Act is passed, appoint an independent person to review generally claims for clinical negligence and means of improving the modes, procedures and outcomes relating to the same”.
We would prefer to stick to the process established by the previous Government, which put in place post-legislative scrutiny of Acts of Parliament. The aim is to complement the Government’s internal departmental scrutiny with parliamentary scrutiny, principally by committees of the House of Commons, to provide a reality check on new laws after three to five years.
As set out in the Cabinet Office guidance, these reviews normally take place within three to five years of Royal Assent. The responsible department must submit a memorandum to its departmental Select Committee, which will then decide whether it wishes to conduct a fuller post-legislative inquiry into the Act. Of course, the House will be free to debate the committee’s findings should it choose to conduct a review into the Act. In addition to this post-legislative scrutiny, the impact assessment for the specific policies in the Bill is accompanied by a post-implementation review plan. It is intended to review each policy between three and five years after the implementation date.
Noble Lords may also be aware that the Government have conducted a public consultation this year on how lower value cases should be dealt with more efficiently in the county courts. We are working closely with the National Health Service Litigation Authority to consider whether a lower value scheme similar to that which is currently operating for low-value road traffic accident cases would work for lower value clinical negligence cases. At the same time, we are actively considering the Government’s response to the consultation and will publish the response in the near future. In the light of these remarks, I hope that my noble friend will withdraw his amendment.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
Before my noble friend sits down, could I be perfectly clear about what he said at the start of his response? Is he saying that there will be a formal review of clinical negligence in the course of reviewing the whole of this Act, as it will become?
Lord McNally
Yes. I have been one of the strongest supporters of post-legislative scrutiny, and I am just putting it in place in terms of the Freedom of Information Act. The Justice Committee in another place has just taken from the Ministry of Justice a full assessment of how that Act has been working and will then take evidence. I would have thought it inconceivable that such post-legislative scrutiny would not examine the issues relating to clinical negligence.
Lord Howarth of Newport
I apologise to the Committee that I was not able to be here at the beginning of this debate. In the Minister’s view, does the legislation as drafted provide the flexibility to enable the Lord Chancellor to respond constructively and effectively to such findings as a review might produce at a suitable interval?
Lord McNally
Yes. If it did not, presumably we would bring forward primary legislation to correct it, but that is the parliamentary process.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his reply. I was going to say that I thanked the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, for what he said—I sort of do. I will not play legal games with him at this time of night, but if this is brought back I will certainly read carefully the points that he made.
As for the Minister’s reply, my sense is that the review that I am calling for in Amendment 99A is far more particular and focused than any review that would come forth under the general review of this legislation, not least because clinical negligence has only a very limited part to play in it. Further, the Bill deals with the scope of clinical negligence in terms of legal aid, not with the detailed functioning of clinical negligence litigation. I would like to read what the Minister has said and perhaps have a conversation with him before Report in order to see whether there is any point in persisting with the nub of this amendment. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord McNally
My Lords, if I may interrupt, this may ruin a few speeches but I think it will help if I say that the Government intend to table an amendment to Clause 12 on Report that will remove the power to introduce means testing for initial advice and assistance at the police station.
Lord Macdonald of River Glaven
My Lords, I have never achieved such remarkable success with so few words. In those circumstances, I shall withdraw my amendment. I thank my noble friend for what he has just said.
Lord McNally
I assure the House that it was my noble friend’s eloquence that produced that result.
Lord Wigley
Can I be clear that the proposals that the Government are bringing forward—I have an amendment in the Marshalled List that is almost identical to this one—will cover all the worries that have been built into the amendments today, and that they are not a superficial way of getting out of the debate today?
Lord McNally
How unworthy! The test of that will be what we bring back on Report, but this is not a way of dodging a debate tonight.
Lord Carlile of Berriew
I hesitate to interrupt my noble friend, but we are curtailing the debate and what he has said is very helpful. Can he assure the Committee that, in preparing an amendment, the Government have in mind the importance of the duty solicitor scheme and of there being a process of integrity in the police station, so that suspects do not choose to refuse to answer questions in interview because they are not properly represented? Can he also assure us that the Government will bear in mind the risks of evidence obtained in police stations being rejected by courts because of a failed and unfair procedure in those police stations? Those of us who started practice at the Bar would say to my noble friend that there were long periods in our early practice when we cross-examined police officers about what used to be called “verballing”. I am sure that my noble friend understands the expression. I hope that whatever amendment is introduced will ensure that we do not have to return to the bad old days before the enactment of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984.
Lord Bach
My Lords, this concerns a very simple point, or rather a short one—I am not entirely clear whether it is simple. I would be grateful for the Minister’s response to this.
Clause 14 is headed “Advice and assistance for criminal proceedings”. Subsection (1) refers to regulations providing,
“that prescribed advice and assistance is to be available under this Part to an individual described in subsection (2) if … prescribed conditions are met, and … the Director has determined that the individual qualifies for such advice and assistance”.
That is fine. Subsection (2) sets out in paragraphs (a), (b) and (c) three classes of individuals who will be entitled to this advice and assistance. My amendment would add a fourth class of,
“individuals who are involved in investigations which may lead to a caution or warning”,
as opposed to,
“individuals who are involved in investigations which may lead to criminal proceedings”.
I admit that it is a long time since I practised, but I understand that people who are cautioned are liable to have that caution recorded and for it to be on their record for a period of time. In those circumstances, would it be better for that class of person to be granted advice and assistance, as are the persons covered by paragraphs (a), (b) and (c)? I will not argue with the Government if there is a good reason for not including that class of person. I just want to hear why there is not a fourth class of person covering,
“individuals who are involved in investigations which may lead to a caution or warning”.
I beg to move.
Lord McNally
My Lords, as the noble Lord has said, Amendment 103 would allow the Lord Chancellor to provide specifically for criminal legal aid under Clause 14 to be available for individuals who are involved in investigations that may lead to a caution or warning.
Clause 14 creates a power to make regulations that prescribe what advice and assistance must be made available to individuals in connection with criminal proceedings if prescribed conditions are met and the director has determined that a person qualifies for such advice and assistance in accordance with the regulations. This largely reflects the provisions in Section 13 of the Access to Justice Act 1999. Advice and assistance for criminal proceedings is distinct from criminal legal aid provided under Clause 12 for individuals in custody.
Under the Access to Justice Act 1999, the Legal Services Commission has the discretion to decide what advice and assistance it considers it is appropriate to fund. Under the Bill, this discretion rests with the Lord Chancellor. In making a decision, the Lord Chancellor will take account of any legal obligations including the requirements of Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Both sets of provisions leave the criteria for making a determination to secondary legislation.
The proposed amendment would allow the Lord Chancellor to make provisions that legal aid may be available for individuals who are involved in investigations that may lead to a caution or warning. We believe that it is unnecessary to add the suggested amendment as provision could already be made under Clause 14(2)(a). If an individual is involved in an investigation that may lead to a caution or warning, that individual must be involved in an investigation that may lead to criminal proceedings. Cautions and warnings are used, where it is appropriate to do so, to divert certain offenders from the criminal justice system as an alternative to instigating criminal proceedings. For an individual in custody at a police station, or other premises, legal aid will be provided under Clause 12. I therefore invite the noble Lord to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, this amendment refers to Clause 16, which sets out the principles on which qualification for representation for legal aid can be determined. This is basically a probing amendment. Subsection (3) states:
“The Lord Chancellor may by order amend subsection (2) by adding or varying a factor”,
to or of the five factors set out in subsection (2). I apprehend that the Minister will confirm that such an order will be subject to the affirmative procedure. Given that the qualifications for representation for criminal legal aid are at stake, it is particularly important that that should be the procedure. If that is the case, the Opposition will be entirely satisfied and the amendment will be withdrawn.
Lord McNally
My Lords, as the noble Lord said, the amendment would omit subsection (3) from Clause 16. This provides a power for the Lord Chancellor to use secondary legislation to add to or vary the list of factors in subsection (2). The Access to Justice Act also contains such a power at paragraph 5(3) of Schedule 3 to that Act. Any order made under Clause 16(3) would be subject to the affirmative procedure.
The factors in the interests of justice test broadly reflect the requirements of the European Convention on Human Rights, which, at Article 6(3)(c), provides expressly for a right for a person,
“to defend himself in person or through legal assistance of his own choosing or, if he has not sufficient means to pay for legal assistance, to be given it free when the interests of justice so require”.
We see no reason now to depart from the principle established in current primary legislation that it is appropriate to provide a power for the Lord Chancellor to use secondary legislation to add to or vary the list of factors in subsection (2). This allows for the flexibility to react to any developments in relation to factors relevant to the interests of justice requirement. As I have said and as the noble Lord asked, these would be subject to the affirmative procedure. I therefore urge the noble Lord to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Beecham
I am most obliged to the Minister for that assurance. For future reference, it might be helpful in these cases if it were to be made clear in the Bill that the affirmative procedure would be used. It would save a little time. However, we have not spent much time on this and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord McNally
My Lords, at this late hour this debate is taking on a confessional nature. There has also been a little bit of topsy-turvy. For a time, I was just sitting back while the noble Lord, Lord Bach, and his colleagues were rubbishing the amendments tabled by my noble friend Lord Thomas and his colleagues, and now I am going to defend the activities of the previous Government.
As has been explained, the amendment is intended to allow the restrained assets of those accused of criminal offences to be taken into account when granting legal aid and to allow legal expenses to be paid from a defendant’s restrained assets. Before the next debate, I must check on the noble Lord’s distinguished career in government as I am not sure whether he was responsible for the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002. Was it on his watch?
Lord McNally
Nevertheless, the previous Government passed the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, which prevents restrained funds being released to a defendant for legal expenses in relation to the offences to which the restraint order relates. The Committee will be aware that assets recovered from the proceeds of crime are already applied to offset the overall costs to the public purse, although I note the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, about the success of confiscation orders. The noble Lord, Lord Thomas, will know that when he put this idea to me, it seemed very attractive with a little Robin Hood stuff about it. However, the reason that the previous Government took action through the Proceeds of Crime Act was that in their judgment there was a risk that individuals might recklessly dissipate assets through lavish spending on their defence in order to try to secure an acquittal at any cost. In 2002, the then Government decided that it was better to allow access to legal aid than to allow an individual to draw down restrained funds to pay for their defence. Restrained assets in these cases are suspected to be the proceeds of crime. They are not therefore legitimate money, and they should not be used to fund the costs of a person’s defence lawyers. First and foremost, the victims of crime ought to be compensated for their loss.
Lord Carlile of Berriew
Before my noble friend goes down this course, which is an accusation that defence lawyers are simply going to charge what they like and take as much as they want, will he read his own clause? Nobody is saying that defence lawyers should be able to say, “Okay, I’ll take £1,000 an hour for representing you”. It is all subject to regulation and to the kind of limitations that currently apply through the LSC. What the Minister is saying at the moment simply does not recognise what the amendment provides. Will he please answer the amendment?
Lord McNally
I think the noble Lord protests too much. I was explaining to him the motivations of the previous Government for bringing in the Proceeds of Crime Act.
Baroness Buscombe
My Lords, I was the shadow Minister on the Proceeds of Crime Bill. I have rather a good memory, and I can say that the Minister is absolutely accurate in his comments about why the Government chose not to use the Proceeds of Crime Act as an opportunity for dealing with this issue.
Lord Bach
It is very good to have the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, joining the debate, but if that was the best defence that the previous Government could put up for that, it was really not satisfactory. I remind the Minister that that argument has been described as,
“fallacious, and easily remedied by the simple implementation of a cap on defence fees, careful supervision by the court and/or an assessment by the court taxing officers, who are familiar with assessing what constitutes ‘reasonable’ costs in such cases”.
If that was the argument put forward by my Government at that time, I say here and now that it was a fallacious argument and not one that the present Government should fall into the trap of adopting.
Lord McNally
As I said, we are in confessional mood tonight. The Government are currently considering a related proposition under which the value of restrained assets might be taken into consideration in the Crown Court means test. Until that proposition has been considered fully, we believe it premature to suggest an amendment to the Proceeds of Crime Act.
This has been an interesting debate. We have heard what the noble Lord, Lord Bach, said in apology for previous omissions by his own Government. As I say, we are looking at the value of restrained assets in the Crown Court, but at the moment we believe it premature to suggest an amendment to the Proceeds of Crime Act and I therefore ask my noble friend to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Thomas of Gresford
The problem is that my noble friend the Minister has not explained why people are allowed recklessly to dissipate criminal assets in civil cases. Why do you have one rule for civil cases, when you can use what are described as criminal assets although they are not necessarily so, and another rule in criminal cases? What is happening at the moment is that defendants are recklessly dissipating legal aid. That is the point and that is why legal aid is so high in criminal cases—it is being recklessly dissipated. My noble friend Lord Carlile explained how it can be done: you can have application after application; you can have little trials within trials; you can have satellite litigation; and the case can run on and on for months.
In the old Stafford Assize Court, which possibly the noble Lord, Lord Bach, has visited—
Lord Beecham
My Lords, this is one of four amendments with which I hope to deal in pretty short order. It relates to the provisions in Clause 20 and the determination of financial resources for legal aid. Clause 20(6) provides for,
“determinations to be made and withdrawn in writing, by telephone or by other prescribed means”.
That is not very satisfactory because it does not leave a sufficient audit trail. In any event, verbal communication, and possibly online communication, may not be suitable in all cases given the variable capacity of people to manage telephonic or online communication. In particular, if an appeal is made to the magistrates’ court subsequent to a determination, it is necessary to have that audit trail. Hence, the amendment proposes that the communication should be in writing and not by telephonic or other electronic means. I beg to move.
Lord McNally
My Lords, concerns about the proposal to establish the community legal advice helpline as the mandatory single telephone gateway in four proposed areas of law were the subject of considerable debate in Committee on 20 December. Given that, and for the purpose of today’s debate, I will therefore address solely the specifics of this amendment as they relate to Clause 20.
Amendment 110 relates to the method by which determinations about financial eligibility for legal aid are made and withdrawn. It would require all determinations about financial eligibility to be made or withdrawn in writing to the person making the legal aid application. It would therefore stop determinations about financial eligibility being made or withdrawn by telephone, or by other prescribed means, thus of course affecting the proposed mandatory single telephone gateway. However, this amendment would go much further than just affecting the gateway. It would seriously affect the financial and operational viability of the provision of legal aid advice by telephone altogether.
In Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Bach, described existing telephone advice provision as “excellent” and,
“a fantastic channel for delivering advice”.—[Official Report, 20/12/11; col. 1759.]
This excellent service is provided through the community legal advice helpline. Currently included in this service is the making and withdrawing of determinations about financial eligibility by telephone.
Determinations about financial eligibility are currently made immediately upon receipt of a call by the community legal advice helpline. No suggestion has been made that the system has not operated effectively and efficiently. This would add considerable time, cost and complexity to the provision of civil legal aid services by telephone. It could delay in particular callers who are not financially eligible for legal aid but are provided with alternative sources of assistance. It could also delay those who are eligible for legal aid help receiving it, as staff and resources would be involved in completing and sending out notifications about eligibility.
Determinations are made after asking precisely the same questions of all callers as face-to-face legal aid providers would ask. Where a person is eligible, they will usually start to receive help on the same day. They do not have to wait perhaps a few days or more for an appointment before their eligibility can be assessed or before they can start to receive help to address their problem, as a person walking into a face-to-face provider’s office may have to do.
In addition, Clause 11(3)(h) means that individuals will have the reasons for the making of a determination explained to them. It will, however, not necessarily be in writing. The assessment of financial eligibility through the community legal advice helpline also filters out those who are not financially eligible for civil legal aid. This assists those individuals by allowing them to receive information about suitable alternative sources of assistance immediately after that assessment is made, enabling them to begin to take alternative action to address their problem promptly and with the minimum of delay.
The current community legal advice helpline is a well used route to access civil legal advice. It offers a high-quality service and works well—the noble Lord’s description of it as excellent is testament to that. The Government understand the concerns behind Amendment 110, but restricting or preventing the operation of the community legal advice helpline will not help those who are in most need to obtain legal aid advice services to help them resolve their problem. This amendment is not in their best interests and I urge the noble Lord to withdraw it.
Lord Wigley
My Lords, the Minister said that he would address the narrow parts of this amendment because of the debate that took place before Christmas on some of the broader issues. Before we move on, can he tell the Committee whether the Government have given further consideration to some of the aspects that were exercised at that time, particularly with regard to the need to make sure that disabled people do not miss out in this process?
Lord McNally
The answer I gave in our December debate was that we are looking at the points raised. We are in contact with representatives of disabled groups to ensure that the facilities that are available through the helpline will enable all aspects of disability to be dealt with in an effective way. I hope that that reassures the noble Lord.
Lord Wigley
If I understand it correctly, the Government are still looking at the representations being made in this area in order to make sure that disabled people do not miss out. Have I understood that correctly?
Lord McNally
Yes. As I said after that debate, we will continue to liaise with the disabled organisations to ensure that we are getting this right.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I regret to say that I do not find the Minister’s answer satisfactory. It is true that many people find the telephone advice line to be perfectly acceptable, but others do not. Telephone advice lines are not the best option for delivering advice to older people, those with language difficulties or those who do not understand English very well. However, this is not about advice; it is about the determination of financial eligibility, and there may be cause for people to appeal against decisions. It is difficult to do that on the basis of a telephonic communication. That is all this amendment requires. Although I beg leave to withdraw the amendment, I cannot say that the Minister has satisfied us about the difficulties which we envisage the proposal will create. It might be something that we have to return to.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, we return again to affluent criminals in a slightly different context. This amendment refers to the definition of an individual about whom information is requested for the purposes of a determination about that individual’s financial resources. The Bill defines such an individual as an “individual”, which is helpful, and goes on to say,
“and any other individual whose financial resources are or may be relevant for the purposes of the determination”.
The problem is that this may not cover, for example, a limited company or possibly a trust effectively controlled by the individual whose financial circumstances are being investigated. The purpose of the amendment therefore is to extend the definition to ensure that any connected companies or trusts are included in the assessment. It may be that the noble Lord will want to take a further look at this, but we are seeking to ensure in a different context the kind of approach advocated by the noble Lords, Lord Carlile and Lord Thomas, in respect of cases—in admittedly slightly different circumstances—where there are means which ought to be brought into account. I beg to move.
Lord McNally
My Lords, Amendment 111 relates to Clause 21, which provides a gateway for the disclosure of certain information to the “relevant authority”, defined as the director of legal aid casework or other person prescribed by the Department for Work and Pensions, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and the equivalent Northern Ireland department. The information can only be requested by the relevant authority for the purpose of facilitating a determination about the individual’s financial resources for legal aid; that is, for the purpose of finding out whether they are financially eligible for legal aid. The categories of information that may be requested are listed in subsections (3) and (4) of Clause 21. Those categories refer to types of information in relation to a relevant individual. A “relevant individual” is defined in Clause 21(8) as meaning the individual seeking legal aid and any other individual whose financial resources are or may be relevant for the purposes of determining financial eligibility for legal aid.
We intend as at present to continue to require those applying for legal aid to disclose any company directorships, positions or shareholdings in companies and to provide detailed information about such companies. More generally, applicants are required to disclose whether they receive any support from a third party, including an individual company or trust. Funding may be refused if this information is not supplied. In relation to companies, it is also possible to conduct an additional search through Companies House. There are indeed circumstances in which such information may be relevant. The Bill includes at Clause 24 a power that will enable the Lord Chancellor by regulation to require or permit the resources of a person other than the client to be treated as the resources of the client. That is currently done under the existing financial regulations.
Regulation 11 allows the resources of a person who is, has been or is likely to be substantially maintaining the client to be treated as the resources of the client. Regulation 11 also allows the resources of another person that have been or are likely to be made available to the client to be treated as the resources of the client. Regulation 12 provides a power to take into account resources that the client has either transferred to another person, deprived themselves of, or converted into resources that would be disregarded for the purpose of reducing their resources. For the purposes of those regulations, “another person” can mean a company, partnership, body of trustees and any body of persons corporate or not corporate. The effect is to prevent applicants for legal aid avoiding a full assessment of their resources by, for example, transferring them into the name of a company.
I return to Clause 21. The information listed in subsections (3) and (4) is about individuals because it is basic information such as date of birth, national insurance number and employment status, which can be related only to an individual. However, the information listed in subsection (4), which can be requested from HMRC, includes information about whether a relevant individual is carrying on a business, trade or profession, as well as further information—for example, the name of the business and its address.
As I have said, those applying for legal aid will continue to be required to disclose any company directorships, positions or shareholdings in companies and to provide detailed information about any such company. It is therefore inappropriate and unnecessary to extend the definition of “relevant individual” to include companies and other legal persons. I hope that, with that explanation, the noble Lord will withdraw the amendment.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, the Minister has given a clear indication that the objectives of the amendment are likely to be met by the present operation of the system. In those circumstances, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Thomas of Gresford
I thought there was a printer’s error here: that is why I inserted “not”. It is not a matter of principle; I could not imagine that the Government would require someone’s contribution to exceed the costs and put money into the hands of the Lord Chancellor. I do not see any reason for that and I await the explanation with interest.
Lord McNally
This had better be good. Amendments 112 and 113 would prevent anyone in receipt of civil legal aid being required to pay an amount for that legal aid which exceeds the amount of the legal aid itself. We intend to use the powers in subsection (3) to establish a supplementary legal aid scheme which will provide an additional source of funding to supplement the legal aid fund. As indicated in our response to the consultation on legal aid reform, under this scheme 25 per cent of damages obtained by successful legal-aided parties, other than damages for future care and loss, will be recovered by the legal aid fund. The supplementary legal aid scheme will apply to successful damages cases where the successful party is legal aided, including any out-of-scope cases which are funded through the exceptional funding scheme.
The provision at subsection (3) is not new. There is already an equivalent provision in Section 10(2)(c) of the Access to Justice Act 1999, which allows for the establishment of a supplementary legal aid scheme whereby a legal-aided person makes a payment exceeding the cost of the services received. The power has not been exercised to date but, as we have made clear, we intend to do so in the future, so it is important that the Bill retains the provision to enable this.
At a time when the public purse is constrained, the funds recouped by the supplementary legal aid scheme will help to put legal aid on a sustainable footing and therefore help support the funding of civil legal aid cases. Besides creating a valuable additional source of funding for legal aid, in setting up the supplementary legal aid scheme we are addressing the interrelationship between legal aid and the proposal for reform to the cost of civil litigation put forward by Lord Justice Jackson and reflected in Part 2.
We want to ensure that, so far as it is possible to do so, the recovery level of damages by the supplementary legal aid scheme is consistent with the Jackson reforms to ensure that conditional fee agreements are no less attractive than legal aid. We have therefore selected a recovery level of 25 per cent of all damages, other than those for future care and loss. This mirrors the maximum level of damages that a solicitor will be able to claim from a successful client under a conditional fee agreement in a personal injury case. Under the Jackson proposals, there will also be an increase of 10 per cent in non-pecuniary general damages such as damages for pain and suffering and loss of amenity in tort cases for all claimants. This will help claimants to pay their CFA success fee or supplementary legal aid scheme contribution.
With that explanation, I hope the noble Lord will agree to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I am not in a position to say and I fear—perhaps I am wrong—that the Government are not in a position to say either, which is part of the point. There does not seem to have been a consultation. There may or may not have been an assessment of the impact, but there certainly ought to be. As I say, this provision has come out of left field, to quote the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, on an earlier point. It really ought not to be progressed until there is a proper assessment of its impact, in consultation with the profession.
In any event, it seems there is something of an issue of principle as to whether the statutory charge should apply not just to the property secured by legal aid but to costs paid by the opposite party, as a contribution towards the total costs incurred on behalf of a claimant. That seems to be a novel principle and one which, as I say, came out of the blue and certainly needs justification. On the face of it, it is difficult to see what the justification would be. I beg to move.
Lord McNally
My Lords, I hope to end the evening on a reassuring note. We recognise that by virtue of the specific reference to costs, the language of Clause 24(1) is different from that in the equivalent provision at Section 10(7) of the Access to Justice Act 1999. However, we consider that costs are capable of falling within the existing provision on the statutory charge as,
“property recovered or preserved by”,
a legally aided person. In any event, I reassure noble Lords that Clause 24 does not represent a change of policy and will not result in any change to current practice.
The provisions in Clause 24 reflect existing practice by protecting the interests of the Legal Aid Fund in the same way that those interests are currently protected by the provisions of the Community Legal Service (Costs) Regulations 2000. For example, the provision in those regulations regarding payment of money due to a legally aided person relate to all such money, including any costs awarded. We therefore have no intention of altering the existing position that operates in cases where interparty cost orders are made and a claim is made against the Legal Aid Fund by a supplier. The current position in such cases will remain exactly the same when we implement the relevant provisions of this Bill.
Indeed, we recognise that market rate costs payments where interparty costs are ordered represent an important source of income for legal aid providers, and nothing in the Bill is intended to interfere with the present position in respect of such payments. Specifically, legal-aid-only costs will continue to be payable to providers where a supplier recovers interparty costs, to the same extent as at present. So the existing position, including in partial cost order cases, will remain. I also confirm that, in the specific context of interparty costs, we intend to exercise the power in Clause 24 of the Bill so that it is clear that legal-aid-only costs, including in partial cost order cases, remain payable to suppliers. This will make the position clearer than it is at present, given that the entitlement to payment for legal-aid-only costs currently appears only in the LSC contract. I hope that with those assurances, the noble Lord will withdraw this amendment.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, that certainly sounds extremely reassuring. I will read what the Minister has said with some care—not that I doubt him, of course—because on the face of it, if the clause does not change the previous legislation, I am not quite sure why we have it at all. However, accepting his assurances and good will, and in a spirit of relief at 10.45 pm, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Freedom of Information Act 2000
Lord McNally Excerpts(12 years, 3 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord McNally)
My Lords, in the spirit in which the Leader of the Opposition intervened, perhaps I may say that it is an interesting idea to broaden the post-legislative scrutiny. The rules are that it is within the scope of the relevant committee to do that, but I will draw her remarks to the attention of Sir Alan. It would be useful if that committee made use of the experience and expertise available. One of my memories of the original Act was the ludicrous situation at that time whereby there was pre-legislative scrutiny by two committees—one from this House and one from the Commons—sitting at either end of the Corridor, with witnesses moving from one to the other.
First, I apologise to all noble Lords who have taken part. This should have been a three-hour debate that gave the eminent people who have contributed a proper opportunity. I will not do my usual practice of trying to refer to the individual points raised. Instead, I should like to provide a considered omnibus reply that I will send to each Member who has participated and put it in the Library of the House, because the issues raised are too important. If I tried to reply to each in turn, I would look up and all my time would have gone. With the permission of the House, I will do it that way.
I must say in passing that I have never seen so many mandarins in one place since my school production of “Chu Chin Chow”, and it was great to see them all out. I am of course immensely grateful to my old friend and colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy. He is quite right—it is about time that I got a PhD from Queen Mary college because of the number of times I see a letter beginning with, “Professor Hennessy has suggested you might be able to help with my research”. I am grateful in one way because I am in several footnotes to history around the various work that is done. My time goes back even further than his clash with the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong, because I was working for Harold Wilson when the Times, with great fanfare, announced this new creature that was going to pace the corridors of power: a Whitehall correspondent, one P Hennessy—to which Harold announced that any civil servant found talking to this new creature would be fired on the spot. Such was the spirit of the age.
The Leader of the Opposition pointed out that the Freedom of Information Act was the work of the previous Government. Let me put on record my admiration for the noble Lord, Lord Clark of Windermere, who produced the first White Paper on freedom of information and on which the Act was built.
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, for the quotation from “Yes, Prime Minister”. I do not think that any of us who have watched “Yes, Prime Minister” and “Yes Minister” and have actually worked in Whitehall and Westminster have ever considered it as comedy; we watched it more as documentary. In passing, I should say that I still have not worked out how in those days Sir John Hunt could manage to get from his office way down in 70 Whitehall to the foyer of No. 10 to greet the Prime Minister without any of the electronic devices that we have today to know that the Prime Minister was about to return, but now as I watch it on the cable channels I find the show still very pertinent.
As many Members are aware, I am a long-standing enthusiast for transparency and freedom of information. I therefore continue to be proud to have an opportunity to help shape the next phase of freedom of information in this country. I note what the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong, said with his vivid quotation from Tony Blair’s memoirs and indeed the valedictory from the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald, who I am very pleased to see in his place. They are matters and opinions certainly to be taken in evidence, although it leaves me, as a proponent of the Act, also to argue that when Prime Ministers and mandarins object, this Act might actually be doing something that it was intended to do.
The noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, has placed considerable emphasis on the Government’s pledge to replace the current 30-year rule with a 20-year rule. I hope the noble Lord will appreciate the enormity of the task. Central government departments alone hold more than 3 million files that will need to be reviewed during this process.
However, just before I depart from the points that were made by a number of noble Lords about the battle—and this has been the battle throughout—between the safe space and the culture of secrecy, all I would say is: let the Parliament system work. The Act has the process of post-legislative scrutiny built into it. Let this process tease out some of the weaknesses that have been named today, and let the Government look at them, and let those who believe that those weaknesses exist give evidence of them. That can be nothing but healthy.
The detailed work has now been done to develop an implementation plan that will balance our intention to reduce the 30-year rule with the burdens that this will impose. I reassure noble Lords, and in particular the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy—who asked for my guarantees on this—that the Government remain committed to this course of action and that further details will be announced in due course. Let me also give him a guarantee that that is not Whitehallese for some time, never. Not on my watch it won’t; we will press ahead with this.
I know that the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, is also keen for there to be a new Waldegrave initiative and an expansion of the current programme of official histories. I fully recognise the benefits to historians that such initiatives bring and I am sympathetic to his view. However, the subsequent introduction of FOI since that time means that the public—including historians—are free to request any records. Moreover, the reduction in the 30-year rule will result in more and more government records being made available earlier year by year.
I hope noble Lords will recognise that such a significant undertaking as the reduction in the 30-year rule would make additional simultaneous initiatives very difficult at this time of financial restraint. I also hope that noble Lords will recognise the unprecedented level of transparency that was not available at the time of the Waldegrave initiative. However, I will continue to keep the suggestion under review and I pledge here and now that it will be called Waldegrave 2. I have no ambitions for it to be called anything else.
As for the official history programme, a good deal of work is already in progress, and I hope that we can review future work in happier economic circumstances. I emphasise again my enthusiasm for the programme of official histories. It would be a tragedy if we were to allow them to wither on the vine after 2013.
Hand in hand with FOI is the transparency agenda being pushed through government by my right honourable friend Francis Maude. The transparency agenda is about much more than historical information; it is about much more than government records in the traditional meaning of the phrase. It is about the information and data that we deal with day to day to inform our decisions and provide our public services. Making that information available is what makes the transparency agenda truly revolutionary. More information than ever is being published proactively by this Government. In excess of 7,500 data sets have been made available to increase accountability, empower the public and foster innovation and economic growth.
As noble Lords will be aware, the Protection of Freedoms Bill includes provisions that introduce a new right to data to ensure that public authorities, including government departments, make data sets available in a reusable format where they can and make them available for reuse when releasing them in response to requests or through publication schemes.
The Government will also be developing a transparency and open data strategy and plan to publish their response to consultation on the form that it might take early this year. There is a strong public interest in increased transparency by all bodies in receipt of public funds, including those in the private sector. The Cabinet Office is considering the type of bodies to which an open data policy will apply.
Many noble Lords will also be aware of the significant steps that we are taking to extend the Freedom of Information Act to more bodies through the Protection of Freedoms Bill and secondary legislation under Section 5 of the Act.
As I said in my opening remarks, I am a long-standing supporter of freedom of information and transparency. I am proud that, on my watch, the Act has been extended and the independence of the Information Commissioner strengthened. I am well aware that the FOI still has its critics among both Ministers and officials. It was never meant to make those groups comfortable, but as the Minister responsible I have played this matter by the book. My department has consulted widely on how the act works in practice. We have produced a report that, I believe—I am grateful for the noble Baroness’s comment—is a model of objectivity in the post-legislative scrutiny process.
That is how matters should work. It is now in the hands of the Justice Select Committee, which has in turn asked for written comment by 3 February and urged interested parties to give the committee their views. As I said, I will pass on the noble Baroness’s comments about widening the basis of the group considering that.
I am confident that FOI is robust enough to survive rigorous post-legislative scrutiny. It is that process that will expose any flaws, if there are any. In the mean time, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, for initiating the debate and all noble Lords who have spoken. As I said at the beginning, the tragedy is that a speakers list of this quality and a topic such as this should be crammed in to the dinner hour, but I will write to noble Lords on the points raised. In the mean time, I am most grateful for all contributions.
Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill
Lord McNally Excerpts(12 years, 3 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord McNally)
My Lords, Amendment 21 would have the effect of removing Part 1, Schedule 1 and bringing within the scope of legal aid, civil legal services available for all categories of law except those excluded in Parts 2 and 3. Broadly speaking, these amendments seek to reinstate the approach to the scope of civil legal aid under the Access to Justice Act 1999—I think that the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, readily acknowledged that—which provided that most categories were in scope of funding except for those limited matters set out in Schedule 2. As noble Lords will appreciate, this would significantly impact on the savings and fundamentally defeats the object of the reforms. We have never hidden the fact that the aim of these reforms is not just to save public expenditure, given the position with the public finances, but to encourage alternatives to a legal settlement of disputes, not least through mediation. My right honourable friend the Lord Chancellor is attempting to reverse the trend on the part of many in our society over the past 20 years to see litigation—and tax-funded litigation, at that—as the first option, and we have gone about this in a way that moves away from the 1999 Act.
The Government have undertaken a comprehensive review of legal aid, have published impact and equality assessments and received nearly 5,000 responses. We have taken into account the importance of the issue, the litigant’s ability to present their own case, including their vulnerability, the availability of alternative sources of funding, and the availability of other routes to resolution. We have never hidden the fact that this is a change from the 1999 Act, but one which retains access to justice while coming to terms with economic reality. We have prioritised funding so that civil legal services as set out in Part 1 of Schedule 1 will be available in the highest priority cases; for example, where a person’s life or liberty is at stake, where they are at risk of serious physical harm or immediate loss of their home, or where children may be taken into care. I therefore urge the noble Lord to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Beecham
With all respect to the Minister, that is not a very satisfactory reply. In the first place, to suggest that the whole purpose of these changes is to avoid litigation as the first option mistakes the nature of the system. It is not only legal aid and representation that will disappear under these provisions but legal advice and assistance, which often prevent cases going to court. In many cases such measures avoid what I and many observers fear will happen; namely, a significant increase in litigants in person. That is likely to lead to considerable delays, the clogging up of the courts, will be inefficient and, for that matter, costly. The noble Lord airily cited the 5,000 responses received to the consultation paper. He did not tell us how many of those responses supported the thrust of the consultation paper. The suggestion is that about 90 per cent of respondents were very much opposed to the proposals.
In any event, there is another issue. The Government are in effect tying their hands and those of their successors on what might ultimately be thought to be desirable to be brought within scope. That will now require primary legislation to amend the Bill, if it is enacted, on those points. No utility is served by that process. It is always open to Governments to change eligibility if they choose to do so and to take matters out of scope, but we are now seeing an attempt to fix the situation as it now is—to imprison the present system in amber, as it were. That makes change unnecessarily difficult should the situation in society as a whole change and require further alteration.
This matter goes to the heart of the Bill, along with the next amendments to be moved by my noble friend. In the circumstances, I will not push this to a vote at this stage, and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Bach
My Lords, first, I thank my noble friend Lord Howarth in particular for supporting our Amendment 24. Of the alternatives set out so clearly by the noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Sudbury, Amendment 24 is the preferred amendment. But I want to make it absolutely clear from our Front Bench that our real quarrel is with the Bill as drafted. In the mild words of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, it is astonishing to find Clause 8(2) in modern legislation. It goes without saying that we believe that this is a non-party issue. Right around the Committee, it has been suggested that on this the Government have got it seriously wrong. If I am a little harsher on the Government than noble Lords have been so far, it is because this is an essential and very important part of this Bill. It is crucial that the Government move on it, if not at this stage, then later. I very much hope that on this group, the Minister can help us by implying that the Government are thinking of changing their position.
The Bill represents an attack on a number of crucial areas of civil legal aid. If the Government get their way, the whole edifice of social welfare law will be severely damaged, perhaps to destruction. The restrictions on private family law are poorly thought through and the proposed taking out of scope of clinical negligence, which we are to debate shortly, seems more ridiculous as every day passes.
We all agree—we certainly do—that there must be some cuts to legal aid. But there should not be these cuts, and any cuts should not be so fast or so far. I pose again to the Minister a question to which I have had no response up till now: why on earth is all criminal law seemingly off limits? Is there no waste, nothing that could be rationalised, in that area of law which, I remind the Committee, takes well over 50 per cent of the whole legal aid budget? The answer is apparently not, because the Government have announced that there will be no moves on criminal legal aid until 2015 at the earliest. I pose the question again: why?
The present position, as I understand it, is that a government can, to a limited extent—I shall be frank in saying that I am not sure to what extent—alter by order what is in and out of scope; for example, by amending the funding code as felt appropriate. But what the Bill asks us to accept is a quite new proposition; namely, that the Government should have the power to omit services from Schedule 1 by order. However, there is no suggestion, of course, that they should have the power to add services by order. Again, the question that all noble Lords have been asking the Minister is: why not? Why this imbalance, this tilt, against legal aid? My own view is that the answer is a bit depressing. It is that, to put it mildly, the ministry has a rather small-minded, extraordinarily partial view of legal aid; it does not much like it and would rather be rid of it than defend it. It does not see it as central to access to justice, let alone the rule of law, and is rather looking forward to cutting more. What other impression can one possibly get from the way in which this clause is drafted?
It is often said, particularly in this House, that the real argument against allowing a provision like this is not for now but for a future government who may not be troubled by the same principles as are supposed to exist in all modern governments of whatever complexion. However—and I hope that this does not sound too harsh—my own reason for not allowing this crude power to omit legal aid to the Government is just as much to do with what I fear is the present Government’s careless attitude towards legal aid as with some rogue government in the future.
Right across this Bill, or right across Part 1 at any rate, the cavalier manner in which it is proposed to decimate social welfare law, to remove clinical negligence from scope and to restrict the definition of domestic violence on the one hand and have too wide evidential criteria for it on the other all tend to suggest that, on the importance in our society of the availability of civil legal aid for ordinary citizens to access justice, the Government really do not have the enthusiasm that they should have. I believe that this view is shared by many inside and outside this Committee. How then can it be right to entrust the Government with the new extensive powers that they propose? Legal aid could be further diminished by order, but nothing could be added to it except by primary legislation. Just to state that proposition shows how wrong it is.
No one apart from the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, has referred to the two important reports that have been published for our benefit. One was from the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, which discussed this issue and came to the following conclusion:
“The Committee has concerns about clause 8(2), and those concerns were not allayed by the explanation in the memorandum that this was merely an updating provision. However, there is precedent for a power of this type to be delegated and subject to affirmative procedure (whether the power is to add or to remove from the Schedule), and on that basis, we do not find it inherently inappropriate. But we draw it to the attention of the House because it is not limited to routine updating and may legitimately be used to make substantial omissions from Schedule 1.”
The Select Committee on the Constitution said this about Clause 8(2):
“Under the Bill the Lord Chancellor will have a power to modify Schedule 1 by omitting further services from the scope of civil legal aid (clause 8(2)). Orders made under clause 8(2) will be subject to the affirmative resolution procedure. This provision should be amended to enable the Lord Chancellor not only to omit services from the scope of civil legal aid but also to add services to the scope of civil legal aid.”
I do not want to quote from the Government’s response to both those committees’ reports. Perhaps the only advantage was that of consistency, because the two paragraphs were the same in each case. If noble Lords look at those paragraphs they do not make a convincing case, or indeed any case at all, against the amendments that have been raised in Committee today.
This is another part of the Bill where the Government must move. I very much hope that the Minister will show signs that the Government have listened to the unanimous view of these committees on this matter today.
Lord McNally
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have contributed to this debate, and particularly my noble friend Lord Faulks for introducing it. There is a little bit of the political bruiser in me that always wants to take the noble Lord, Lord Bach, full on, particularly when he is in piety mode. He was part of a Government who carried out six reviews of legal aid in its last five years, brought in real cuts, and had an actual manifesto commitment to cut legal aid.
Lord McNally
As I said at the very beginning, we were faced with circumstances where we had to make hard choices. The noble Lord sticks to the mantra, “Not these cuts, not this place, not now”.
A number of telling points have been made by the contributions today. To clarify a point that my noble friend Lord Faulks asked for, the regulations under Clause 8(2) would be subject to the affirmative procedure in terms of parliamentary scrutiny. However I take full note of the point that the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, made, that strong and experienced legal opinion has advised against this one-way street which is built into the Bill. I also take on board—which is why I want to come back to this at the end—the question of primary legislation as against secondary legislation.
I also take note of the advice of the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, about the need for flexibility and future-proofing, which my noble friend Lord Thomas also referred to. The importance, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Scott, pointed out of the adequacy of the civil justice system, is something that is constantly in our minds in trying to determine our priority, and I take on board the warnings that we have had about the dangers of litigants in person.
The noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, asked whether the aim was to see legal aid wither on the vine. That is certainly not our intention. Like previous speakers, the noble Baroness argued again the case for having some guard against what she termed the “law of unintended consequences”, although the term “sucking on the sweetie” must be some aspect of Scottish law rather than English law. As a non-lawyer, I would not know. However I agree that “sucking on the sweetie” may well be the test of all legislation.
My noble friend Lord Carlile called for us to keep the door open. He was right to say that all Ministers must be ready to take lobbying; that is not in doubt.
Lord Clinton-Davis
What I said was that secondary legislation should be introduced only where essential, and the onus of proof is on the Government.
Lord McNally
I did hear the noble Lord’s speech. I was merely pointing out that as a parliamentarian I, too, have worried about the overreliance on secondary legislation, which is a point that I would concede to him.
There is no doubt that there is great strength of feeling about these amendments. I assure the Committee that the Lord Chancellor has noted the concerns; my noble friend Lord Thomas and others had a meeting with him earlier in the week when they put this case very strongly. With the leave of the House, and I think the noble Lord, Lord Bach, intimated this in his wind-up speech, in the full light of the points made in this debate and by the Delegated Powers Committee and the Select Committee on the Constitution, both of which have been referred to, may the Justice Secretary look at these matters again and give serious consideration to the amendments—not all of which mesh together—so that we can bring back proposals regarding this clause for further debate on Report? Given that assurance that we are taking this matter away in a constructive way, I hope that noble Lords will agree to not to press their amendments today.
Lord Faulks
My Lords, I am very grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken in this debate. It is a matter of happenstance that I am dealing with this amendment. The other amendments are in the same spirit, although to slightly different effect. I do not wish to intrude on the spat between the noble Lords, Lord McNally and Lord Bach. My concern, in this amendment, is not so much the detail, which we are going to develop in due course in argument, but more the question of principle, which I would suggest, and others all round the Committee have suggested, is at the moment embodied in this clause in a most unsatisfactory way.
I am, however, very grateful for the conciliatory noises made by the noble Lord, Lord McNally, and for his assurance that what has been said in this debate, and what has been said in the various committees that have considered this clause, will be noted by the Lord Chancellor. I very much hope that, when this matter comes back on Report, those concerns can be reflected by the Minister. In that guise, I am happy to withdraw this amendment.
Lord Bach
I agree absolutely. It seems to follow because the people who practise this kind of law—and we know that they are not particularly well-paid lawyers—are very careful, on the whole, to give advice on the position in law and not necessarily what the claimant wants to hear. It is right that people with hopeless claims do not go forward and those with meritorious claims do go forward—as they should do.
These are legal problems—let us make no mistake about that. The truth is that the welfare benefits field, as we have heard all round the House from great experts, is very complex in many cases and people need help with these matters before they can decide the right thing to do.
Judge Robert Martin, the head of the Social Entitlement Chamber of the First-tier Tribunal, gave evidence to the Justice Committee inquiry some time last year. The 7,500 pages I referred to in an intervention are the reference material that was issued to the tribunals and which is now spread over six volumes. He made that point to the Justice Committee. He was asked by the chair, the right honourable gentleman Sir Alan Beith:
“Will it bring more people into the tribunal because they have not been advised that their case has no chance of success in the tribunal”?,
which I think is the question the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, asked me. Judge Robert Martin said:
“Yes, because a general public awareness of tribunals is very low. Very little is put into public education of the law and how to seek redress for grievances. There is this risk that we will see many people who have been drawn to the tribunal believing it is the most appropriate forum to solve things, whereas it may be just a mistaken conception about the tribunal”.
He continued:
“Legal help is so important in that triage function of sifting out cases which can be redressed but not through the tribunal or the court, and assisting those cases where the tribunal or the court can assist to have the case prepared in a way that maximises the chance of success”.
That gives the answer from someone who is, as it were, at the coal face. He went on to say:
“With the removal of legal help, we will have to spend a lot more time explaining simply what the tribunal is about rather than getting to the heart of the matter”.
This Bill is at its worst in this particular part. I argued at Second Reading—and I argue again today—that it is unconstitutional in that it removes access to justice for a large number of citizens, it is immoral because the state should not try to save a fairly small amount of money by targeting the poor and the disabled by removing their legal rights, and it is financially crazy because the savings will be non-existent. As benefits mistakes are not remedied, the problems will grow and the cost to the state will explode.
We are very proud of our legal system in this country and we encourage, quite rightly, foreign citizens to litigate their cases in British courts. They do so because of the extreme fairness and expertise of the British legal system from top to bottom. It is ironic, is it not, that we should be asking foreigners to litigate their serious cases in our courts because of the greatness of our system, while at the same time we seek to reduce some basic rights in law for our own citizens who are the least able to look after themselves?
Lord McNally
My Lords, Amendments 32 and 89 seek to bring welfare benefit matters into the scope of legal aid funding, first, by deleting the exclusion for welfare benefits in Part 2 of Schedule 1 and, secondly, by adding social welfare as an in-scope category in Part 1 of Schedule 1.
The amendments are contrary to our reform programme in which we are focusing our resources on the highest priority cases. Currently legal aid is available for legal advice but not representation in relation to decisions on welfare benefits at the First-tier and Upper Tribunals. While we recognise that many people rely on welfare benefits, these cases are primarily about financial entitlement. In our reforms we have concentrated on the fundamental issues of liberty or safety. Given the need to prioritise funding, we have decided to remove legal advice for welfare benefits from the scope of the legal aid scheme.
Lord Howarth of Newport
Can the Minister explain why poverty is a less fundamental issue than liberty or safety?
Lord McNally
I am going to go on to this. I must say to the noble Lord that it would help if I can get further than just past page one. I will deal exactly with the issue that he has raised. As the noble Baronesses, Lady Mallalieu and Lady Howe, indicated, we will have a series of debates on a number of specific individuals who will be affected by reforms.
A number of noble Lords have cited their own experiences, either professional or personal, so I shall in part answer the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, by giving a personal experience of my own. In 1976 I sat in the Cabinet Room in Downing Street with the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Prime Minister—Denis Healey and James Callaghan—and during the course of a two or three hour meeting the pound fell from 1.95 to 1.45 against the dollar. By the time it hit 1.45 we had sent for the Governor of the Bank of England and decided to call in the IMF. Like many events, it has left a political scar, which is this: if you lose control of your own economy, all the concern for the poor and the disabled and the disadvantaged is as nothing because you cannot help them if you are not in control of your own economy.
Many of the debates that we have heard in the past few days, including this one—and probably the one tomorrow—have addressed the kind of issues that we have heard today. As I look around the House, I know that on all Benches there are people who have devoted their lives to the betterment of the citizens of this country. No one party has a monopoly on that. However, it is right to say that we have had to take hard decisions in difficult circumstances. I hear that £1 million is within the margin of error and that £20 million is trivial, but in a department like mine those are the figures that we are having to face and deal with. Therefore, although I understand some of the—
Lord Howarth of Newport
I am sure we all accept that it is imperative that the Government do not lose control of the economy, as the Minister puts it, but it is a question of how you gain control of the economy. Why do this Government prefer to deprive people of legal aid in their appeals for welfare benefits in order to save £25 million—they think, but very good reasons have been put by noble Lords all round the House as to why that saving would be illusory—while being prepared to spend much larger sums on freezing council tax, which will largely benefit more affluent people, or on weekly refuse collections? It is a question of priorities.
Lord McNally
Politics is always a question of priorities. We keep on having this Second Reading debate. If we want a bit of knockabout, it has taken the Shadow Chancellor and the Leader of the Opposition 18 months into this Government to accept the cuts that the Government are imposing. We can have a knockabout if you want. We started this debate some months ago and what we are talking about is a department that is making its contribution to a roughly 20 per cent cut in public expenditure. That kind of adjustment was necessary—and I think has been successful—to retain the confidence in our economy which others have lost, and which has allowed us to borrow at lower interest rates and keep that readjustment within manageable terms.
Of course, as each department brings its proposals forward, tough choices are made. I am sure there are people in local government who are having to make tough choices, and when they make those tough choices people will extrapolate the consequences of those tough choices—but let us not pretend that there are alternatives to those tough choices. It is also interesting. I am not sure where we are on this. I could not intervene because my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace was in charge of that.
During the medical debate, the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, stood up and with a perfectly straight face, and supposedly making an argument on his side, cited a case where £90,000 was spent—£45,000 on legal fees and £45,000 on advice—to produce £4,500 of compensation for the person offended. It did not seem to occur to the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, but it did to me as a poor, innocent, non-legal layman, that there is something wrong with a system that absorbs £90,000—
Lord Beecham
That was hardly a representative example of cases. In most cases—although necessarily costs in clinical negligence cases are higher than the average—they are nothing like that proportion.
Lord McNally
I never even suggested that. However, I am suggesting that we are talking about processes where the response of the Opposition, and sometimes my noble friends, seems to be yet more lawyers, yet more litigation—
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
I thank my noble friend for giving way, but I must just reply. First, the whole point of my alarming case was to show how desperately needed reform was. Secondly, it was to support the amendment because were aid available to get expert reports right at the beginning, you would know at the outset whether the case was a runner and some of these crazy expenses would be knocked out.
Lord McNally
It still seems barmy to me. Likewise, with regard to the 7,500-page volume mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Bach, and the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, in 13 years of Labour Government, did nobody think, “What kind of system are we producing that requires that kind of detailed explanation and advice?”? It seems to me that the approach is not reform, as the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, said, but forever putting another layer of wallpaper on an already dirty room. We are about reform and one of the things that we are reforming—again, it would be interesting in wider debates to hear where the Opposition is on this—
Lord Bach
If the Minister’s best point is that the volumes on welfare benefits increased in the years of the Labour Government—as no doubt they did in the years of the Conservative Government before, and have done for 30 or 40 years as the system has got more complicated—that is a pretty poor argument for taking out of scope social welfare law, frankly.
Lord McNally
That is not my best point. The best point is that we are having, supposedly, a national debate about welfare dependency and welfare reform. It may be a bit unsettling that a number of reforms are taking place at the same time, but my understanding is that the welfare reforms before this House are attempting to simplify a much overcomplicated process and that that had the broad support of the Opposition. I do not think we are going to win this argument, some of which we will return to.
Amendment 35 seeks to bring into scope legal aid for advice and assistance for appeals to the First-tier Social Entitlement Chamber in respect of welfare benefits that are payable under social security legislation as a result of disability. The intention of the amendment appears to be for legal help and representation to be provided for welfare benefit appeals in the First-tier Tribunal for those with disabilities. Currently, legal aid is available for legal advice only in relation to decisions on welfare benefits in the First-tier Tribunal. Legally aided representation is not available for tribunal hearings because they are designed, as has been said, to be user-friendly without the need for legal representation. Therefore, we believe that this amendment would increase the cost of legal aid by expanding it into areas where it is not currently available.
We recognise that this amendment is concerned about the impact on those with disabilities who are appealing to the tribunal. While we recognise that those with disabilities may face additional obstacles, the tribunal is a relatively informal venue. The tribunal itself will comprise a medical practitioner and a disability expert as well as a tribunal judge when considering disability living allowance appeals. Given this and the need to prioritise funding, we have decided to remove legal advice for welfare benefits from the scope of the legal aid scheme. I hope that my noble friend will withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Doocey
My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords for their support on these amendments.
I have listened very carefully to what the Minister has said and I cannot pretend I am not disappointed by the response. There is no doubt that we need to get a higher proportion of benefit decisions right the first time round but I have not seen anything to convince me that this is going to happen any time soon.
Huge numbers of mistakes are made in decisions on benefit, and these have catastrophic effects, not just on the person trying to claim the benefit, but on their entire family.
I will give you one example. Somebody that I have known for 30 years has incredibly complex problems with her back following an accident. She had worked all her life, and was forced to claim benefit. She is so badly damaged, having had multiple operations, that she is incapable of standing for more than three minutes at a time. She spends the majority of her life lying down to take the pressure off her back, and is on incredible amounts of medication. Initially she was assessed as having no problems whatever, and that she could work. While she is a highly articulate person, she is terrified of authority, and so without being pushed by a number of us, and having recourse to legal aid, because she had no money at all, she could never have appealed that decision, which was clearly absolutely wrong.
I therefore really worry about what is going to happen if this goes through. I really hope that the Minister will reflect again and consider bringing back some hope at Report stage. Meanwhile, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill
Lord McNally Excerpts(12 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord McNally
My Lords, even at this late stage of the night, the mere appearance of the noble and learned Baroness at the Dispatch Box brings a smile to my face. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Bach, does not feel any jealousy.
Lord McNally
Of course, having listened to a debate dominated by what I acknowledge is a great deal of expertise and experience in this area, I will go away to ponder and think about what has been said, and discuss it with my right honourable friend the Lord Chancellor. At this time of night, like the noble Baroness I think it is better if I put on the record our approach and we can then resume on Wednesday.
Amendments 33, 34, 39, 40, 41, 51, 52, 79B, 80, 80A, 82A, 82B and 82C all concern legal aid for children and young people, or people with dependent children. Others refer to the use of mediation in family cases. While—as I have said—I acknowledge the expertise and experience on display today, and while I understand what motivates these amendments, I ask the House in turn to acknowledge the economic realities behind the difficult decisions that we have been forced to take.
As the House is well aware, the Government’s approach has been to look at every area of law where legal aid is provided, and to consider whether it should continue, and in what form. In developing our proposals, we have considered carefully a number of factors, including: the importance and complexity of the issue; the litigant’s ability to present their own case; the availability of alternative sources of funding; and the availability of other routes to resolution. We have used these factors to prioritise funding so that civil legal services will be available in the highest priority cases; for example, where people’s life or liberty is at stake, where they are at risk of serious physical harm or immediate loss of their home, or for domestic violence remedies, or where children may be taken into care.
A number of noble Lords have drawn inferences that this is a cruel and uncaring Government; as the noble Lord, Lord Alton, said, a government for the sharp elbowed. Let me just put on record at this stage and remind noble Lords that even after our reforms are in place we will still be spending £120 million of funding per year for private family law, including domestic violence; an extra £10 million per year on mediation; £50 million on categories of social welfare law; £6 million on clinical negligence; and £2 million on education. That is why I sometimes bridle at suggestions that we are destroying the legal aid system. We are trying to manage an overall cut in legal aid that will still leave us with—as I have said before—one of the most generous legal aid systems in the world.
Amendment 33 applies to all civil and family proceedings, and seeks to bring into scope civil legal services for many areas of law that are excluded where the individual has a child who is dependent on them. The intention appears to be that this group of people should receive civil legal services because of the potential impact on their children of the withdrawal of legal aid. The amendment would retain funding across the board for people with dependent children, without regard to the relative priority and alternative methods of resolving disputes, and would lose the bulk of the £170 million of annual savings, as most family law cases involve a respondent or applicant who has dependent children. It would also significantly impact on the £110 million saving in other areas of civil law. We have not sought simply to retain legal aid for any case where the individual has a child. Doing so would mean expending limited funds on a range of cases: some important, some not as important and some where alternative ways of resolving the dispute would be preferable. Therefore, I hope that noble Lords will not press the amendment.
Amendment 79B would bring all civil non-family matters within scope for children, with the exception of work relating to breach of a statutory duty, the making of wills, trust law and business cases. Amendment 82C seeks to bring into scope civil legal services covering welfare benefits, debt, housing and employment for those aged 24 or under or who are represented by a legal guardian. Amendment 82B seeks to bring into scope civil legal services in relation to advice and proceedings where the person is a care leaver under the age of 21 in wide-ranging civil and family areas specified in the amendment. Amendment 79B would mean that nearly all civil cases would be brought into scope if the applicant were a child. It is worth making it absolutely clear that in civil cases, claims brought in the name of a child are usually conducted by their parents acting as the child’s litigation friend rather than by the child themselves. This accords with the normal rules of civil litigation. The civil justice system as a whole does not generally require children to act on their own behalf.
I turn now to the rest of the amendments in the group. Providing blanket funding for all cases where the child or young person is the applicant would be costly, unnecessary and might create perverse incentives for parents to attempt to bring civil litigation in their children's name purely to secure funding in otherwise out-of-scope areas of law. The Government recognise the importance of funding in a range of cases where children's interests are paramount. This is reflected in the decisions that we have reached. As a result we have protected funding in areas that specifically involve children. We have retained legal aid for child protection cases, civil cases concerning the abuse of a child, and for cases concerning special educational needs assistance. We have also made special provision so that legal aid will be available for children who are made parties to private family proceedings.
There will also be an exceptional funding scheme that will ensure the protection of an individual's rights to legal aid under the European Convention on Human Rights, as well as those rights to legal aid that are directly enforceable under European Union law. Each case will be decided on its own facts, but in cases where Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights is engaged, the ability of the client to present their own case, the complexity of the issues and the importance of the issues at stake will be relevant factors when a decision is taken on whether to grant exceptional funding. Therefore, where a child brings an action without a litigation friend, this will be an important factor in deciding whether they have the ability to present their case.
Amendments 80 and 80A seek to bring into scope civil legal services for any person who is under 24 and has a disability. They include but do not limit themselves to particular areas of scope that are excluded. Amendment 82A seeks to bring into scope civil legal services in relation to advice and proceedings for any person who is 24 or under and has a disability or lacks mental capacity. We have considered the point that the amendment makes about legal aid for those with disabilities. The equality impact assessment published alongside the Government’s response to consultation sets out our analysis of the potential effects that the reforms may have on people sharing protected characteristics in accordance with the public sector equality duty set out in the Equality Act 2010. We have acted consistently with that duty, one requirement of which is to have due regard to the impact on groups of different ages and those with different needs, such as disabilities. While we have identified the potential for the reforms to have greater impacts on some groups, we believe that those impacts are proportionate and justified by the need to meet our objectives, including the pressing need to make savings from legal aid.
Lord Howarth of Newport
As this issue came up in an earlier debate, will the Minister explain to the Committee how it is that his policies that he acknowledges will have an impact on disabled people are not discriminatory and therefore legally offensive?
Lord McNally
They are not legally offensive. We have been honest right from the first day I answered questions. I go back again to this, which is something that the noble Lord in his many, many interventions never acknowledges. If you are making cuts in such an area that is directed at the poorer sections of society, of course, you will affect the poorer sections of society. But what will also affect the poorer sections of society is if you lose control of the economy and are forced to bring in further draconian cuts over which you have no control. We will return, as we have done, through six or seven parallel debates with the same briefings and research from the same organisations. We have a fundamental difference of opinion on how to tackle these problems. I am not even sure that the noble Lord is quite on message at least with the latest pronouncements from his Front Bench in the other place about what we are facing in these matters. I suspect that we will have further discussions on this.
The Bill contains important safeguards for children and adults who lack capacity and who require treatment for mental health issues. Paragraph 5 of Part 1 of Schedule 1 provides that legal aid may be made available for cases arising under the Mental Health Act 1983 and the Mental Capacity Act 2005, including cases concerning medical treatment of patients or those who lack capacity. Furthermore, paragraphs 9 and 15 of Part 3 of Schedule 1 provide for legal aid for advocacy for mental health cases before the mental health tribunal. Paragraph 4 provides for advocacy before the Court of Protection where there is to be an oral hearing and the case will determine the vital interests of the individual: medical treatment, including psychological treatment; life; liberty; physical safety; the capacity to marry or enter into civil partnerships; the capacity to enter into sexual relations; or the right to family life. Paragraphs 1 and 2 of Part 3 of Schedule 1 provide legal aid for advocacy for an onward appeal to the Court of Appeal or Supreme Court on a mental health or capacity issue that is within scope.
As I have already mentioned, there will also be an exceptional funding scheme that will ensure the protection of an individual’s right to legal aid under the European Convention on Human Rights as well as those rights to legal aid that are directly enforceable under European Union law.
Amendment 34 applies to all civil and family proceedings. It seeks to bring into scope civil legal services for many areas of law that are excluded for any child party or child represented by legal guardian. I will address the amendment on the basis that the term “legal guardian” means the child’s guardian of the type appointed by CAFCASS. We are already retaining legal aid for child parties in family proceedings which we have prioritised. This part of the amendment is therefore unnecessary. Otherwise the amendment retains funding across the board for children in all civil disputes without regard to their relative priority or alternative methods of resolving them.
As I said, the Government recognise the importance of funding in a range of cases where children’s interests are paramount. That is reflected in the final decisions we have reached. As a result, we have protected funding in areas that specifically involve children. We have also made special provision so that legal aid is available for children who are made parties to private family proceedings.
Baroness Scotland of Asthal
I understand that the Minister is trying to give a full response, but in his valiant reply he said that the international child abduction cases were difficult and complex and that domestic abduction cases were not. Will he think again on that issue, not least because the complexity of the issues relating to abduction is similar in both domestic and international cases? Quite often the parents are greatly distressed, very confused and in need of the quick, experienced lawyer who is able to navigate the system. Many lawyers find abduction cases difficult and international cases are not very dissimilar. Will the Minister take back to the department that the belief that domestic cases may be easier than international cases is not quite as it may think it is.
Lord McNally
That is always the problem. If you say that one thing is more difficult it is implied that the others are easier. No, I was not implying that. I take the noble and learned Baroness’s point. One of the more difficult areas is where there is a break-up of a family and a loss of contact. I shall read what has been said and take it back.
Baroness Butler-Sloss
Perhaps I may add to what the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Scotland, has said. I have listened with interest to what the Minister is saying to us, but he suggested that the police would intervene even without going to court. Will he check as to whether the police are prepared to act in the absence of a court order? My experience, which is now six years out of date, was that the police were not prepared to act unless there was a court order. It would be very helpful if the Minister could find out about that very practical and basic point because it adds a great deal of force to what the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Scotland, has said.
Lord McNally
I promise the noble and learned Baroness that I shall go into the Lord Chancellor’s room tomorrow and say, “Baroness Butler-Sloss has asked me to ask you to clarify what you told me”. It is a very serious point. My briefing states that the police would help. She has made a relevant point about whether they would do so without a court order. I have never pretended that my knowledge on these matters was only six years out of date. In fact, my expertise is right up to date because I am learning all the time. I take on board what both noble and learned Baronesses have said, and I will try to explain to the Lord Chancellor that when I stand at the Dispatch Box I am facing a considerable amendment of experience and expertise which, dare I say it, he does not always face in the other place.
Amendment 41 is also open to the argument that it would extend to applications to prevent the child being moved by the parent with whom he or she resides and so put back into the scope of legal aid a very common type of family dispute. It is hard to estimate what effect this would have on our savings, but it would inevitably run into many millions of pounds. However, I will go back. As we know from other aspects of this thing about the rights of fathers—the noble and learned Baroness gave some of the horrific statistics about family break-up—we are touching a very sensitive area and I will raise these matters with my right honourable colleague.
Amendment 51 seeks to guarantee the availability of legal aid, subject to the means and merits test, for every family dispute that is not resolved by mediation. In considering the effect of this amendment, it is important to remember that both privately paying and publicly funded clients are already required to consider mediation before bringing proceedings. Given those existing requirements, it is difficult to see how this amendment would do anything other than maintain the status quo, retaining legal aid for all or most family cases. That would completely undermine our targeted approach to legal aid reform. We have to reduce expenditure on legal aid, but we also want less reliance on litigation as a means of solving problems. This amendment would do the opposite. If the fact that mediation had not resolved the parties’ differences were to become a route to legal aid, it would have the unintended consequence of discouraging people from paying more than lip service to the mediation process and reducing genuine engagement with it.
The Government’s position is clear. We believe that it is right to encourage families, where appropriate, to resolve their disputes without going to court. Accordingly, for most divorces, child contact applications or ancillary applications to divide up the family assets, legal aid will no longer be available. We want to prioritise mediation, which can be cheaper, quicker and less acrimonious than contested court proceedings. Legal aid will therefore remain available for mediation in private law family cases. We estimate that we will spend an extra £10 million on mediation, taking the total to £25 million a year.
However, we accept that mediation might not be suitable in every case, such as those involving domestic violence. Legal aid will remain available for private family cases where there is evidence of domestic violence and cases where a child is at risk of abuse. We will be turning to the matter of domestic violence on Wednesday. I want to make clear that funding for victims of domestic violence seeking a protective order will remain available as at present; that is, we will continue to provide civil legal aid where a person is applying for an order for protection against domestic violence, such as a non-molestation order or an occupation order. We will also continue to waive the financial eligibility limits in these cases. Again, the exceptional funding scheme will ensure the protection of an individual’s right to legal aid under the European Convention on Human Rights, as well as the rights to legal aid that are directly enforceable under European law.
Amendment 52 is aimed at providing legal aid for any adult party in family proceedings where a child party may give oral evidence, presumably to prevent cross-examination of the child by the alleged perpetrator. I understand the concerns which the noble Baroness who moved the amendment is trying to address here, but we are seeking to ensure funding for the most vulnerable in society. We do not think that to automatically extend funding to an alleged perpetrator fits well with this. It would be a mistake to assume that the only means of protection for the prospective witness is funding representation for the prospective questioner.
The situation which the noble and learned Baroness seeks to address can already occur in the courts. Should a victim of abuse face questioning from their abuser, judges have powers and training to manage the situation, to make sure that the court’s process is not abused and that hearings at which oral evidence is given are handled sensitively. In family proceedings, for example, the court is specifically empowered to limit cross-examination—it can have questions relayed to the witness rather than asked directly—and can use video links and intervene to prevent inappropriate questioning.
That brings me to the end of that list. I am not waving a white handkerchief and making specific concessions, but I take the point made by the noble and learned Baroness in closing that this has been an array of experience and expertise that we would do well to consider, and this we will do before we bring these matters back on Report. I ask the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, who started this debate, whether she will now withdraw her amendment.
Baroness O'Loan
I thank the Minister for his comments, and I am glad to hear that he will reflect further upon this very wide-ranging debate, in which the consequences of the proposed legislation have been so well articulated on all sides of the House. I am not persuaded by what the Minister has said—that it is right, necessary or proportionate that there should be a whole-scale removal of the availability of legal aid to families with dependent children, when there is such a huge range of issues of vital importance, such as basic family income.
The Government suggest that we may save £270 million, but we know already that those figures are very questionable. Careful analysis suggests that the consequences of this part of the Bill will be a much greater involvement of social services, housing authorities, welfare services, the criminal justice system, education services, and, I fear, ultimately the health service.
The Minister has not persuaded me that the drafters of this Bill have had sufficient regard to the needs of the child and of the family to which the child belongs. We may need to return to the matter on Report. For the present, I beg leave to withdraw.
Prisons: Population
Lord McNally Excerpts(12 years, 4 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord McNally)
My Lords, the Government have embarked on a series of policies to make the public safer—in particular, by breaking into the cycle of reoffending. Our policies, including measures in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill now before this House, are expected to impact favourably on the size of the prison population.
Lord Dubs
My Lords, does the Minister agree that since the coalition came to power, the number of people in prison has risen to a record figure of over 80,000, the highest ever for England and Wales, and that, even if the impact assessment on the legal aid Bill works out fully, that will barely bring the prison population down to what it was before the coalition came in? Is it not fair to say that the Government have given up on this?
Lord McNally
My Lords, on the contrary, what the Government have not done is to play the numbers game. People are in prison as a response to offences committed and sentences imposed by the courts. Simply making arbitrary decisions on prison numbers is pointless, but what we are doing is putting into place policies which, as I have said, particularly tackle what I think is one of the major problems in the upward trend in our prison population—that is, the unacceptable level of reoffending. That is why we are putting a lot of effort into policies on the rehabilitation of offenders.
Baroness Knight of Collingtree
My Lords, will my noble friend bear in mind how many times we have seen news of a prisoner who has been let out of prison early causing great trouble, including murder? We must always keep an eye on the danger of letting people out of prison too early.
Lord McNally
My Lords, that is the mirror image of the Question put by the noble Lord, Lord Dubs. There is no doubt that every time you release a prisoner, there could be a danger of reoffending. That is why the assessment is very thorough and the management—the Opposition Front Bench is nodding as though I was saying something brilliant. I am not changing policy at all, and what we are certainly not going to do is let out 80,000 people early because we have mismanaged the prison building programme. If anyone wants to talk about mismanaging prisons, we can look at the record over 10 years of the previous Government. In terms of the question asked by my noble friend Lady Knight, it is absolutely correct that Ministers are aware of public concern about the management of ex-prisoners. That is why we take great care in these matters and why, when we look at the alternatives to prison, we make sure that the public have confidence in the policies we put in place. That is the reality.
Lord Mackenzie of Framwellgate
My Lords, does the Minister agree that one of the greatest deterrents to the commission of crime is the fear of being caught? How is this helped by a 20 per cent cut in police funding?
Lord McNally
Again, there are great nods from the Opposition. Apparently the reality of the necessity for cuts has reached the Leader of the Opposition, yet any specific cut is met with shakes of the head. The police are being asked, as are many others, to carry through efficiency programmes, but we remain confident that they will deliver in terms of public safety while carrying out the programmes that have been requested of them.
Lord Woolf
Does the Minister agree that more important than when a prisoner is released is whether, when he is released, enough has been done while he is in custody to ensure that he does not quickly return to prison by reoffending?
Lord McNally
That is exactly the point that my right honourable friend the Lord Chancellor made. It is the rehabilitation of offenders that we must look at. Yes, people who have committed serious crimes should be put in prison but, unless you are going to keep them in prison for ever, you are going to release them at some stage. Therefore, the policy aim must be to put in place programmes of rehabilitation to avoid reoffending wherever possible. It was put to me on a prison visit that the best chance of avoiding reoffending is for prisoners to have the prospect of a job, a place to live and a relationship. Those are difficult things to put in place but that is, and will continue to be, the thrust of our policy.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, can my noble friend tell the House about any progress that is being made in reducing the number of women in prison, both on remand and following sentencing? I know that he shares my view that this carries a huge cost—not just a financial one but in particular a social one.
Lord McNally
My Lords, there are about 4,000 women in our prisons at the moment, and anyone who takes a moment to study these matters will say that that is far too large a number. We are taking forward a range of measures to look at how women who have committed crimes outside the prison regime can be treated. I pay tribute here to the landmark Corston report from the previous Administration. We are pursuing most of the recommendations, as did the previous Administration, but, like them, we have found the key recommendation specific to small units too costly to pursue. It is widely said that women need a different kind of treatment and I believe that to be the case. This is a serious problem and one that we are taking seriously in terms of initiatives on drugs, debt and treatment outside. Those are the facts.
Lord Bach
My Lords, when the Government were in their first flush of enthusiasm, they were full of claims as to how much smaller the prison population would be by the time of the next general election. Who was playing the numbers game then? How times have changed. Particularly bearing in mind the increase in crime that is now being reported, what is the current forecast of what the prison population will be at the next election in May 2015? What a contrast all this is with the days of the previous Labour Government, when crime was being reduced by 43 per cent.
Lord McNally
The commitment that we have made is to try to bring in a raft of policies that address specific problems about reoffending which are key to the size of our prison population. I am not going to play a numbers game; indeed, we never have. I look across at some of the heads shaking and nodding opposite, but I personally find this matter far too serious to play a numbers game.
Lord McNally
I know that they do not like it but the fact is that during their period in office the Labour Government oversaw a massive increase in our prison population without tackling at any time scandalous levels of reoffending, ranging from 50 to 70 per cent.
Lord McNally
Time, yes; and it is time that the Labour Opposition faced up to their appalling record on crime.
Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill
Lord McNally Excerpts(12 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Woolf
My Lords, may I say a few words in support of this proposal? Expert evidence is an area in which the courts have had considerable difficulties in the past. However, following on from what the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, said, it is right to acknowledge that great progress has been made over recent years in the way in which expert evidence is used in the courts, but the amount of knowledge that is available for expert reports in connection with litigation is limited. I suggest no more than that a review of the sort suggested in the amendment is well needed.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord McNally)
My Lords, I am most grateful to all noble Lords who have contributed to the debate. It has gone slightly wider in the use of experts than the narrow interpretation given in the amendment, and in some respects has read into the amendment things that are not there, but I shall try to deal with the points raised and noble Lords may then understand better what I am saying.
On the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, we are not withdrawing funds for experts. Where the case has public funding under legal aid and funding for expert opinion is appropriate, funding will be made available. The Government are working with the Legal Services Commission to develop and put in place a robust client and provider strategy that both reflects the demands and requirements of the new legal aid market and obtains the maximum value from the ongoing structure developed in the legal aid market.
In the Government’s response to the legal aid reform consultation, we confirmed that we would not be considering contracting with or paying experts directly in the short term because of the administrative costs to the LSC. However, when we have had time to consider the family justice review final report, which came out just before Christmas, we will look at this matter again. At the moment, there is no plan for the LSC to take this on from the solicitors to whom the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, referred.
Amendment 5 seeks to impose a duty on the Lord Chancellor to review the accessibility and quality of expert witness advice for the purposes of civil proceedings, as well as a duty to maintain or improve such accessibility and quality following the commencement of Part 1 of the Bill. This is an entirely unworkable amendment, in our opinion. By definition, expert witnesses are highly qualified and experienced professional individuals in their normally very technical fields. As professionals, they will be subject to the standards required by their respective professional membership bodies. It is not within the Lord Chancellor’s gift, nor should it be, to determine the quality provided by any given expert witness. Principally, this would be inappropriate; the Lord Chancellor cannot be expected to be in a position to determine the quality of the expert evidence or advice given, not least because the requisite expertise would not be held to reach a credible determination.
The costs of establishing a mechanism to assess credibly the quality of expert witnesses would also be prohibitive. Even if resources were unlimited, we have severe doubts as to the viability of such a mechanism. Disputes as to the accuracy or otherwise of expert evidence can be the subject of extensive debate and even litigation.
Lord Campbell of Alloway
In trying to follow this, I must say that surely the question of the quality of the expert evidence is not fundamental. The fundamental question, is it not, is whether they need expert evidence. Who decides that? Is it an independent person or is it the legal aid authorities? Could I ask for an answer, if it is relevant?
Lord McNally
I refer to quality because the amendment itself does so, but the application for legal aid will go to the new director, who will consider both the question of legal aid and whether there is justification for having expert witnesses, as I said before.
As I said, disputes as to the accuracy or otherwise of expert evidence can be the subject of extensive debate, even litigation, and the notion of a single objective standard that could be applied without reviewing evidence or advice given on a case-by-case basis, bearing in mind the myriad scenarios—in which, for example, a psychologist might be giving evidence or advice—does not hold water. Equally, we find the notion of accessibility somewhat difficult in the context of expert evidence. By definition, these individuals are experts in their fields and therefore few in number, and their engagement in any given proceeding is, outside the major urban conurbations, unlikely to be geographically convenient—a point made by the noble and learned Lord. Under the current framework, experts are quite naturally drawn from far and wide and it is not within the Lord Chancellor’s gift, nor should it be, to try to control or influence the geographical distribution of experts in England and Wales.
The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, referred to the matter of lower rates being applied in London. The fact is that expert provision reacts to normal economic considerations of supply and demand. It follows, of course, that in areas of higher supply there is greater competition, and it should be open to the Government to pay slightly lower rates to reflect that position.
Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws
I am sorry to interrupt. On the issue of the assumption that experts will cluster in London rather than elsewhere, the experience, particularly in the medical field, is that—after, for example, the “sudden infant death” debacle and miscarriages of justice, and due to the feeling that there has been considerable criticism of paediatricians or pathologists over matters involving children—there is now real reluctance among people to be experts. It is not that there is a plethora of experts around; in fact, the opposite is the case. It is very hard to get medical people to come forward as experts in the courts because they do not want to have that kind of exposure. They also find that they are not paid enough money to make doing so worth cutting into their professional time. There is a misunderstanding about the availability of experts, particularly in the medical field.
My point about domestic violence is that in family cases, where on the whole there will not be legal aid, if someone is claiming that they have been a victim of domestic violence then they will be able to claim legal aid, but often there will be an argument over whether indeed there has been domestic violence. It is experts who often can resolve that. Will there be legal aid available to help to resolve the issue of domestic violence in order to enable access to legal aid?
Lord McNally
I do not think that I can give that assurance. The more that this goes on, the more that one can see why the Government are reluctant to accept an amendment that would impose a kind of impossibilism on the Lord Chancellor. We are working our way carefully with the LSC to a system that we think reflects the position. I hear what the noble Baroness is saying about the availability of expert witnesses. This is not the conclusion to which my right honourable and learned friend the Lord Chancellor has come; he thinks that this structure will provide the necessary experts. The more that we hear these examples given, the more I believe that the idea that legal aid or public funds can fund the whole range of expertise that the noble Baroness was suggesting is dangerous and one that I cannot possibly support from the Dispatch Box. I think that we will see some of the worst-case scenarios but we have confidence that the system we are setting up will carry on some of the procedures and reforms set in place by the previous Administration, and that it reflects an effective way of using public money. Therefore, accordingly, I ask the noble Lord to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I am grateful to noble Lords who have spoken in this debate. Several noble and learned Lords have been very sympathetic to the amendment; I am particularly grateful to my noble friend Lady Kennedy and the noble and learned Lords, Lord Morris and Lord Woolf. I am also grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Walton, whom it was my pleasure to instruct from time to time as an expert witness over many years, paying his very moderate and modest fees for his expert services.
I find the Minister’s response disappointing, to put it mildly. In answer to my noble friend Lord Howarth, I should say that a body to advise the Lord Chancellor in the exercise of the functions proposed by the amendment would be the right approach. However, the real issue here is accessibility, which depends on there being sufficient witnesses who are ready and willing to give evidence to assist parties and the courts. There is a clear concern about that, which is magnified by the issue of fees. The Minister rather airily dismissed the question of the availability of witnesses but did not address the point that I raised about the National Health Service finding difficulties with the proposed arrangements. My noble friend Lord Bach has handed me a letter which he has just received from the chief executive of the Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust. The chief executive says that she writes,
“on a matter of some concern regarding the fees paid to expert witnesses … I have been approached by clinicians in my Trust who undertake expert witness work … I am informed that the fees payable for such work have recently been reduced to a rate (of £90 per hour) which is causing some concern in my … service. As the NHS, we are required to pay consultant medical staff at the national rate and these are not compatible with the rates set by the Legal Services Commission. Our staff are highly expert and it would be a great loss to the family courts if we were unable to release them for such expert witness work in the future”.
That is clear evidence of the kind of problem that we will see and which will presumably grow over time.
The noble Lord raised the issue of London having more people, and so on. However, a London expert giving evidence somewhere else, as many of them will have to do, will presumably be paid at the London rate, whereas an expert in a provincial city will presumably be paid at a lower rate. It seems incongruous to me.
I hope that the Government will look again at this and perhaps answer—if not on this occasion, then in writing—a question which was put by, I think, the noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis. What discussions have taken place with the consortium to which I referred, and were there any positive responses? In particular, if a third meeting was promised, why did it not take place? At this stage, however, I will not press the amendment, but beg leave to withdraw it.
Lord McNally
My Lords, I am most grateful for all the contributions to what has been an extremely full debate—one that yet again has taken on some of the elements of a Second Reading debate, partly because of the structure of the amendment.
I have to say that we were one hour and 40 minutes into today’s deliberations before anyone—it was the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth—kindly mentioned that the debate and the Bill are set against the background of the economic situation we faced when we came into office. In the Ministry of Justice, a relatively small department, there was a commitment to find savings of £2 billion during this spending round. I say to the Benches around the House that there are no soft options.
I have not yet had a chance to read in full today’s speech by the Leader of the Opposition in which he is apparently asking the Labour Party to face up to the fact that cuts are inevitable. However, I have been following some of the advice he has received over the past week or so about facing that reality, some of which came even from Members of this House. I also think that some of the comments about the kind of social tsunami that we are going to face if the Bill is passed need a reality check: that after we have cut £350 million off the budget of our legal aid scheme—and I have not heard anyone challenge this—it will remain among the most generous in the world. The idea that somehow this is the end of civilisation as we know it does not stand up. We have been asked on a number of occasions to go back to first principles. We came into office with a commitment to make cuts in a department where there are really only four areas of expenditure: courts services, probation, prisons and legal aid. We set about trying to reshape the legal aid scheme in a way that addressed what we saw as the most fundamental issues of access to justice.
Lord Clinton-Davis
But if the Government are wrong about saving £350 million, and if the cost of providing services equivalent to legal aid mounts irrevocably, what does the Minister say about that? If the Government have miscalculated, is that not a grave offence?
Lord McNally
Fortunately, I know that the noble Lord has himself stood at this Dispatch Box, and I am sure that then he heard alarm bells going off in his head when anybody asked him questions with “if … if … if” in them. It is wise not to try to speculate. Of course things may happen beyond our control. The Government have made a judgment on these matters. We are asking the House to support that judgment, and we will find in the course of time whether that judgment is right.
The Bill is beginning to suffer from what I might call report fatigue, in that almost weekly a report comes out, usually sponsored by very interested parties, which is then quoted around the House. I would be the last to deny the right of groups to commission reports and to use their findings, but it is not necessary for those to be treated as holy writ. They are studies; we receive them, read them and take notice of them.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton
My Lords, I ask the Minister for the Government to produce their report. It is no good the Government dismissing or implying self-interest among those who are producing independent reports. I ask the Minister for the Government's evidence on which they base their judgment. Like him, I accept that all sorts of things come out of the blue. I want to know how the Government reached their conclusion. Where is the evidence? Please share it.
Lord McNally
I suggest that the noble Baroness reads our impact assessment, which has been quoted. Our critics cannot have it both ways. At one moment, they are banging the Dispatch Box and saying that the impact assessment reveals this, that and the other terrible finding, and then they say that we have not done any research. The noble Baroness has been in both national and local government. Many people in local government of all parties are having to take tough, difficult decisions. In a time of austerity there are no soft options. We have of course had cross-departmental discussions about the measures. It is almost impossible to assess with any accuracy the various impacts on one department or another of various measures—which involve, at maximum, £350 million in a relatively small department.
Lord McNally
One has to face up to these things but it is always a case of cuts being made somewhere else. We have tried to restructure legal aid in a way that reflects the economic reality that we face. My right honourable friend the Lord Chancellor has said very frankly that in his opinion we have become a society that reaches too easily for lawyers at taxpayers’ expense, and he is trying to roll back that tendency in this restructuring. We have also said that, as part of the restructuring, we want to look at alternative dispute resolution.
We understand the concerns that have been expressed about the not-for-profit or voluntary sector and the advice sector, and we have responded to them. I am not suggesting that this is a new announcement for the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, but we have found £20 million this year, despite the fact that the legal aid cuts do not impact on CABs at the moment as the cuts have not yet come into being. Under my honourable friend Nick Hurd in another place, we are also having a comprehensive look at the funding of that sector. Therefore, as I said, it is easy to put forward the case that has been made, but I and other Ministers were faced with a difficult decision regarding what we had to spend in the budget and how we could spend it.
Amendment 6 calls for a pre-commencement impact assessment of Part 1 of the Bill and for a copy of the report to be presented to both Houses of Parliament. The proposed review would look at the expected costs and impacts of Part 1 on a number of groups, including children and young people, women, black and ethnic minorities, and people with disabilities. It would also quantify impacts on the courts, tribunals, local authorities and government departments. Amendment 194 would bring the proposed new clause into force on the same day as the Act was passed.
Amendment 195 would require the Lord Chancellor, prior to commencement, to commission an independent review of the expected cost and impact on time and resources for judges and the courts of any increase in the number of litigants in person arising from the provisions in Parts 1 and 2 of the Bill. Amendment 191 would make the date on which the provisions of the Bill came into force subject to the provisions in Amendment 195.
Noble Lords will be aware that an established process, introduced by the previous Government, is already in place for the post-legislative scrutiny of Acts of Parliament. The aim is to complement the Government’s internal departmental scrutiny with parliamentary scrutiny, principally by committees of the House of Commons, to provide a reality check of new laws after three to five years. As set out in Cabinet Office guidance, these reviews normally take place three to five years after Royal Assent. The responsible department must submit a memorandum to its departmental Select Committee and the Select Committee will then decide whether it wishes to conduct a fuller post-legislative inquiry into the Act. Of course, the House will be free to debate the committee’s findings should it choose to conduct a review of the Act. In addition to this post-legislative scrutiny, the impact assessment for the specific policies in the Bill is accompanied by a post-implementation review plan.
As noble Lords will be aware, the Government are also, under Section 149 of the Equality Act 2010, subject to an ongoing public sector equality duty to have due regard to the effect of their policies on the groups protected by equality legislation. To that end, we have already produced detailed equality impact assessments—both at the point of consultation and alongside the introduction of the Bill—which set out the likely impact of our proposals on groups sharing protected characteristics. We will of course continue to act in accordance with our public sector equality duty.
In their amendment, noble Lords ask that the cost to other government departments is factored into this review of Part 1 of the Bill. We have given careful consideration to this issue as part of the policy development and clearance process throughout Whitehall. Extensive discussions between policy officials in different departments were held as part of that, and knock-on or downstream costs were factored into those discussions. Ultimately, costs to other government departments will be driven by behavioural responses to the reforms, and these cannot be predicted with any degree of accuracy.
As I have already said, the noble Lord, Lord Bach, referred to our risk assessment. From the very beginning, I have never hidden the facts in answering questions at this Dispatch Box. If you are dealing with cuts in almost any aspect of government—for example, as chairman of housing in a local authority—but especially if you have a budget specifically aimed at the more vulnerable in society, then I do not resile from the fact that the cuts will impact on the most vulnerable in society. However, the test is then how to protect the most vulnerable. One has to ask: “Have we done enough? Have we focused our scant resources enough?”. In part, that is what these debates will be about.
Lord Elystan-Morgan
The noble Lord has said very helpfully that downstream costs affecting other departments were factored into the consideration. Therefore, is the £350 million in fact a gross figure from which a factor of X has to be deducted, although at this stage we do not know and are not in a position to know what X might be?
Lord McNally
No. The commitment is to the expenditure from my department, and factored in are discussions with other departments which leave us confident that the kind of disproportionate impact which has been suggested will not occur. However, one knows how fluid these matters are when discussing government budgets. For example, how do last summer’s riots feed into the demand for prison places or indeed the demand for legal aid? There are variables and unknowns in these matters, but we have put forward our objective of cutting the legal aid bill by £350 million in a way that we hope is focused and takes account of some of the issues that have been raised. For example, domestic violence is in scope. We will have debates later about definitions of domestic violence, but to suggest that domestic violence is being taken out of scope is plainly not fair.
Baroness Scotland of Asthal
My Lords, I make it plain to the Minister and reassure him that no one is trying to be unfair in relation to domestic violence. The noble Lord will know that the impediments that have been put in the way of someone getting legal aid for domestic violence are quite acute. They have to have had an injunction within the previous 12 months, and there either has to be a person imprisoned within 12 months or the victim has to come at the top of the scale—that is, by being at threat of death or grievous bodily harm. That is an undue hurdle to overcome.
Secondly, we know that in many private law cases there are elements of domestic violence that are not proceeded with because the parties have lawyers and come to a settlement. The noble Lord wishes to use mediation. However, the King's College figures show that the additional mediation services that we would need would cost £46 million to £48 million; the Government's figures show that we have £10 million in the budget. Therefore, it is for these reasons that we ask for the evidence for the savings that will be made, because it does not appear to be there now.
Lord McNally
We will discuss this point at a further stage of the Bill. I compare that intervention by the noble and learned Baroness with her earlier one which was more broad-brush in its general condemnation. We will discuss the other areas when we come to them.
I will speak also about the issue of litigants in person, on which Amendment 195 focuses. I heard what was said, in particular by a number of noble and learned Lords—I do not think that the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, qualifies as learned.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
I must rise to that jibe; I am an experienced Lord.
Lord McNally
Even after 15 years I am never sure who is gallant, who is learned and who is—like the noble Lord, Lord Phillips—just experienced.
Unrepresented litigants have always been a feature of our legal system. Judges make efforts to assist them by explaining relevant procedures and what is expected. We accept that the reforms are likely to lead to an increase in the number of litigants in person. We conducted a full review of the available literature on litigants in person, which was published alongside the consultation response. The review found that the evidence available on litigants in person tended to suggest a mixed impact on the length of proceedings where litigants in person were involved. It is also important to point out that there will be significantly increased numbers not going to court at all. We estimate that there will be 10,000 additional mediation cases as a result of our decision to prioritise this area. This will offset the additional burdens on the courts from dealing with litigants in person.
We took into account this issue in the impact assessment and the equality impact assessment, published at the time of consultation. One assumption we made in calculating costs and savings was the increase in unrepresented litigants. We are now considering how best to provide the support and training needed to those who assist unrepresented litigants, as well as to the litigants themselves. This will include looking to simplify the forms of guidance available to those using the courts in person and to improve the information we offer to members of the public through the new online content of the Directgov website. The ministry is considering the Civil Justice Council’s recent report and is liaising with the council on how best to take forward its recommendations for dealing with litigants in person.
The current system of post-legislative scrutiny achieves the right balance and value in effective scrutiny for both Parliament and the Government. Therefore, I urge the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment. We have had a very good debate. It had some elements of Second Reading and took just under three hours of the second day of Committee. I hope that noble Lords will believe me when I say that we are listening and that we will have further thorough, specific debates. However, the amendment takes us too far back to first principles on a Bill that has gone through the other place and has had its Second Reading in this place.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton
My Lords, will the Minister give an assurance to the House that he will read this debate carefully and, where there are unanswered questions about costs that could occur, including costs to other departments, or any other questions to do with the validity of the Government’s assumptions and of the background knowledge that he assures us that the Government have, they will be answered in writing before Report to all noble Lords who have taken part today?
Lord McNally
No, my Lords. I will read the debate and consider these matters, but frankly some of the issues raised were so speculative that no responsible Minister would respond in that way. I assure the noble Baroness with all honesty that I will bring the facts before the House and will deal with the Bill with all the responsibility that I can. However, she is too old a hand—
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton
The noble Lord has lost none of his Blackpool charm.
Lord McNally
Coming from a Preston girl, that is a compliment—I think. I will read Hansard. I realise that very interesting points were made, which I will study carefully and draw to the attention of the Lord Chancellor. With that, I ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Bach
My Lords, we have had a very full debate, as the Minister reminded us. However, it was very worth while because this is a very important subject that goes to the heart of whether the Government did the work they should have done before bringing in such controversial and fundamental legislation. I start by saying how grateful I am to noble Lords from all sides of the Committee who spoke in the debate. I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, for backing the amendment, as I am to the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar. I forgot to say earlier, as I was asked to, that she was unable to attend when the amendment was moved because of her appearance at a very well known and important committee. I am very glad to see her in her place now.
I thank noble Lords for making some very important points. I do not wish to embarrass the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, but I will thank him for his contribution if only because it gives me the chance on behalf of the Committee to congratulate him on the honour he received in the New Year Honours List. However, other speeches were just as good, on all sides of the Committee. The one thing they had in common—this is something that the Minister must take back to his department—is that they were all, in one way or another, critical of the way in which the Government approached this part of the Bill.
I will not speak for long; I do not for a moment believe that more than a few noble Lords are in the Chamber to hear me wind up the debate on this amendment. They are here for another reason that I cannot think of. However, it is necessary to make one or two points. Although of course I will not press the amendment, the issue is important and we may well come back to it on Report because it is fundamental to the Bill. If the Bill comes into force with us knowing so little about what its effects and costs are likely to be—whether to the MoJ, other government departments or society as a whole—that is not a satisfactory way of law making. This is not a political point but a common-sense point, and I hope that the debate has been conducted from a common-sense point of view.
The points I want to make are these: everyone around the House, including my party, knows that savings have to be made in the legal aid budget. Of course that is right. We put forward proposals in relation to criminal legal aid in the last few months when we were in government. We said it in our manifesto. Other proposals for savings in legal aid have been put forward in various amendments that we are going to debate in due course in this House. The Law Society has also put forward proposals. The question is not: should there be cuts in legal aid? The question is: where should those cuts be?
For the life of me, I cannot understand why the Government have chosen that part of legal aid—the social welfare law part, the law of everyday life, which is a pretty small part of it, in fact—which in its own way works successfully in helping the most underprivileged in our society get basic legal advice on legal problems that affect their daily lives. It follows that that early advice often sorts out the problem and means that courts and tribunals are not bothered with hopeless cases and that people’s lives can be improved. I cannot for the life of me understand why the Government should have chosen that aspect when they refused to do anything about criminal legal aid, where a number of us think that there is room for substantial savings in some parts of it. It is disappointing that when the Government say that they are not going to implement Part 1 of the Bill until April 2013, they go on to say that they are not even going to look at criminal legal aid again until 2015. That is disappointing. That is my first point.
My second point is that we believe that it is a false argument that the Government have chosen life and liberty as the only places where legal aid should apply today. The point has already been made in this debate that it is difficult to think of a more obvious place where legal aid is appropriate than to solve legal problems that affect people who are, through no fault of their own, poor or disabled or who lack any privileges. That is surely where a legal aid system should bite. To remove legal aid from there is a completely wrong thing to do.
I thank the Minister for his contribution because it is not easy to face the Committee which, on this issue at least, is pretty dead-set against him. He made a point about how weekly reports come out suggesting that the policy is wrong, and he appeared to criticise that. The fact is that there would not be so much criticism if the Government had done the work they should have done before they tried to legislate in this way. All we ask is that in the time between now and Report, he goes back to his department and asks—I do not think he answered this in the debate—why the Government have not done the assessments of costs and social costs so that Parliament has a better idea of what it is being asked to legislate for. The Government have clearly not done the work that should have been done—that is a pretty universal feeling around the Committee. It is not too late for them to start doing it now, and I would encourage them to do so. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill
Lord McNally Excerpts(12 years, 4 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord McNally)
My Lords, Amendment 7 seeks to require a novel situation whereby specific arrangements that the Lord Chancellor may make under Clause 2(2)(c) would have to be included in an order subject to the affirmative resolution procedure. I believe that it will be beneficial to expand on the purpose of the provisions in question before addressing the amendment itself.
The specific provision is designed to provide the Lord Chancellor with the powers to create a body to provide or facilitate the provision of services. In practice, this provision is included in the Bill to allow the Lord Chancellor to continue to provide services through the Public Defender Service. The PDS is a body established under the auspices of the Legal Services Commission that directly employs lawyers to provide legally aided criminal defence services, alongside solicitors’ firms in private practice that are contracted with by the LSC. This dual model tends to be used in areas where there have historically been issues with the level of availability of supply. The PDS must necessarily be distinct from the Lord Chancellor, given its role of defending individuals accused by the state of committing criminal offences.
Let me turn now to the proposed amendment. It appears to me a very novel suggestion that the legislative processes of these Houses would be used to consider arrangements that are not intended as legislative instruments but would nevertheless become so were the amendment to be adopted. The specific arrangements envisaged under this proposal—the continued provision of the Public Defender Service—do not and should not require parliamentary scrutiny. There is no question of protecting independence. Lawyers employed by the PDS are subject to the same professional obligations and ethical codes as those in private practice, regulated as they are by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. In addition to this, PDS lawyers are also subject to a PDS code of conduct, which is designed to help ensure independence. It is the Government’s intention that all current arrangements should continue under the new framework, including the PDS code of conduct.
This is explicitly dealt with in Clause 28, which provides for a code of conduct to be observed by civil servants and employees of a body established and maintained by the Lord Chancellor, the latter dealing with those individuals employed as part of the PDS. The PDS has operated unencumbered by interference since it was first deployed in 2001, and there is no basis for assuming that its continued operation should be in any way different under the revised framework before the Committee. I stress that this power will be used in law to re-establish the PDS under the new framework. However, in practice nothing will change: the PDS will operate in exactly the same manner and in the same locations, and it is not appropriate to use parliamentary time to endorse what is already in existence. Given those assurances, I hope that the noble Lord will withdraw his amendment. There is no need to put powers in the Bill to create the LSC’s replacement. This is a departmental administrative arrangement and the legal aid agency will be an executive agency of the MoJ.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I am tempted to apologise to the Minister for not having the telepathic powers that would have enabled me to understand what the clause is about. It does not specifically refer to the Public Defender Service. Of course I accept the noble Lord’s explanation but it would be helpful if the Government were to amend the clause before we get to Report to make it clear that it is the Public Defender Service that is referred to. On the face of it, it could be any kind of arrangement that is being made, so, if I may say respectfully, it would be helpful for that course to be taken.
Lord McNally
If it would be helpful, I will write to the noble Lord to clarify and I will consult with colleagues on the point that he makes.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, the noble Lord may say that this amendment relates only to the Public Defender Service, in which case I suspect that my speech will be rather shorter than it might otherwise have been. The amendment refers to Clause 2(4), which refers to,
“arrangements for the purposes of this Part”—
not just this clause—
“that provide for a court, tribunal or other person to assess remuneration payable by the Lord Chancellor, the court, tribunal or other person … in accordance with the arrangements”.
The previous subsection provides that the Lord Chancellor may make such provision for remuneration by regulations. I apprehend that this will not refer to the Public Defender Service. If that is the case, I will proceed to outline the position that we wish to take.
On the assumption that this amendment is of general application, which appears to be the position, the amendment would require the Lord Chancellor to consult the Bar Council and the Law Society, which is the present position under the Access to Justice Act. In addition, it is suggested that consultation should take place with the Institute of Legal Executives, which is now a recognised and substantial body of contributors to the legal system, and with organisations that represent the legal advice movement—law centres and the like. These have, with cross-party support since their inception, played a growing and important role, again supplying legal aid and advice.
As we heard in the context of the debate on today’s first amendment—on expert witnesses—there is a potential issue about remuneration, which is linked to the possibility of maintaining an adequate supply of lawyers in this case, and to providing choice for consumers. Therefore, the amendment would make it necessary for consultation to take place, whereas the Government’s view is that it is not necessary to have that in legislation. They have indicated that they will continue to consult the Bar Council and the Law Society. We would say that consultation needs to be wider and that it needs to be statutory, rather than simply rely on the good will of the Government of the day. Consequently, any regulations that then come forward would also require approval.
Amendment 9 would make it a requirement—rather than, as matters presently stand, discretionary—for the Lord Chancellor to set and monitor standards of service in legal services. That seems a sensible provision, which would reinforce the need to ensure that there is access to advice that meets a standard. At present, under the legal aid scheme, certain quality standards have to be passed by practitioners and that should remain the case. Amendment 10 effectively reinforces that provision, again making it necessary for the Lord Chancellor or other persons to set and monitor standards of service under the Bill.
Amendment 11 refers to the need to consult the relevant organisations—the Law Society, the Bar Council and the Institute of Legal Executives—in devising and maintaining a system of accreditation for the purpose of providing legal services.
There is a question raised by Amendment 12, which as it stands would remove Clauses 3(4) and (5), which provide for the Lord Chancellor to charge for accreditation. This is designed to elicit a response from the Minister as to what the Government’s intentions are in this respect. It may be that charging for accreditation would act as a deterrent in certain areas, particularly perhaps in the voluntary sector and for law centres that would seek accreditation.
Amendment 104 again requires the Lord Chancellor to carry out consultation before making regulations in relation to criminal proceedings. He should consult with the Lord Chief Justice, the Director of Public Prosecutions and, again, the three legal bodies. There is a concern that the current pattern of reductions in support for organisations will impact on market sustainability, to use a phrase of the chief executive of the Legal Services Commission. People consider there is a danger that organisations will not survive, particularly in the voluntary sector. That is something on which the Government need to reflect when they are making regulations to secure the delivery of advice and support services.
The Access to Justice Act provides:
“When making any remuneration order the [Lord Chancellor] shall have regard to— … (a) the need to secure the provision of services of the description to which the order relates by a sufficient number of competent persons and bodies, … (b) the cost to public funds, and … (c) the need to secure value for money”.
That measure has commanded cross-party support for well over a decade. The thrust of these amendments is to ensure that that remains the case and to involve those who will be engaged in providing that legal advice and assistance in the regulations that the Lord Chancellor will be required to make regarding remuneration, the supply side of the service, as it were, and maintaining the quality of the service. I hope the Minister accepts that these amendments are designed to reinforce and support the system which the Bill seeks to create. I beg to move.
Lord McNally
My Lords, I note that the noble Lord spoke not only to Amendment 8 but to Amendments 9, 10, 11, 12 and 104. I hope that that was intentional. I am happy to reply to both groups. According to my batting order they were supposed to be spoken to separately. However, the noble Lord spoke to them so well that I am happy to reply to both groups. If anybody wants to speak to the group beginning with Amendment 9, I will sit down while they do so; otherwise, I will reply to both groups at the same time. I commend the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, on his splendid—
Lord McNally
Perhaps he would like to move the next four groups formally as well.
Amendment 8 seeks to achieve two things. First, it provides for the inclusion of provisions akin to those in Sections 25(2) and (3) of the Access to Justice Act in relation to the matters the Lord Chancellor must take into account when setting remuneration rates for barristers and solicitors in regulations under Clause 2(3), specifically,
“the need to secure the provision of services of the description to which the order relates by a sufficient number of competent persons and bodies”.
I realise that a number of the amendments that the Opposition have put forward have harked backed to the Access to Justice Act.
The second effect of the amendment would be to create a statutory requirement to consult with the Bar Council, the Law Society, the Institute of Legal Executives and organisations representing the legal advice movement before making regulations under Clause 2(3) setting remuneration rates for barristers and solicitors. I recognise that the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee drew the attention of the House to Clause 2(3) in light of the lack of a provision in the Bill equivalent to Sections 25(2) and (3) of the Access to Justice Act 1999. However, in our view Amendment 8 is unnecessary. In respect of factors the Lord Chancellor must take into account when making regulations setting rates of remuneration for barristers and solicitors, the matter specified in the amendment is naturally a matter that falls to be taken into account, along with other relevant considerations, when deciding how to set those remuneration rates, and it is therefore unnecessary to include a reference to them on the face of the Bill. It is also unhelpful specifically to list these factors when there will be a range of other factors that, in the particular circumstances prevailing at the time, also properly fall to be considered but may appear excluded, or be given a lesser status, by the proposed provision. I am sure that noble Lords will agree that, when making regulations setting remuneration rates, the Lord Chancellor should properly have regard to all the relevant considerations and give them appropriate weight and that the Bill should not imply otherwise.
In respect of the proposed duty to consult with the Bar Council, the Law Society, the Institute of Legal Executives and organisations representing the legal advice movement before making regulations under Clause 2(3) setting remuneration rates for barristers and solicitors, we also consider this to be unnecessary. We will continue to engage the Bar Council, the Law Society and other representative bodies on remuneration matters wherever it is appropriate and constructive to do so. The absence of a statutory duty does not preclude this. With that assurance, I hope that the noble Lord will withdraw the amendment.
Lord Carlile of Berriew
If there are circumstances in which it would be inappropriate to consult the Law Society and the Bar Council about payments to be made to their members from public funds, will the noble Lord please explain to us what those circumstances are?
Lord McNally
No, my Lords. I go back to what I have said. Neither I nor my noble friend the Lord Chancellor wants to allow the Opposition to sprinkle the Bill with “must” in this respect. We need to apply common sense to this matter. I would be as hard put as him to find a reason why one would not consult such bodies—indeed, I would add the Institute of Legal Executives to the list. Common sense dictates that a Lord Chancellor would want to do this. I will give way but I add, to help the noble Lord with his next shaft, that that seems to me the sensible thing to do.
Lord Carlile of Berriew
I am very grateful to my noble friend and I apologise for interrupting him again but this is intended to be a shaft of light and not a bolt of lightning. Can he think of any circumstances in which a failure to consult ILEX, the Bar Council or the Law Society about their respective members’ pay would not be judicially reviewable? Surely, it is right that a failure to consult would provide a certain judicial review against the Government.
Lord McNally
One of the joys of this job is answering questions on the law posed by learned QCs. I honestly do not know whether that situation would be judicially reviewable. However, we do not think that it is necessary to include “must”. We have made it very clear that a sensible Lord Chancellor would consult these bodies and perhaps if some future—
Baroness Butler-Sloss
I am very grateful to the Minister but, speaking as another lawyer, the problem with “may” is that something may not take place. That is the point that the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, is making. If the Lord Chancellor has to do something, it is straightforward. However, if he may do something, he does not have to do it. The words used by the Minister may not actually meet the point.
Lord McNally
But if he “may” and he does not do it, again from my layman’s view and from what I gather my noble friend Lord Carlile was saying, that “may” would be tested by judicial review.
Lord McNally
The noble and learned Baroness asks that from a sedentary position. That is the position that the Government have come to. Again, my right honourable and learned friend at the other end of the Corridor will see this exchange. Whether or not this is a matter on which one should go to the wall, I do not know. I am not sure how many consultations went on with the previous Administration.
Lord Bach
I may not have been party to many of them, but I can assure the noble Lord that of course there were consultations with the various bodies representing lawyers of various kinds about payment. They did not always satisfy the lawyers involved, but the important point is that there was genuine consultation on these matters. For the life of me, I cannot see why the Minister cannot accept the amendment.
Lord McNally
The noble Lord knows very well why I cannot accept it, but I hear what has been said. If the noble Lord will withdraw the amendment and the position remains the same at Report, it is best that we return to the matter then. I cannot take it any further now. I also have a slight feeling that this desire to replace “may” wherever “must” appears is not always entirely helpful to good government, but we will see.
Amendments 9 and 10 seek to convert into duties the Lord Chancellor’s powers under Clause 3 to set and monitor quality standards, as well as to accredit organisations against those standards—here we go again. As I shall explain, these amendments are unnecessary. The current provisions in Clause 3 enable the Lord Chancellor to establish a system of accreditation of legal aid service providers. Accreditation may be either by the Lord Chancellor or by those authorised by the Lord Chancellor to do so. These powers are similar to those currently given to the Legal Services Commission in relation to the Criminal Defence Service and Community Legal Service.
The Legal Service Commission’s existing quality assurance standard is the specialist quality mark. This standard aims to demonstrate that organisations that hold a contract with the commission are well managed, provide a good level of client care and have systems in place to ensure delivery of good-quality advice. The Legal Services Commission also accepts the Law Society’s Lexcel quality standards as entry criteria to providers seeking to obtain an LSC contract. The LSC is committed to ensuring that it contracts with providers that deliver high-quality services for its clients. Its successor will have the same job. The standards must be met and accreditation obtained prior to award of contract and throughout the lifetime of a contract. This compares favourably to the privately funded market, where these standards are not mandatory.
This is all done under the existing arrangements and ensures high-quality advice. There is no intention to derogate from the existing model in future under the provisions of this Bill and, accordingly, a duty to establish, maintain and accredit against quality standards is not required when the clear intention is to continue with the arrangements that have served the legal aid market and the quality of service delivered by that market so well under the current framework.
Amendment 11 concerns the Lord Chancellor’s power to make arrangements for the accreditation of legal aid service providers against quality standards under Clause 3. Specifically, the amendment seeks to require the Lord Chancellor to consult with the Bar Council, the Law Society and the Institute of Legal Executives prior to making arrangements for accreditation. This amendment assumes that the Lord Chancellor would seek to introduce a new accreditation scheme to replace the existing quality standards that must be met by a potential legal aid service provider prior to contracting with the Legal Services Commission—namely the LSC’s specialist quality mark and the Law Society’s own Lexcel standard.
In practice, it is highly unlikely that the Lord Chancellor would seek to develop a new standard. Legal aid providers are familiar with the existing standards, and these have worked well since the introduction of contracting to the legal aid sphere. Given their efficacy, and the inherent costs and time required to establish any new standard, there is no obvious need to develop and introduce one.
However, we cannot of course completely rule out the possibility that a new standard might be introduced at some point in the future under the provisions of the Bill. In that eventuality, the Lord Chancellor would, so far as it would be constructive and appropriate, engage with relevant representative bodies in the development and design of any such scheme. There is no need to make this a requirement in the Bill. The regulatory aspect of any such scheme would, in all likelihood, require engagement with the bodies mentioned in the amendment, as well as with the Legal Services Board and others—for example, the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies—to ensure that such a scheme was fit for purpose and had the support of the professions.
Historically, this engagement has always taken place and there is no reason to assume that the situation in the future would be any different. A recent example of this kind of collaborative working is the quality assurance scheme for advocates. The work was initially taken forward by the LSC and the Ministry of Justice, with the input of all relevant stakeholders, and is now being led by the regulators operating as a joint advocacy group. The JAG is made up of the three main regulators of advocates: the Bar Standards Board, the Solicitors Regulation Authority and ILEX Professional Standards. This situation did not arise as a consequence of statutory requirement; it simply represents what is required in order to get any new quality standard established with the requisite support from the sector, and this would apply irrespective of the statutory framework under which any such scheme would be introduced.
Amendment 12 concerns the provisions in Clause 3 that enable the Lord Chancellor or persons authorised by the Lord Chancellor to charge for accreditation and monitoring of persons providing legal aid services. There are, of course, significant resource implications attached to the running of such schemes. These provisions would allow any accreditation body to meet its costs in carrying out any accreditation and monitoring function, which is entirely appropriate if they are to commit resources to such a function, and this reflects the current statutory provisions under the Access to Justice Act.
The same considerations arise in respect of where the Lord Chancellor undertakes accreditation and monitoring. Significant resource implications are attached to accreditation and monitoring and it is perfectly proper that those who wish to seek accreditation in order to undertake legally aided work are able to be charged in respect of that accreditation and the monitoring of the services that they provide. In conclusion, the provisions on charges for monitoring and accreditation are entirely appropriate and reflect the current statutory position.
Amendment 104 would require the Lord Chancellor to consult prescribed individuals and bodies before making regulation for criminal legal services for individuals involved in criminal investigations or proceedings. Clause 14 creates a power to make regulations that prescribe the advice and assistance that must be made available if the director has determined that a person qualifies for advice and assistance. This largely reflects the provisions in Section 13 of the Access to Justice Act 1999 that require the Legal Services Commission to fund such advice and assistance as is considered appropriate. The circumstances in which such advice and assistance will be made available are prescribed in regulation. Advice and assistance for criminal proceedings are distinct from those provided under Clause 12 to individuals arrested and held in custody. The services that we are talking about include those provided by a duty solicitor in court or to a prisoner preparing for his appearance before a parole board.
Lord McNally
No, I recognise a red rag when I see one. I will think about the point that the noble Lord made. I commend him for merging two groupings and ask him to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Howarth of Newport
Before my noble friend withdraws his amendment, perhaps I can ask the Minister a question. I am sure that the Committee is grateful to him for the full explanation that he has given in response to the amendments. He has assured the Committee that it is unimaginable that the Lord Chancellor would not consult regularly with bodies representative of those who provide legal services and he has insisted on the importance of due monitoring and accreditation—all processes no doubt designed to uphold standards. Can he give some account of how all those processes that he has said that the Government will undertake assort with something else of which the Lord Chancellor has made much? He said in his article in the Guardian on 20 December:
“This year we've begun deregulation of the legal sector, a change comparable in its possible impact to the Big Bang in the City in the 1980s”.
That suggests that there will be some very different procedures and that the relationship between the Ministry of Justice and the legal profession could become very different indeed.
In the context of the ministry's zealous desire to deliver substantial savings in public spending and its desire to break open some of the traditional structures and ways of carrying on, I wonder how the consultation, monitoring and continuing assurance of standards are to be reconciled with the exciting and radical new approaches that the ministry is developing.
Lord McNally
If I may say so, that is an extremely helpful intervention. One reason why my right honourable friend is reluctant to have these things battened down is that, as I have said from this Dispatch Box, the provision of legal services and the structures of the legal profession will be changed not by any radical zeal from the Ministry of Justice but by market forces and changes that are happening in our society. Much of what we have been talking about since the dinner break has concerned the machinery to be put in place, which very much replicates machinery already there but anticipates a more fluid situation in the legal profession.
That is why specifying named organisations and people could be dangerous. What must be clear is that the Lord Chancellor has those responsibilities, including the overriding one of protecting justice. I also invite the House to have some common sense: any Lord Chancellor or Secretary of State for Justice who tried to ignore or ride roughshod over the various bodies involved would soon come to grief.
I agree with the comment of the noble Lord, Lord Bach: successive Ministers will find that you can consult but you do not always agree. I am sure that there was not total agreement when the previous Government imposed cuts in various fees for parts of the legal profession. That is the nature of things. Any sensible Lord Chancellor would involve and consult those bodies. That makes the amendments unnecessary.
Lord Beecham
I am glad to have given the Minister the opportunity to buy one group of amendments and get another free. I am sorry that he has not accepted the offer. He twice used the pregnant phrase that this does not “preclude” consultation. If I may say so, that is a very negative way of looking at the responsibilities of the Lord Chancellor and a rather worrying phrase. It is not a question of not precluding; the Bill should lay down what is expected of the Lord Chancellor and what he should do.
The Minister has repeatedly objected to the substitution of “must” for “may” in my amendments. The word “must” is in Clause 1, which states:
“The Lord Chancellor must secure that legal aid is made available in accordance with this Part”.
In some ways, this is a mirror image of another debate that I am involved in, with other Members of your Lordships' House, on the health Bill. Many of us, including some on the government Benches, have been trying to secure that the Secretary of State for Health has the duty to provide health services. That aspiration is one which, in respect of legal services and legal aid as defined in the Bill, is embodied in the government's wording.
Given that, it is not enough for the Minister to say that the LSC has those powers now. After all, the LSC effectively disappears. The Lord Chancellor becomes the authoritative body for the provision of legal services. It seems to me sensible and in fact desirable to protect the Lord Chancellor from succumbing to the temptation not to consult properly or to do things in perhaps a rather rushed or narrow way either of his own volition or at the behest of the Treasury or other organs of government, looking, for example, to make savings very quickly and perhaps very radically. I dare say that that may not be the intention of the present Lord Chancellor but it would be better to protect him from the possibility of judicial review, to which the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, referred, in the first place by providing a clear responsibility.
I was rather worried by the Minister’s reference to market forces. This is, I suppose, a reference to the sort of Tesco law that we are beginning to see happening. It rather worries me that, particularly in relation to Amendment 104, which deals with the criminal justice aspect, market forces might be deemed to be fit and proper effectively to run the legal aid service, whereas in the particularly important area of public policy and justice there is no requirement to consult such responsible bodies and persons as the Lord Chief Justice, the Director of Public Prosecutions and the three legal professions. I do not think it is good enough just to say that any Lord Chancellor would do this. One would hope that that would be the case but I am not sanguine enough to accept that it is proper in dealing with these matters to leave it to the potential good will of a future Lord Chancellor.
I would hope that the Minister would recognise that there ought to be a duty here. It is something that, in the absence of any movement before Report, we will have to come back to, as we might with regard to some of the other aspects to which he referred—in particular, the issue of charging for accreditation. I can see some case for making charges but I can also see a strong case in the realm of the voluntary sector for a different scheme. I give way to the noble Lord.
Lord Bach
My Lords, we have heard short but very impressive speeches on this very important group. Clause 4 is particularly important and it is absolutely vital that the Government get this right. We want to help them get it right all across the House. I hope that the Minister will have some freedom of manoeuvre on this matter, which is, in the end, a matter of some principle.
Perhaps I may start by commending the Government for bringing the Legal Services Commission inside the Ministry of Justice. When we were in power, we set up the Magee committee to produce a report on whether that would be an appropriate thing to do. It seemed to us at the time, and clearly to this Government, that there were a number of very good reasons why it is not satisfactory for the Legal Services Commission not to be an agency of government. In our view, it is appropriate that it should be and we commend the Government for doing that.
The problem always—it would have been as much a problem for us as it is for the present Government—is with the words “independence” and “perception of independence”. The Minister will know, as all of us know, that many interested people outside this House are very concerned about the drafting of Clause 4 and whether it meets what the Government clearly intend. No one is accusing them of bad faith here. Clause 4(4) shows that they clearly intend that this should be a system that works fairly and well. As the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, pointed out, the wording is extraordinarily ambivalent and ambiguous, certainly as regards the relationship between subsections (3) and (4). The Government need to look at it again, and, I would argue, it probably needs to be redrafted.
I do not know whether noble Lords have had the opportunity to see an interesting, short note from Justice on this topic. Mr Roger Smith, who I think is well known to a large number of people who are interested in this issue and who has huge experience in this field, makes a very good point as to why this present drafting is not satisfactory. He says on what I think is an important part of the argument that:
“The provision will be most objectionable where the Director makes a decision to refuse legal aid for judicial review against his own minister. However justified that might be on the individual facts, it would be argued that the Lord Chancellor is being a judge in his own cause. Indeed, it may well be”—
this is the clever point—
“that interest groups are motivated to make exactly that accusation, regardless of the substantive worth of their application, precisely to obtain more publicity for their cause”.
As an example, among many others that could be referred to, he has shown where the Government have to tread extraordinarily carefully to make sure that independence is real and is perceived to be real. I therefore ask the Minister to be sympathetic and to look very carefully indeed at how this clause is currently drafted.
Lord McNally
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Bach, for the way he has summed up the debate. This clause reflects the Government’s absolute determination to make it clear that the director will be independent. I have to say that when I look at this cluster of amendments and see the names that are attached to them, I am tempted to repeat a phrase that I use occasionally about my own collection of legal advisers: if I had to pay them, I could not afford them. This is a very distinguished group of legal opinion and I make my reply conscious that that weight of opinion has been reflected in the debate.
Clause 4(4) gives clear guidance on the limits of the Lord Chancellor’s powers. However, I take on board the fact that there have been cases in the past of friction between senior civil servants and Ministers, and if Parliament is going to create an important body and function it will need to be perceived very clearly. I take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Bach, that perception is also important. We have to get this right.
I want to make clear the point made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf. As I told him earlier, I have in fact signed off a letter to him, but cock-up often triumphs over conspiracy in these matters. As far as I can see, there was no intention to block the meeting he wanted, and somewhere in the postal system—this is not the Government’s standard promise that a letter is in the post—is his letter. I am sure that when he gets it, he will respect me in the morning because it does say that we certainly have no objection to the kind of meeting he seeks.
I am not sure that I would go as far as the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, on the point that the demonstration of independence needs civil servants to figure in television interviews and so on, although I have noted the points he made. It is also worth noting that some suggestions were made about dangers to the director’s independence—here I tread lightly into suggesting a legal form of words—but it would be ultra vires for the Lord Chancellor to interfere in directorial decisions in individual cases, and in that respect he is well protected by Clause 4(4). However, it is true that the Lord Chancellor will decide the criteria by which exceptional cases are granted funding, and these criteria will be published. Although the director must comply with directions and take account of guidance given by the Lord Chancellor about the carrying-out of the director’s functions under Part 1 of the Bill, the Lord Chancellor cannot give directions or guidance to the director about the carrying-out of those functions in relation to individual cases.
Lord Howarth of Newport
Will the annual report say what the directions are? How are the legitimately interested public to know what directions the Lord Chancellor will give the director? Will the Minister tell us how they are to be known and what ground they would cover? What would be the subject matter of the directions?
Lord McNally
I think that we will have to await the document, but I will take advice on it. As far as I understand, the directions and guidance on the director’s functions will be published by the Ministry of Justice.
Lord Williamson of Horton
It is covered by the Bill, in subsection (5). The directions have to be published. Whether they should be in the Bill at all is another matter; but if they are in the Bill, they have to be published.
Lord McNally
I am also told that the director’s terms and conditions will govern the circumstances in which they could be dismissed. Some of the concerns that have been raised are either in the Bill or will be covered by guidance or in published directions and terms of reference from the department.
I go back to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Bach. Clause 4 is not an attempt to create some stooge of either the Ministry of Justice or the Lord Chancellor of the day; it is to have somebody who will command public confidence and respect. I am not in a position to take note, here in a Committee stage, of the points that have been made; I will, as I said earlier, draw the Lord Chancellor’s attention to the views of the contributors to this debate. It would probably be of help both in looking forward and in winding up this debate if I were to set out the position as we see it now.
Amendment 13 seeks to introduce into the Bill a specification for the role of the director, in particular requiring that the person designated as director has such qualifications and experience in securing access to legal services for individuals as the Lord Chancellor considers appropriate. The amendment also seeks to have the concept of independence, and specifically the independence of the director when carrying out functions under Part 1, incorporated into the terms and conditions of the director’s employment. Amendment 17 provides a definition of “Minister of the Crown” to reflect the reference to the same in Amendment 13.
These are unnecessary amendments. Relevant experience and qualifications are, of course, factors that are taken into account in any appointment, and the recruitment of the director is no different. We can see no persuasive reasons why it should be necessary to include these considerations in primary legislation. The Committee should also note that the framework document which will govern the relationship between the Ministry of Justice and the new executive agency will also reflect the principle of independence of decision-making. The incorporation of this principle into the terms and conditions of the director would add nothing as the effect is already secured through the existing provisions.
Clause 4(2) requires the Lord Chancellor to,
“make arrangements for the provision to the Director by civil servants or other persons (or both) of such assistance as the Lord Chancellor considers appropriate”.
This means that the director will also be assisted by those with relevant experience and qualifications in discharging the director’s functions under Part 1 of the Bill, providing the necessary expertise alongside the director’s own. This support is essential as, in practical terms, it is not the case that the director will personally make all decisions on eligibility. That would be unworkable given the volume of applications made for legal aid.
Clause 5 sets out the director’s powers of delegation and, of course, this anticipates the delegation of decision-making on an individual application. As such, the need to ensure the requisite knowledge, skills, experience and qualifications for those making decisions applies to all and the proposed amendment does not further this imperative.
On the limb of Amendment 13, which seeks to have the concept of independence incorporated into the director’s terms and conditions, this is also an unnecessary amendment. The existing provisions of Clause 4 provide statutory protection to the director against ministerial or other political interference. In particular, while the Lord Chancellor can issue directions and guidance to the director about the carrying out of the director’s functions under Part 1, the Lord Chancellor is specifically prevented under Clause 4(4) from issuing directions or guidance about the carrying out of the director’s functions in relation to individual cases.
It is important to note that the prohibition in Clause 4(4) extends to anyone, including civil servants, to whom the director may delegate his or her decision-making functions in accordance with Clause 5. This is an important safeguard.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
I am sorry to interrupt my noble friend’s flow, but surely for him to argue, as he just has, that all is well on the independence front because Clause 4(4) states that the Lord Chancellor cannot direct the director of legal aid casework in individual cases is small comfort given that it leaves intact Clause 4(3), which enables the Lord Chancellor to give directions, which the director must comply with, on anything to do with the director’s functions except in an individual case. A whole wide sea of discretion is given to the Lord Chancellor by that provision, which goes to the heart of the independence of the director.
Lord McNally
The noble Lord is repeating the thrust of a number of contributions that I have heard today. My response indicates the Government’s position at the moment. Again, along with this response will be the comments that he and other noble Lords have made. Let us see where we go from there. It is an important safeguard to ensure the director’s independence in carrying out his or her functions in relation to individual cases, which in the Government’s view is not improved or added to by the amendment.
Amendment 14 seeks to amend Clause 4(2) by removing reference to other persons who may be provided to the director under arrangements to assist in the discharge of functions under Part 1. Again, this is an unnecessary amendment. To the extent that independent persons are envisaged under the new scheme, the current drafting of Clause 4(2) does nothing to prevent such individuals being engaged. The amendment also may have unintended consequences that could serve to undermine the efficient operation of the new scheme. Were this amendment to be accepted, it would limit the range of those individuals who could be engaged to assist the director to either civil servants or independent persons. It may of course be that the director will in future only ever need the assistance of civil servants and independent persons to discharge their functions. However, we cannot be sure with any certainty that this would be the case in all eventualities in the future.
The current formulation of “or other persons” provides the requisite flexibility to meet any future scenario, including the provision of independent persons. Accordingly, Amendment 14 merely limits the pool of people that might be available to assist the director, with potentially problematic unintended consequences for the operation of the scheme.
Amendment 15 to Clause 4 is intended to alter the provisions in relation to the independence of the director of legal aid casework. As I hope to explain, we believe the amendment, again, is unnecessary. I will briefly set out for the benefit of noble Lords the role and key functions of the director and why I believe that independence is important and why it is already enshrined in the Bill. Under Clause 4, the Lord Chancellor is obliged to appoint a civil servant as a statutory officeholder who will be responsible for making funding decisions in individual cases, including funding decisions in relation to exceptional funding applications under the Bill.
The statutory officeholder is to be known as the director of legal aid casework. The Lord Chancellor is also obliged to provide civil servants or other persons, or both, to assist the director in carrying out their functions. The director must make determinations in legal aid cases in accordance with the provisions of Part 1 of the Bill.
Under the new arrangements, Clause 4 is potentially the most important. It ensures that the director has independence in carrying out functions and is free from any political interference in making decisions in relation to individual cases. This independence is enshrined by the specific provisions within this clause, specifically subsection (4), which the amendment would delete. Subsection (4) prohibits the Lord Chancellor from giving guidance or directions in relation to the carrying out of the director’s functions in relation to individual cases.
There are provisions within Clause 4 that oblige the director to comply with directions given by the Lord Chancellor about the carrying out of the director’s functions, and to have regard to guidance issued by the Lord Chancellor about the carrying out of those functions, but crucially such guidance and directions cannot relate to the carrying out of the director’s functions in relation to individual cases. This protection of the director against interference when carrying out their functions in relation to individual cases is an important safeguard.
I would like to assure noble Lords that the protection of this independence is a fundamental tenet of the new arrangements, which provide the necessary safeguards that are required to make the new arrangements work. It should be noted that the director is a separate office from the Lord Chancellor created by statute. As I have said, under Clause 4(4), the Lord Chancellor cannot give directions or guidance to the director about the carrying out of the director’s functions in relation to individual cases. That is a very explicit assurance about independence. The protection offered by Clause 4(4) extends to anyone, including civil servants, to whom the director may delegate his or her decision-making functions in accordance with Clause 5 of the Bill. I believe that the Bill already establishes a proper role for the director, free from any political interference in relation to the carrying out of his functions in relation to individual cases.
I now turn to Amendment 16, which seeks to amend Clause 4(4) by specifying a category of case in relation to which the Lord Chancellor cannot issue guidance or directions. As I have said already, Clause 4(4) provides the director of casework with statutory protection against interference in individual cases; to seek to specify classes of case in a clause that bars interference in any individual cases cannot in my view add anything to the existing provisions. The Government’s policy has been consistently that proceedings where the litigant is seeking to hold the state to account by judicial review are important and should generally be retained within the scope of civil legal aid. This is expressly covered in paragraph 17 of Part 1 of Schedule 1 to the Bill. As with other areas within the scope of civil legal aid, in a judicial review case that is within the scope of civil legal aid, the director’s functions under Part 1 of the Bill are to decide whether in each particular case the individual qualifies for funding.
Lord Thomas of Gresford
I wish to add further concerns, having heard the Minister’s reply. I understand that the director would have to follow directions and guidance given on matters of merits and eligibility. Standards would have to be set as to what has to be satisfied, and eligibility in relation to finance is something that the Lord Chancellor would be concerned with. But I have some concerns about the emphasis on individual cases as opposed to a category of cases.
We sought in Amendment 16 to take one category of case—namely, cases against the Government or government agencies, or whatever. The Lord Chancellor ought not to be able to interfere in any category of case that is within the scope of Part 1 of the Bill. He should not be able to say that there are too many of these cases and we have to cut down, and the wording leaves that open.
Another matter that concerns me is exactly what is intended. The Minister used once the expression “an executive agency”. What is that? Is it a body within the Ministry of Justice or is it to be set up separately? Is it to be staffed only by civil servants or is it to be able to recruit its own people to it? What is the relationship of the executive agency headed by the director to the Ministry of Justice? We are very familiar with the concept of the Director of Public Prosecutions and the sometimes rather fraught relationship between the DPP and the Attorney-General, who is responsible for the director’s decisions in a parliamentary sense but not necessarily able to give him directions or control him in any way. So the independence of the DPP is a very interesting model which I would have thought the director of legal aid casework ought to follow. That means having an executive agency recruiting its own people and a constructive tension between the director and the Lord Chancellor, or whoever the Minister of Justice happens to be at the time. I would like to probe the concept a little further at this stage. What is this executive agency? How will it be staffed? What is the relationship between its director and the Minister of Justice? It may be that I am posing these questions at the wrong stage in this debate. If my noble friend is not able to answer these questions at the moment, I am sure he will explain them to me at a later stage.
Lord McNally
I can do no more than suggest that the noble Lord reads the Bill, because it sets out the structure for carrying out this function within an agency which is within the Ministry of Justice and staffed by civil servants appointed on the criteria which have stood us in good stead for the past 130 years. Again, as with the other contributions to this debate, I will take those matters back and see whether there are areas that can be better clarified to give my noble friend the assurances that he requires.
Lord Pannick
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for the constructive approach that he has taken to the important issues raised by this debate. I would ask him to reflect with the Lord Chancellor on the central points which have been made by noble Lords on all sides of this Committee, and to whom I am very grateful. A civil servant—the director—is going to have the crucial task of determining who has effective access to justice. The director is going to do that, often in contexts where the Government are the potential defendants. It is then striking, as many noble Lords have pointed out, that Clause 4 says nothing express about ensuring the independence of the director. This is a particular concern, as noble Lords have emphasised, in the light of the uncertainty as to the limits of Clause 4(3).
Clause 4(4), as the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, has emphasised, is not sufficient protection because it does not prevent directions from the Lord Chancellor to the director about categories of cases, or indeed as to the general approach to be adopted by the director. As I understood it, the Minister's response to this was that the Government's position today—although the Minister emphasised that that may change—is that they are as keen on independence as everybody else. If I understood him correctly, he said that independence is a fundamental tenet of this arrangement. The position of the Minister and the Government today is that Clause 4 is designed to achieve that objective and therefore these amendments are unnecessary.
The noble Lord will appreciate, and I hope that he will communicate this to the Lord Chancellor, that around this Committee the view is taken that, with great respect, that is not good enough because noble Lords prefer an express statement of the basic constitutional principle on which we are all agreed as to independence. Noble Lords prefer the drafting of Clause 4 to contain clear limits on the powers, in this context, of the Lord Chancellor and clear safeguards of the independence of the director. I hope that the Minister will be able to ask his officials to look again at the wording of Clause 4 so as to achieve these objectives, otherwise we will undoubtedly be returning to this matter on Report. For the time being, I beg leave to withdraw this amendment.
Lord Bach
My Lords, I am sorely tempted to test the opinion of the House on Clause 4 tonight; I think it would be the better course to take. I am going to resist that sore temptation, but only just, because—here I am supporting what the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, said in his closing remarks—apart from the Minister’s final remarks, his response to the debate was unsatisfactory. His response runs the severe risk—against the Government’s real instincts, I am sure—of being careless of the independence point. That is a fundamental point and, as the Minister himself pointed out, exactly the sort of point that this House is quite good at dealing with in revising legislation that comes from another place. Frankly, the current draft is just not good enough, and this point is so central that at some stage the House will have to take a view on the issue. I very much hope that the Minister will use his powerful persuasive powers to persuade others in the ministry that the clause must be altered for the better.
Lord McNally
I have a full speaking note on Clause 4, but I have heard what the noble Lord has said. I am not sure how persuasive my powers are. I want to read the debate in Hansard; one of the good things about Committee stage in the Lords is that it gives us a chance to hear the voices. I will consider this with my right honourable and learned friend, but I will spare the House my speaking note on Clause 4.
Lord Carlile of Berriew
My Lords, having inherited a number of returns from my noble friend Lord Thomas of Gresford when we were both barristers outside London many years ago, I share the memory of the effectiveness of those committees, including the gloss placed on it by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf.
I would like to point out a parallel that exists today. Those of us who from time to time undertake very high-cost criminal cases have to apply for permission to the Legal Services Commission to do certain aspects of preparation. If the commission refuses permission, for example to obtain an expert witness’s report or to make photocopies of original documents—believe it or not, it can descend to that—there is a committee made up of practising lawyers who determine whether that permission should be granted, and it works very well. If the committee decides against the applicant, he or she has the opportunity to apply for permission to apply for judicial review. That involves a paper process, initially before a judge. If permission is refused, it is open to the applicant to have an application heard before the full court, but it is far from universal that that is done.
We therefore have in the existing provisions for very high-cost cases something very similar to that described by my noble friend Lord Thomas of Gresford. I suggest to the Minister that this would be a practical way of dealing with this appeal problem that would cover the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Bach, those who have signed his amendment and those of us who have signed my noble friend’s amendment.
Lord McNally
My Lords, the intention of the amendment is to establish a tribunal to review determinations made by the director about whether an individual qualifies for legal aid. This is very closely related to Amendment 96, which would make it a requirement for all reviews concerning determinations by the director under Clauses 8 and 9 to be referred to an independent panel.
The amendment is unnecessary. The Bill already establishes the director in a way that maintains and protects the director’s independence of decision-making in individual cases. The director is created by statute. Although the director must comply with directions and take account of guidance given by the Lord Chancellor about the carrying out of the director’s functions under Part 1, the Lord Chancellor cannot give directions or guidance to the director about carrying out those functions in relation to individual cases. There is already provision in the Bill for review of the director’s decisions and appeals against them. This means that there is no need for an amendment to create a separate tribunal.
Clause 11(5) provides that regulations must make provision for procedures for the review of the determinations of the director under Clauses 8 and 9 as to whether a person qualifies for civil legal aid and for the withdrawal of such determinations. There is also power in Clause 11(6) to make provision for appeals to a court, tribunal or other person against the making or withdrawal of a determination in relation to civil legal aid. The Government intend to continue with the Legal Services Commission’s existing appeal and review procedures for cases determined under Clause 8—that is, those within the general scope of the civil legal aid scheme—including the use of independent funding adjudicators. Those procedures are well established and understood, and the intention is that they will include provision for internal review of decisions by the director.
Additionally, where a client is dissatisfied with the conclusions of a review on merits grounds concerning a decision on legal representation in civil and family proceedings in scope under the Bill, the client will be able to appeal to an independent funding adjudicator. As at present, there would be no appeal against refusal on means grounds, although a client can ask for their means to be reassessed.
In reflecting the current review arrangements, there will also under Clause 9 be a right of internal review for exceptional case determinations, although independent funding adjudicators will have no role in the review of exceptional funding decisions. This is because of the particular nature of the assessment at the heart of such cases, which will focus on an interpretation of the relevant obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights to provide legal aid. Exceptional case determinations, along with all other decisions by the director, would be subject to judicial review.
This is more than adequate provision to ensure that scrutiny can be applied to the decisions of the director where an individual believes that there are grounds for review. There is also provision for making regulations about the review of and appeals against the director’s determination on criminal legal aid. I refer noble Lords to Clause 14(9)—
Lord Carlile of Berriew
I apologise for interrupting my noble friend, but he referred in passing to Clause 11(6). Can he explain to the Committee the difference between subsection (5), which requires provision establishing procedures for the review of determinations, and subsection (6), which provides that regulations may make provisions for appeals to a court? Why the difference between “must” and “may” in those two subsections?
Lord Carlile of Berriew
Clause 11(5) says “must”, whereas Clause 11(6) says “may”—perhaps echoing a point made by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, earlier.
Lord McNally
I will have to take advice on that, but I thank the noble Lord for drawing it to my attention. I sometimes wonder whether mays and musts are not spread through a Bill according to whether parliamentary counsel gets bored with the use of “must” and decides to put “may”, but I am sure there are far more legal reasons why those choices are made.
As I was saying, there is more than adequate provision to ensure that scrutiny can be applied to the decision of the director where an individual believes that there are grounds for review. There is also provision for making regulations about the review of and appeals against the director's determination on criminal legal aid.
Amendments 97 and 98 would change Clause 11(6), which concerns determinations of whether funding should be granted for any of the matters included in Schedule 1 or any excluded cases under Clause 9. These amendments would require regulations under Clause 11 to make provision for appeals to a court or tribunal against determinations made by the director under Clauses 8 and 9 and against the withdrawal of such determinations.
I have described the intention and effect of Clauses 11(5) and (6), as well as the intention to continue with the existing, effective processes and procedures currently used by the LSC in the new model, and I do not propose to cover the same ground here, although I take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Carlile. However, requiring provision to be made for appeals to a court or tribunal against all determinations by the director would be expensive, resource intensive and likely to lead to delay in the hearing of appeals.
Clause 14 creates a power to make regulations that prescribe what advice and assistance must be made available if the director has determined that a person qualifies for advice and assistance. That largely reflects the provisions in Section 13 of the Access to Justice Act 1999, which requires the Legal Services Commission to fund such advice and assistance as it considers appropriate. The circumstances in which such advice and assistance will be made available are prescribed in regulation. Advice and assistance for criminal proceedings is distinct from that provided under Clause 12 to individuals arrested and held in custody. The services we are talking about here would include those provided by a duty solicitor in court or to a prisoner preparing for his appearance before a parole board.
Although Clause 14 and Section 13 of the Access to Justice Act are framed differently, their overall effect is essentially the same. Clause 14 is intended to replace Section 13(1)(b) of the Access to Justice Act. The Bill confers a power to make regulations under Clause 14 for consistency with Section 13(1)(b) of the Access to Justice Act. That section provides that the Legal Services Commission's duty to provide advice and assistance to the individuals mentioned there arises only in prescribed circumstances, and “prescribed” means prescribed in regulations made by the Lord Chancellor.
The combined effect of Amendments 105 to 107 would require regulations made by the Lord Chancellor under Clause 14(1) to provide for appeals, but not reviews, to a court or tribunal in relation to the aspects of determination on legal aid set out in Clauses 14(9)(a) and (b).
Amendment 107 would preclude regulations allowing for appeals to any other person. The Government judge it more appropriate to allow the Lord Chancellor to make regulations, if he considers it appropriate, than to require him to do so. We will retain the existing arrangements whereby advice and assistance for criminal proceedings provided under Clause 14 are subject to a “sufficient benefit” test. In practice, this would be conducted on behalf of the Director of Legal Aid Casework by the litigator, who would provide the legal aid services. The LSC criminal contract provides that advice and assistance may only be provided on legal issues concerning English or Welsh law,
“and where there is sufficient benefit to the Client, having regard to the circumstances of the matter, including the personal circumstances of the Client, to justify work or further work being carried out”.
There is currently no appeal to a court or tribunal in relation to the sufficient benefit test. However, there is a right, set out in the LSC contract, for the person refused legal aid to apply to an independent funding adjudicator for a review of the decision not to grant legal aid. There are no plans to introduce appeals provisions immediately, although subsection (9) would allow for the introduction of provisions for reviews and appeals in the future if it were considered appropriate.
Procedures for review and appeal might, in any event, not be necessary or proportionate in establishing whether all criteria specified in regulations under subsection (5)(b) were met. For example, if a criterion was that the provider had to hold a contract to provide such services, then an appeal would not be necessary to establish whether a provider held a contract. The Government therefore believe that a duty to secure such arrangements is unnecessary and heavy-handed. In such circumstances, a right of appeal to a body other than a court might be more appropriate. The Government believe it is appropriate to have the flexibility to make regulations that could provide for either a review or an appeal, or a combination of both, and that a review or appeal might be made to a body other than a court or tribunal.
The noble Lords, Lord Bach and Lord Thomas, raised points concerning Article 6. It is intended that any arrangements made will comply with the ECHR.
On the rather interesting background to previous systems, it was the previous Administration that brought to an end what sounded like a nice little earner for the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, and the noble Lords, Lord Thomas and Lord Carlile.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
My Lords, this cannot pass. It must be in Hansard that on this occasion, rare though it is, lawyers acted pro bono.
Lord McNally
As I say so often, I am not a lawyer—thank God.
There was a question about how the independent funding adjudicator system is working. Some 11,560 reviews were received in 2010, of which about 3,500 were subsequently appealed to an independent funding adjudicator at a cost of about £18 per case. The total cost of these appeals was just over £63,000, so it appears to be a very cost-effective scheme. I hope that the noble Lord will withdraw his amendment.
Lord Bach
I will withdraw the amendment, of course, but there is a real issue here which goes to the independence issue that we debated in the previous group. We argue that it is not satisfactory for there to be a system in which the LSC, as it were, comes in house and becomes an agency of government, with the old process of reviewing decisions remaining exactly the same. That is because the adjudicators, independent though they may be, are appointed by the ministry, so again there is the problem of the perception of independence. There must be a system of appeal against a legal aid decision.
I am certainly not in the mood to fall out with noble Lords opposite who believe that there is a better system than that of tribunals. They may be right or wrong, but what we agree on is much more important than what distinguishes us: namely, there must be a genuinely independent appeals procedure. Of course we do not want it to be expensive or long-winded, but there must be one in order that the perception of independence is there. I am afraid that the Government have not yet got the point that the system proposed in the Bill is not satisfactory for those who are refused legal aid and go to the adjudicator who has been appointed by the Ministry and are refused again.
For the perception of independence, it would be so much simpler and easier for there to be either a chamber of the tribunal or another totally independent body that will decide these issues. There are not that many of them each year; it would not cost the state a great deal of money. However, the principle of being able to appeal against a decision made in this case by a civil servant who has been appointed by the Lord Chancellor is very important. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment, but we may come back to this on Report. If we are coming back to the earlier independence issue, we shall have to come back to this one as well.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
My Lords, my name is on this amendment. As persuasively put by my noble friend Lord Thomas of Gresford, it seems to be an unarguable proposition. The only fiddling point I would make about calling it “collaborative law” is that it is not the law that is collaborative but the process. It might be better to call it “collaborative resolution”, but that is a detail. I hope very much that my noble friend will feel that this is an advance.
Lord McNally
My Lords, we are approaching the witching hour, as the opposition Whip moves stealthily to consult the government Whip. I do not want to give any clues as to whether this is going-home time, but if it is I am very grateful to my noble friend for ending our evening on a matter on which there is some hope of collaboration. I do not want to raise his expectations too much, but I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, that this concept, which is new to many of us, seems to have great potential. Again quoting from the noble Lord, it appears to be adaptable and flexible. It now has the not inconsiderable badge of approval from the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, as an admirable scheme run by an admirable organisation. Like book reviews, I am sure that Resolution will have that as a strap-line.
How does this fit in with what the Government are trying to do? In response to the points made by the noble Lords, Lord Beecham and Lord Howarth, I should say that we have never seen mediation as a cure-all. The Lord Chancellor has made it very clear that he wants to wean us away from almost automatic litigation at the taxpayers’ expense, which is one of the attractions of mediation. The collaborative law concept certainly has its attractions.
As the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, pointed out when he quoted from Resolution, the MoJ has said that the Bill as it stands does not exclude the possibility of funding collaborative law in the future. Clause 7 refers to funding,
“mediation and other forms of dispute resolution”.
The amendments are accordingly unnecessary in so far as they set out to make it possible, as opposed to requiring, for funding to be made available for collaborative law. However, given the reduction in the budget that we need to make and the additional costs of involving two lawyers, as would be required for collaborative law when compared with mediation, we cannot commit to the additional resources required to fund collaborative law at this stage. We would not, however, rule it out at some time in the future.
I should like to make one other point. The Government understand that some mediation cases are complex and need additional legal support. We will be providing further legal advice in such family cases where an agreement reached through mediation needs to be turned into a court order, with an independent fee set at this level of service at £200. This is in addition to the £150 fee for legal advice accompanying mediation as originally proposed, and taken together this means that there will be considerable scope for publicly funded legal advice to accompany mediation, especially in more complex cases.
As I have said, I cannot take out the chequebook this evening so far as collaborative law is concerned, but I assure my noble friend that by putting this on the agenda, as it were, there is no doubt that it will play a part in future. Again, as the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, has said and as I have said a number of times from this Dispatch Box, legal services are on the move and I can very well see that the concept of collaborative law or collaborative resolution, if my noble friend Lord Phillips has his way, may well play a part in the future. At this time of night, however, I ask my noble friend to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, perhaps the Minister might suggest an experiment with collaborative resolution. If the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister underwent the process, it might help the noble Lord to get the resources needed to extend the principle more widely.
Lord Thomas of Gresford
My Lords, I have to confess that I am disappointed with my noble friend’s response and I shall certainly return to this issue on Report. The Government have to appreciate that they are taking family law out of scope, which means that there are going to be couples who are at each other’s throats. There are various ways in which they can resolve their problems. They can say, “He hit me on one occasion. It is domestic abuse, so I want legal aid”. All the fears that have been expressed by the Government of people pushing domestic abuse up the agenda in order to get legal aid and thus making it more difficult to settle will become prevalent.
Here is a system where, on a fixed fee, issues of finance, housing and children can be settled, which is exactly what we as solicitors used to do. We would pick up the phone and talk to the opposing solicitor in order to sort things out without having to go to court. If you do not have a system like this to resolve issues, inevitably it is going to cost more. As I say, there will not necessarily be made-up allegations of abuse, but the little disputes that have occurred in a marriage may perhaps be tarted up just enough to make it possible for legal aid to be involved. You are then into an expensive system. I will therefore return to the matter on Report and I shall continue to advocate this very excellent system. I am pleased to see that the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, is involved. So far as I am concerned, the process has been given the seal of approval. For the moment, however, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill
Lord McNally Excerpts(12 years, 4 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord McNally)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, for his words. We are very pleased to see the noble Lord, Lord Bach, with us. He very courteously explained to me the personal reasons why he could not be with us earlier, but it is good to see him in his place now.
The debate has taken on some of the aspects of a Second Reading debate and it is none the worse for that. The first amendment allows for such wide-ranging points to be made. I shall not try to reply to them all at this point, as we are at the very start of Committee stage. My noble and learned friend Lord Wallace and I will return to many of the issues, like medical negligence and social welfare, as the Committee stage runs forward.
I accept the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, that the official Opposition are not arguing for retaining the status quo. He and the spokesman for the Labour Party in the other place have made it clear that, if they had been in office, faced with the economic situation with which we are faced, they too would have been making cuts. The debate is about where those cuts should be made and with what impact. It is fair for him to look at the impact assessment, and the fact that it lends some ammunition to him is an assurance that it is a very fair impact assessment. The very first question I answered from this Dispatch Box about the Bill related to the fact that if you make budget cuts to a section of government expenditure that is focused mainly on the needy, it is the needy who will find the impact of those cuts. That is true of housing, social welfare, and so on, and that is the reality of a Government who have to cut back on expenditure.
I make no complaint at all about the contributions from lawyers in the debate. If we were debating a fundamental issue about medicine, I would hope that the noble Lord, Lord Winston, and other expert medics in the place would contribute; and if we were talking about defence, I would hope that our generals would contribute. I do not think that there is anything wrong with the fact that a large number of the contributors have come from the legal profession. The daunting thing for me, as a non-lawyer, is the array of talent that is on display from the legal profession. I always remind my colleagues down the corridor that, whenever I stand at this Dispatch Box, I am very conscious that somewhere in the listening audience there are about three former Lord Chancellors and half a dozen former Solicitor-Generals or Attorney-Generals. I have never quite got to grips with the number of QCs that we have in the House of Lords, but there is a goodly number. We have good legal expertise and this debate is, and the Committee stage will be, all the better for it.
It is certainly not my intention to approach this—I am trying to find that barb from my noble friend—with something like tetchy impatience. In fact, over the past few months, I have been watching my noble friend Lord Howe at the Dispatch Box. He will be my model for this Committee stage—a kind of concerned bedside manner.
However, in talking about Committee stage when I was on the Benches opposite, I was on record as saying that if the House divides in Committee, almost invariably one will have to resist. I genuinely want to use Committee stage to listen. I cannot make blanket promises and I certainly, at this stage, cannot start giving a list of concessions. The position of the Government is that the Bill has been delivered from the other place in pristine condition and ready for adoption but, as our system works, we listen to the advisory—
Lord Beecham
I am not so sure about adoption being that much more difficult these days.
Lord McNally
We will listen and we will ponder. I hope that that will be the spirit in which we conduct the debates. It is certainly not, as the noble Lord, Lord Alton, suggested, an attempt to turn the clock back. Even when this exercise is finished, no one could dispute that we will have one of the most generous legal aid schemes in the world. My right honourable friend the Lord Chancellor, in his article in the Guardian, which has been quoted a number of times, says:
“Access to justice is a fundamental part of a properly functioning democracy”.
He goes on to make the point that the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, and a number of others made: “Without legal aid, and”—I emphasise this—
“the dedicated lawyers who deliver it, our system of justice would quite simply collapse”.
That is the starting point.
Lord Alton of Liverpool
The noble Lord, Lord McNally, has just cited the idea that we have the most generous legal aid system anywhere in the world, which he said no one would dispute. During the debate, noble Lords have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, myself and others about what Lord Justice Jackson has said about any further cuts in legal aid. He certainly disputes it, as do surely many others.
Lord McNally
There is absolutely no logic in what the noble Lord has said, with the utmost possible respect—I think that is what you say to each other when you are insulting one another. Lord Justice Jackson may well have a perfectly reasonable opinion that legal aid should not be cut, but it does not follow that, if it is cut, it will not remain the most generous system in the world. There is a non sequitur in what was said. Lord Justice Jackson says that he does not want the present system cut, which is fair enough but, if the system is cut, it will remain the most generous legal aid system in the world.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
Does my noble friend at least accept that we legislate vastly more than any free democracy in the western world? We have between 200 per cent and 400 per cent more statute law than any free state that I have yet discovered.
Lord McNally
I have no idea whatever whether that figure is correct. I am not even going to promise to write to my noble friend about that. Yes, I think both members of the coalition came into government determined to legislate less and I am sure that, if and when power changes, any new Government will come into power wanting to legislate less. However, you get into a department and find that it has two or three Bills that it has just been waiting to get on to the statute book, or some campaigning organisation, probably chaired by my noble friend Lord Phillips, has a ready-made Bill to get on to the statute book as soon as possible.
First, perhaps I can deal with the calumny from the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu. I am not a Home Office Minister; I am a Ministry of Justice Minister. We benefit from that subtle division of responsibilities carried out by the previous Administration, which has so benefited government. Just as my noble friend Lord Carlile emphasises the liberalism of his approach, I make no apologies for approaching these matters as a social democrat. I look at these issues through those eyes, including that raised by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham. It is extremely important that in reforming our justice system, we keep rehabilitation in the forefront. It is important to make clear that we will have a vigorous system to prosecute justice and punish offenders. However, if we carry on casually allowing the upward rise of our prison population into six figures, it will be a self-defeating process. Unless we attack the rehabilitation of offenders to stop the horrendous reoffending rates, as the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, has often championed, we will be doomed to be spending increasingly more on punishment in a justice system with no real help to society at large.
This has been a philosophical debate. The noble Lord, Lord Howarth, set the tone in a speech which, as my noble friend Lord Thomas of Gresford pointed out, was wonderful in its rhetoric but brought us to why there was not universal support for the Pannick amendment. It suggested that the Government might have to take some account of the resources available. The noble Lord, Lord Howarth, went back to Magna Carta, quoting Lord Bingham and others. I have beside my bed a copy of his The Rule of Law, which is a guide for any lay innocent Justice Minister. We have to accept the fact that Governments and departments have to meet budgets and that they cannot find blank cheques and never have been able to.
I went to see the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson of Lullington, who, sadly, can no longer attend the House and has taken leave of absence. Jeremy Hutchinson is now 96, but was one of the group of lawyers who helped to bring in the 1949 Act. He said rather wistfully, “We thought that we were bringing in a National Health Service for law”. In a way, I can understand that that is a noble aspiration. However, as successive Governments have shown, it is one that must be constrained by the economic realities of the day. Therefore, we are having to make choices—and sometimes hard choices. Perhaps I may again quote my right honourable friend’s article in the Guardian:
“The logic is simple: to determine carefully which types of cases most urgently merit scarce resources, to encourage people to use non-adversarial solutions to their problems where appropriate, and to speed up and simplify court processes where they are not”.
That is the philosophy of the Bill and it is what we are attempting to do. It is unfair when people use language suggesting that we are taking an axe to a whole system of justice. I know from my contact with the Lord Chancellor that that is not his intention.
The noble Lord, Lord Hylton, asked me about our approach to non-adversarial solutions. As the Lord Chancellor indicated in the Guardian article, we are looking to increase funding for family mediation. The Government are committed to increasing it by £10 million, which would fund an extra 10,000 cases.
I hear the speeches from my own Benches and am always interested when someone like my noble friend Lord Carlile makes an intervention followed by praise for courage from around the House. I draw his attention to the line in George Bernard Shaw’s “Saint Joan”:
“Woe unto me when all men praise me!”.
Actually, I am a little bit old fashioned. I believe that the real courage is in standing up and saying, “I support the Government. I think that this is a very good Bill and I intend to vote for them tonight”.
Lord Lester of Herne Hill
I am sorry to interrupt and I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. I want to help the Minister, I really do. I do not yet understand whether he really disagrees with the principle stated in the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick. The principle stated would replace what is in Clause 1 with what seems to me a platitude but a very important one. I do not hear the Minister say that he thinks it is not the right principle.
I suggest that this needs to be thought about right now because we had the same situation in connection with the Public Bodies Bill. In Committee on that Bill, the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, and I did a rather bold and perhaps unthinkable thing and I stood on my head about it. The noble Lord made the House divide on my amendment to write a principle at the front of that Bill. We did that at the beginning in Committee, and getting the principle in had a beneficial effect. I am not suggesting that that might be necessary now, but it would help those of us who are loyal to the Government to know whether there is a real disagreement with the statement of principle in the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Pannick.
Lord McNally
If my noble friend had a fault—and, my God, that is a dangerous thing even to suggest—it is his impetuosity. I was just coming to the nub of the Pannick amendment, but thought that after a long debate it was reasonable to try to pick up at least some of the points made by noble Lords.
The amendment seeks to place a statutory duty on the Lord Chancellor to secure access within the resources made available and in accordance with the provision in Part 1: the legal services that effectively meet the needs of individuals. We accept that this proposed amendment is very similar to the duty placed on the Legal Services Commission by Section 4(1) of the Access to Justice Act 1999. We also accept that the duty that the amendment would place on the Lord Chancellor would be qualified by the reference to the duty being subject both to the resources available and to the provisions of Part 1. However, against the backdrop of this Bill, we believe that Amendment 1 is unnecessary. It is central to our proposal for reform that the reforms establish an affordable system while ensuring that no one is denied their fundamental right of access to justice. Legal aid will be a key element in ensuring access to justice in some cases, but in many cases justice can and should be afforded without the assistance of a lawyer funded by the taxpayer. Fundamental rights to access to justice are the subject of international protections such as the European Convention on Human Rights and certain enforceable EU rights, and are protected by this Bill in relation to legal aid through the areas retained in scope in Schedule 1 and through the exceptional funding provision in Clause 9.
The exceptional funding scheme will ensure the protection of an individual’s right to legal aid under the European Convention on Human Rights, as well as those rights to legal aid that are directly enforceable under European Union law. These rights are of fundamental importance, and the Government consider that the Bill adequately protects them. However, we do not consider that any more extensive right to taxpayer assistance by way of legal aid to access to the courts should be established. In light of the way the Bill protects fundamental rights of access to justice, to the extent that the amendment seeks to introduce requirements over and above what is required by, for example, Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, it is not desirable or necessary. To the extent that it would require no more than, for example, Article 6, it is also unnecessary. Clause 1 states that the Lord Chancellor must secure that legal aid is made available in accordance with Part 1 of the Bill. The Lord Chancellor has powers under Clause 2 to make arrangements to meet that duty.
Considerations about the demand for civil legal aid services have not been ignored. Under Clause 10 the Lord Chancellor will make regulations setting out criteria that the director of legal aid casework will be required to consider when making decisions. When settling the criteria, the Lord Chancellor must consider the extent to which the criteria should reflect certain factors. These include the availability of resources to provide the services and the appropriateness of applying such resources to provide the services, having regard to present and likely future demands for civil legal aid services.
In addition, the Lord Chancellor will be required, in carrying out his functions, to protect and promote the public interest and to support the constitutional principle of the rule of law. These considerations are inherent in the Lord Chancellor’s functions as a Minister of the Crown and do not require specific reference here. In addition, the Lord Chancellor will have specific duties under the Constitutional Reform Act 2005. We have also been clear in our response to consultation that we will work in conjunction with the Legal Services Commission and its successor executive agency to develop and to put in place a procurement strategy that will reflect the demands and requirements of the new legal aid market.
Having read that out, I appreciate that a large number of noble Lords will want to read Hansard, see what it says and see how it matches. It would be madness for any Minister faced with an amendment tabled by the noble Lords who tabled this amendment simply to dismiss it. I will certainly draw the attention of the Lord Chancellor to the debate.
Lord Clinton-Davis
So far the Minister has not mentioned the conversations that he and the Government have had with the Bar Council, the Law Society and other bodies concerned with this aspect of law. They have been critical of the Government's approach, have they not? In what way?
Lord McNally
At one stage I accused Peter Lodder, chairman of the Bar Council, of stalking me, so often did I see him. Of course the Bar Council, the Law Society and various other bodies, including committees of this House, will give an opinion on legislation. We are certainly in conversation on these matters. The noble Lord shakes his head, but when he was a Minister he did not say, “Come in, vested interests, tell me what you want and I will do it”. He listened to them, and where they could convince him he made changes. I assure noble Lords that my honourable and right honourable friends the Ministers in the other place and I have made ourselves constantly available to a wide range of bodies, including professional organisations, and we will continue to do so during the passage of the Bill. No organisation has a rubber stamp on the matter, but we will listen.
In philosophy and in content, this has been an extremely useful debate that I will draw to the attention of the Lord Chancellor. When it comes to the crunch, we face a division between the principled approach of the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, that access to justice means that we must pay the legal aid bill, whatever it is.
Lord Howarth of Newport
I referred to expenditure that was genuinely necessary to ensure that all our citizens have equal access to justice. I certainly did not endorse any inefficiencies or extravagances in the legal aid system that there might be at the moment.
Lord McNally
The point is that that is genuinely what we, too, are trying to do. It is a matter of judgment. In the next month or six weeks, as we take the Bill through the House, we will test those judgments in detail. I hope that in the light of my response, the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, will withdraw his amendment.
Lord Lester of Herne Hill
The Minister referred to Article 6 of the convention being the standard. We should bear in mind, as he said, that among the 47 states we have one of the best systems, yet by using Article 6 we are adopting a standard well below common law and anything that we in this country have enjoyed since 1949. Will he reflect on that?
Lord McNally
As I said, I reflect on almost anything that my friend says, and it is now in Hansard as well.
Lord Pannick
My Lords, this has been a lengthy debate that has touched on a large number of very important issues. In responding, perhaps I may briefly take the attention of the Committee back to what we are debating: the terms of Amendment 1. With all due respect to the Minister, I simply cannot understand his objection to the amendment. It is not a matter of legal complexity, it is not a matter of legal expertise, and it is certainly not a matter of philosophy. Surely the amendment identifies in terms that I hope are clear and uncontroversial the aims of the legal aid system in our society. It recognises that the provision of legal aid must be within available resources, so it does not cut across the Minister's understandable desire to save money. There is no question of the amendment requiring a “blank cheque”, which was his phrase in answering criticisms of the Bill. Surely a statement of constitutional principle such as this is absolutely vital at the start of a Bill of this nature.
I suggest to noble Lords that the Government's refusal, through the Minister, to recognise a simple, and I hope uncontroversial, statement of principle in Clause 1 is deeply troubling in what it tells the Committee and the world outside the House about the Government's approach to legal aid and to the more detailed provisions that we will come to debate in Committee.
Lord McNally
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Bach, for that summing up. I was well aware of his own deep concern about social welfare law and I am not surprised by the passion with which he deployed his arguments. I was interested that he talked about advice. Quite often as this Bill goes through we will move between what is advice, what is legal advice and what is taxpayer legally paid advice. It may be that some of the areas of concern are addressed by other means.
On the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, about tribunals, I am advised that upper-tier tribunals are under a duty in accordance with the overriding objective to make sure that cases are dealt with fairly and justly. That includes,
“avoiding unnecessary formality and seeking flexibility in proceedings”,
and,
“ensuring, so far as practicable, that the parties are able to participate fully”.
I am also advised that legal aid is not available now under the current system for representation at the Upper Tribunal or on welfare benefit cases, so we are not operating from a basis on which legal aid is as generally available now, as some of the speeches might have indicated.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett
I might be wrong, but is it not true that legal aid is available for advice for people who attend those tribunals?
Lord McNally
The noble Baroness is an expert. She wrote a precursor to 1,620 pages of advice, so I will accept that. We will have plenty of opportunities for correction if either of us is wrong.
When I started as a Minister I started counting the number of times the noble Lord, Lord Newton, and I disagreed, but I have now stopped counting. Nevertheless, my love for him remains totally undiminished and I know of his own concern and expertise in this area. He mentioned the danger of a pincer movement, but a number of proposals that are currently being considered across government should make it easier for people to receive the right provision or entitlement in areas such as welfare, benefits and education. The most notable of these is the universal credit, which will help to reduce the scope of error significantly, as it makes the whole benefits system simpler and easier to understand. The Ministry of Justice is working closely with the Department for Work and Pensions as part of its wider welfare reform programme to improve the quality and effectiveness of initial decision-making in social security applications, considerations within the DWP and the system of subsequent appeals to tribunal. That is another aspect.
A number of people have asked about the impact of particular reforms. It has not always been acknowledged that other government actions might be improving the situation in some of these areas. It is always difficult to give the full impact of any particular measure. As the Lord Chancellor points out in his oft-quoted Guardian article—I did not know there were so many Guardian readers in the House—part of the aim is, to a certain extent, to change attitudes and approaches so that we do not become overly reliant on legalistic solutions. There might well be changes, both beneficial and less beneficial, in the outcomes of some of the things that are going on.
I accept the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, and others that appearing before a tribunal is daunting for the lay man. The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, asked me a specific question about the cost of legal aid appeals to the Upper Tribunal on welfare benefit matters. I am advised that at the moment we spend approximately £1 million a year on legal aid for advice and representation on welfare benefit appeals to the Upper Tribunal and higher courts. I will come back to Amendment 2.
Amendment 19 deals with Clause 7, which defines what “legal services” and “civil legal services” mean for the purposes of Part 1. Clause 7 provides an overarching definition, but the specific levels of service—for example, legal help and legal representation—that will be available in any particular case will be set out in regulations made under Clause 10. This approach is based closely on the current model, where Section 4(2) of the Access to Justice Act 1999 describes the types of services that can in principle be funded, and the Legal Services Commission’s funding code criteria set out the precise levels of service that are available in any particular case.
The definition of service in Clause 7 is wide enough to cover the things that one would expect, such as advice from a high street solicitor about a case that a person wishes to bring. I can perhaps assure noble Lords that legal advice and assistance in relation to tribunals is a service that is already encompassed in the description of legal proceedings in Clause 7(1). Indeed, “legal proceedings” is defined in Clause 41 as meaning,
“proceedings before a court or tribunal”.
We rely on this for the provision of services, including advocacy, in, for example, mental health tribunals as set out in paragraph 5 of Part 1 of Schedule 1 or in paragraph 9 of Part 3 of Schedule 1. The definition of legal services in Clause 7 is therefore wide enough to include legal help and indeed advocacy in proceedings before a court or tribunal, and this amendment is unnecessary.
Amendments 2, 29 and 78 all broadly concern appeals to the Upper Tribunal and appellate courts on a point of law. Amendment 2 seeks to make legal aid available in relation to,
“appeals on any point of law in the fields of welfare benefits, employment, debt, housing, immigration, education, and asylum”,
where an individual is in dispute with the state. Amendment 29 seeks to make legal aid, including advocacy, available in social security appeals before the Upper Tribunal and appellate courts. Amendment 78 would add a new paragraph to Schedule 1 and seeks to include appeals on a point of law,
“from the Immigration and Asylum Chamber of the First-tier Tribunal to the Upper Tribunal, the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court”,
within the scope of legal aid.
The categories of law in question include ones such as welfare benefits where tribunals are used. Legally aided representation is not available for most tribunal hearings because tribunals are designed to be user-friendly, without the need for legal representation. Indeed, legal aid is not currently available for legal representation in point-of-law appeals on welfare benefits. Amendments 2 and 29 seek to extend legal aid even beyond its current boundaries by providing legal representation for these Upper Tribunal appeals.
The Government have considered whether funding remains justified for all appeals, regardless of the area of law in which they arise. In the Government’s view, it does not. Under the present scheme, funding is not provided for cases that are not considered a priority for the scheme, such as defamation or business cases, even where these take place in the High Court, the Court of Appeal or the Supreme Court. We consider that the ability of the client to represent their arguments and the importance and complexity of the issues will vary from case to case. The fact that a case is to be heard in a higher court or tribunal does not automatically mean that it will be particularly complex; nor will the forum in which a case is heard outweigh other considerations that determine our priorities for funding.
The noble Lord, Lord Hylton, referred to immigration. Since consultation, we have taken on board some of the concerns raised, including those raised during the passage of the Bill in another place on domestic violence and immigration cases. On the introduction of the Bill, we included in Part 1 of Schedule 1 funding for advice in asylum support cases concerning the provision of accommodation. However, our fundamental position has not changed. It is our view that most immigration cases do not require a lawyer. I should make it clear, however—because some of the points made by noble Lord, Lord Hylton, refer to asylum cases—that asylum cases will remain within scope. I can assure noble Lords that funding is being retained, including for advocacy, for a range of tribunal appeals. These include appeals to the First-tier Tribunal under the Mental Health Act 1983 and appeals to the Upper Tribunal in special educational needs cases. Here, we have focused our limited resources on the highest priority cases.
On the question of appeals to the Supreme Court, we will continue to fund appeals to the High Court, the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court where the area of law to which the appeal relates remains in scope. Again, this will allow for our limited resources to be focused on areas of higher relative priority.
Amendment 2 appears to suggest the requirement of an equality of arms with the state in such cases. The principle of equality of arms is clearly important but is susceptible to misunderstanding. This amendment implies that justice can be done only in a particular case where both parties in proceedings have identical representation. This is not a view supported by the law, or by the experience of many litigants who currently appear before tribunals without the benefit of legally aided representation.
The important question is whether an imbalance in representation gives rise to an obvious unfairness in the proceedings. The case law on Article 6 of the ECHR sets out the circumstances in which legal aid will be required to guard against an obvious unfairness in proceedings. In determining this question, it is necessary to consider all the circumstances of the case, including the nature of the rights at stake, the complexity of the law, the capacity of the individual to represent themselves and whether there are alternative means of securing access to justice. In many cases, for example before tribunals, the procedure is relatively straightforward and there are sufficient safeguards in place to ensure that the absence of legal representation on one side does not lead to an unjust outcome.
Clause 9 provides for an exceptional funding scheme that will continue to ensure the protection of an individual’s rights to legal aid under the European Convention on Human Rights as well as the rights to legal aid that are directly enforceable under European Union law. I must emphasise that the threshold here is very high—as the name suggests, they will have to be exceptional cases. However, in cases in which Article 6 of the ECHR is engaged, the exceptional funding scheme will provide an important safety net for those in which an egregr—
Lord McNally
Thank you, Cambridge. This is the value of the House of Lords—there is always an expert around to help you. Queens’ College, Cambridge, comes to my aid.
Lord Prescott
The noble Lord would not have made that mistake if he had not been reading it out.
Lord McNally
This is another moment in history. I have been heckled for mispronunciation by the noble Lord, Lord Prescott. I stand corrected. The exceptional funding scheme will provide an important safety net for cases in which an egregious inequality of arms would lead to an obvious and unlawful unfairness in proceedings.
We have had to make difficult choices about legal aid. Our reforms to the scope of the scheme are designed to refocus civil legal aid on the most serious cases in which legal advice and representation is justified. In social welfare law, education and immigration, we are reducing the availability of legal aid; but it will remain for cases with the highest priority, and we will continue to spend £50 million on social welfare law.
As I said in the other debate, I realise that noble Lords will want to study some of the things that I read out at speed while referring and cross-referring to parts of the Bill. I think my noble friend indicated that he will withdraw his amendment, and I hope he will, although I am making no promises of massive change. One of the crunch parts of this Bill as it passes through the House will be whether we rightly judged which areas we are withdrawing from the scope of legal aid. The Lord Chancellor and my colleagues in government are confident that we have made the right decisions, hard as they have been in some cases; so, as I say, I hope that the noble Lord will, at this stage, withdraw his amendment.
Lord Thomas of Gresford
My Lords, I thought I detected in the last few sentences the possibility of some movement in this area, but despite that the final sentence was a killer. I am very disappointed with my noble friend’s response to what I considered to be an overwhelming case. If you cannot get legal aid for the Second-tier Tribunal, the Court of Appeal and above, as of right, we really are in a very parlous position. I assure my noble friend that I shall press him on these matters in the future. I thank all noble Lords for their participation in this debate and say to your Lordships that the state in Amendment 2 is widely defined to include local authorities, government organisations and so on. That is quite well understood when we deal with the concept of equality of arms.
While I listened to my noble friend’s summing up, I was reminded of the one person I know quite well who appeared as a litigant in person in the Divisional Court and won—my noble friend Lady Walmsley. The authority concerned went to appeal, where she was represented by a leading counsel, who is now a High Court judge, and by my son, who is a Queen’s Counsel in his own right, and lost. Fortunately her costs were all paid by the authority concerned. It takes an exceptional person to be able to take a case before a judge as a litigant in person and argue it through. The Government have underestimated just how exceptional that person has to be. For the moment, and subject to what I shall say at a later date, I beg leave to withdraw this amendment.
Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill
Lord McNally Excerpts(12 years, 4 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Elystan-Morgan
My Lords, I support the amendment and congratulate the Government on their imaginative development in relation to this matter, but I too accept that it should be mandatory rather than discretionary. As the noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport, mentioned, there is the problem of the unrepresented defendant—the bane of every judge’s life, particularly, if I may say so, that of the circuit judge. Often one found in a perhaps not uncomplicated situation two unrepresented defendants. One would have to spell out to them with bullet points essentially what the civil law is. One would then have to explain that if the claimant could on a balance of probability establish the case, he or she would succeed. If not, the other side, the defendant, would triumph.
However, it is not really the unrepresented defendant, complicated though the situation is, that this matter deals with, but the person who has not made a claim at all and will possibly never make a claim. I think it must have been around 10 years ago that I saw a memorandum from the Law Society. It had conducted a comprehensive survey across the country and found that around 30 per cent of straightforward industrial claims which had every prospect of success were, for some reason or another, never pursued. That is the essential community that this piece of legislation is aimed at. Therefore I commend the Government on their imagination, but to my mind there is no earthly reason why it should not be mandatory rather than discretionary.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord McNally)
My Lords, it is warming to find a clause in the Bill that has such general approval. Amendment 3 seeks to amend Clause 1(3) to make the power of the Lord Chancellor in relation to the provision of information a duty. This amendment is not appropriate. The duties of the Lord Chancellor under this Bill relate to the provision of legal aid for those who qualify for it in accordance with Part 1. In contract, this subsection is aimed in particular at enabling the Lord Chancellor to direct those ineligible for legal aid to other sources of advice. In the future this may include the provision of referral to paid-for advice through a telephone helpline service. The Government have decided not to implement the proposal at this stage, but intend to run a pilot scheme. The intention is that any individual who is seeking legally aided services but is ineligible for legal aid advice could be signposted to other sources of advice that may be able to assist them in their problem. However, to create a duty in this regard would be too onerous and potentially very costly as a duty implies a far greater requirement to provide an all encompassing service. In a sense, the debate has covered demands for that much broader service, but I still maintain that we cannot make this a bounden duty on the Lord Chancellor. However, it takes us in a direction that is interesting so far as this debate is concerned and, indeed, in the way our legal services are being developed.
Some of the issues raised by the noble Lord, Lord Bach, and my noble friend Lord Phillips go far beyond the responsibilities of the Ministry of Justice and of the Bill about the rights and responsibilities of the citizen in our society. However, I accept that it is sensible to address the need for a better understanding of how the justice system works and allow the citizen a more fully understood access to it.
Lord McNally
He will be very annoyed; that is what his father was called. It is one of the problems of being in the House of Lords that you remember their fathers. I am working with Francis Maude on our transparency agenda. On a number of things that have been, and will be, discussed in this Bill, some of my noble friends talk as if the legal profession was set in aspic. I suspect that we are about to see an enormous change in the legal profession. As in any sector where there is change, it is unsettling, but it could also be very enabling. I wonder whether alternative business structures, whereby accessing a lawyer might not be so formidable as calling on the high-street solicitor but a matter of going to somewhere in your local Co-op, might make a difference in terms of access.
Noble Lords underestimate just how willing people are to use the telephone and, increasingly, their e-mails and computers to get information. One has only to see the impact of eBay to appreciate how confidently people use that kind of technology for everyday use. The idea that people will get their advice via telephones and computers is not so far fetched.
The noble Lord, Lord Howarth, asked me what the department was doing. Through Directgov, the public can gain access to a range of information online about the justice system, including legal aid. The introductory page on legal aid on Directgov includes specific information about accessing the community legal advice helpline via the telephone or by completing a web-based online form to book a call back from the helpline in a language and at a time convenient to the caller. Plans are for e-mail advice and community legal advice, and the Legal Services Commission is currently working to enhance the facilities for clients to access advice electronically from the community legal advice helpline via secure e-mail. Initial access to the CLA e-mail advice service will be via the current “contact us, call me back” page on Directgov.
Online general services come in three forms: free web-page services provided by a variety of commercial and not-for-profit organisations such as National Debtline, the Adviceguide from Citizens Advice, and consumer credit counselling services.
I went to the Law Society awards ceremony earlier this year and it was interesting how many of the award-winning companies had online services. Some of them went quite a way down in terms of advice before you pressed the button to start being charged. Again, online services are an interesting development.
These online and digital resources also explain court processes and procedures and how court hearings work, which is particularly important for litigants in person. There are a number of links that demonstrate how comprehensive these resources are. They give advice on, for example, how to avoid repossession, what to do if you get into mortgage arrears and a whole variety of other services.
I am suggesting that part of what the noble Lord, Lord Bach, raised in this amendment, which I welcome because it allowed us to tease out some of these matters, is that a great part of our responsibilities under this section will be carried through by the new technologies. We believe that the public, who in other parts of our life show an amazing capacity to use these new technologies, will find them an important part of understanding and having access to our legal system.
We resist the amendment because we think that this should not be a duty, although it is certainly a direction of travel for the MoJ. We regard the creation of a duty at this stage to be too onerous and potentially very costly as a duty implies a far greater requirement to provide an all-encompassing service. I hope that the noble Lord will accept where our intentions lie and where our direction of travel lies, and at this stage will agree to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Bach
I will withdraw the amendment in due course, although I must say that having had the support that I have had around the House I am sorely tempted to have our first vote on this Bill tonight. But as I think that we are probably the only part of the whole of British society that is working at the moment—they certainly are not at the other end—I will resist that very strong temptation.
I am about to find out what Section 4(2)(a) of the Access to Justice Act 1999 says. I believe that it says that the Government have to provide general information about the law—I will find out in a moment—so the praise with which the present Government have been lauded during the course of this debate for having raised this issue for the first time ever may be a little premature. At the same time, it is good to have it in the Bill, but not good to see it as a “may” rather than a “must”. I shall start by saying to the Minister that we may well come back to this on Report, on the basis of what he said.
Section 4(1) of the Access to Justice Act says, under the heading “Community Legal Service”, that the commission—which means the Legal Services Commission—shall,
“establish, maintain and develop a service known as the Community Legal Service for the purpose of promoting the availability to individuals of services of the descriptions specified in subsection (2) and, in particular, for securing (within the resources made available, and priorities set, in accordance with this Part) that individuals have access to services that effectively meet their needs”.
We met those last words earlier today, so I will not mention them again. Subsection (2) goes on:
“The descriptions of services referred to in subsection (1) are … (a) the provision of general information about the law and legal system and the availability of legal services”,
so the Government have done well to put it back into this Bill, but it is a pity that it is voluntary and not mandatory.
I would like the noble Lord to tell us, either tonight or in writing, what is in the budget for this work—what is being spent on it this year and what is planned to be spent on it next year. I hope that the answer is not “Nil”. I rather fear it might be.
Lord McNally
I cannot give precise figures, but I am, as I said, the Minister responsible for digital development within the system and have been witnessing a lot of work going on, concerning how to make websites understandable, accessible and people-friendly. Since we are being swamped with advice, a little bit that has come to me says that, under the Access to Justice Act 1999, the provision of information is part of civil legal aid, but we have decided to take it out of the concept of legal aid because, although it appears in Section 4(2)(a) of the 1999 Act, the Legal Services Commission did not in practice treat it as something that it would normally fund. It was put in the Act, but nothing happened, which is not unknown.
Lord Bach
We spent quite a lot of money on it, and planned to spend more. I think that that is as far as we can take it tonight, but if the noble Lord can supply the figures, if there are any, that would be helpful to the Committee.
I want to thank all noble Lords who have spoken in this fairly short debate. I particularly want to praise the noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Sudbury, for his role in the Citizenship Foundation. As my noble friend Lord Howarth pointed out, it is wrong to congratulate him this week if citizenship is no longer to play the role that it has done in the curriculum. I suspect that the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, will have more to say on that, perhaps even now.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
My Lords, I want to make one point and one point only but I hope to do so forcibly. If it is mandatory for those seeking assistance to go through a telephone gateway, we will cast adrift a significant minority of our fellow citizens who will never use a telephone gateway for the sorts of problems with which they are confronted. It is a small but significant group, and it would be an irony if the most needy people in our society were the very ones who were, in effect, cut off from access to legal help when they most needed it.
I say this from a considerable amount of personal experience working for the Samaritans and for one of the London law centres, and from my life as a young solicitor in a general practice and, indeed, as the director of the first national legal telephone helpline. I emphasise to the Minister that the problem really is not at all obvious. It is a commonplace that the younger generation today is phenomenally computer literate and so on, but there is still a small group of people who are totally lacking in self-confidence and in an ability to analyse their own problems, and they are fearful of being made fools of on a telephone. I could go on describing this group. I quite accept that for the majority of people what is currently proposed is fine but, as my noble friend Lord Shipley and others have said, we must, whatever else we do, have a second route into legal help which does not cut off that most needy group.
Lord McNally
I thank noble Lords for their comments. A number of points have been raised. The helpline is an 0845 number. However, callers can text or call to request a call back at minimum cost, and the call back will be entirely free. There is also an online form which can be sent to the helpline at no cost. The helpline is a confidential service and the legal advice given will be protected by legal professional privilege.
I hear what my noble friend Lord Phillips says, although it is ironic that one of the experiences that he quotes is that of the Samaritans, whose service is based on the telephone. I hear that there will be this needy section of society but I suggest that the range of services mentioned by my noble friend Lord Shipley will capture these people. There are also health visitors and local councillors. If there are such people in our society and if they are disabled in this way in the broader sense of that word, they will get advice. I really think that it is taking the argument too far to say that there must be a system that can identify the individual who is so afraid of the modern world that he will not engage. No system on earth can cover that.
I am not being flippant about what we are addressing now but, when we were involved with broadcasting issues, noble Lords would make a great fuss about some mythical pensioner, who lived in the West Riding, had a nine-inch Bush television and would ask whether she would be able to get the television stations when we switched to 625 lines from 405. We can always take things to the extreme, but the people who were mentioned by my noble friend Lord Phillips and others are those who will be given other sources of advice to enable them to go through the gateway.
I will deal with the issues raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson. She asked how records will be kept. Recordings and case records will be retained for six years after the contract with the provider has expired. If a caller calls on more than one occasion, the operator will hold on to the information held. She asked whether an advocate can ring on behalf of a client. All clients will be assessed on a case-by-case basis and a caller identified as being unable to give instructions, or to act on advice given, will be referred to a face-to-face advice service and there will be provision for a third party to call a gateway on a client’s behalf.
We have taken on board the issues of people with learning difficulties or mental health issues. Where a client who lacks capacity contacts the specialist telephone advice service, or the adviser believes that they may lack capacity, the advice provider will need to follow relevant professional standards. However, the specialist advice service will be able to discuss the details of the case with an authorised third party.
The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, raised the question of whether the operating service may not correctly diagnose a problem. Only where the operator service is fully satisfied that it has correctly diagnosed that a case is out of scope will they make a decision. If there is any doubt, they will refer the matter to a legally trained specialist. The noble Lord, Lord Bach, asked how people will know how to ring the helpline. We will be developing a communication strategy between now and 2013 when it will come online. That was also a question asked by the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson. That information about the line will be appropriate and specifically targeted to routes that individuals currently use to find out information.
Both the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, and the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, asked whether helpline operators will be legally qualified. The answer is no, because they do not offer callers legal advice. They are fully trained to identify key words from a client’s description of a problem to ensure an accurate diagnosis. That means that the client can then be passed on to the appropriate legally trained adviser who is able to give advice on the relevant point of law.
The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, and the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, asked about qualifications. Gateway operators are fully trained. Telephone advice specialists are required to have the same level of qualification as their face-to-face equivalents.
I am well aware from the debate that noble Lords have concerns about the mandatory single gateway and the Government are seeking to give assurances about those concerns. Amendment 4 relates to Clause 1 and would affect the introduction of the mandatory single gateway as set out in the Government’s consultation response on legal aid reform. It is essential that the Government should seek to provide legal aid services in a cost-effective manner that meets the needs of their clients. However, this amendment seeks to fetter the Government’s flexibility to do so by placing the specific duty on the Lord Chancellor under Clause 1 that for those people eligible for legal aid, those legal aid services must be available in a range of forms and that this must include face-to-face advice. This would preclude the possibility of providing, subject to exceptions, legal aid services in certain areas of law only through specialist telephone advice services. This amendment would also conflict with the provisions in Clause 26(1) and (2), which provide that the Lord Chancellor’s duty at Clause 1 does not, where an individual qualifies for legal aid, include a duty to secure that services are made available by the means selected by the individual. The Lord Chancellor may discharge that duty by arranging for services to be provided by telephone or by other electronic means.
The Government explained in their consultation response their intention to implement a mandatory single gateway, based on the community legal advice helpline, initially in a restricted number of areas of law. Clients in these areas would generally be required to apply for legal aid over the telephone or other electronic means, and would then, if they qualify for legal aid, be offered legal aid advice only over the telephone or other electronic means. The areas of law concerned are debt, in so far it remains in scope; community care; discrimination—in other words, claims relating to a contravention of the Equality Act 2010—and special educational needs. There would be an exception to using the mandatory single gateway to the four areas of law covered by the gateway. These would be emergency cases; instances where the client had previously been assessed by the mandatory single gateway as requiring advice face-to-face within the last 12 months and is seeking further help to resolve link problems from the same face-to-face provider; and clients who are in detention, including prison, a detention centre or a secure hospital, and children, defined as those under the age of 18.
In the legal aid consultation response, we also explained that where clients access the community legal advice helplines through the mandatory single gateway in those four areas of law, we expect that those who qualify for legal aid would normally be transferred to the community legal advice specialist telephone adviser. However, both gateway call operators and specialist advisers will assess the specific needs of all callers on a case-by-case basis. This assessment will be based on the personal circumstances of the client and the nature of the issue about which they are seeking legal assistance. Generally speaking, the key consideration is whether the individual client or someone on their behalf will be able to give instructions and act on the advice given. But where it becomes clear that legal representation will be necessary, clients will be given the option to see a face-to-face provider.
Where it is determined that face-to-face advice will be more appropriate for the caller, they will, where possible, be given a choice of face-to-face advice provider either from a list of suitable advice providers or a specific suitable provider known to the client. The Government do not believe that there will be any significant delay to an individual receiving the help they need or any increased bureaucracy caused by the introduction of a gateway. In some cases—for example, where a client does not know which provider will be able to help—we believe that telephone advice is likely to be quicker even where a referral is to a face-to-face provider. The Government believe that the diagnostic and routing service offered by the gateway will be of value to many.
Amendments 114 and 116 would require that where legal aid services are provided by telephone or other electronic means, those services should be provided solely by a not-for-profit sector. I recognise and value the important role that not-for-profit organisations play in delivering advice at the local level. I also recognise the concerns of many noble Lords about not-for-profit organisations and the future provision of advice services. However, seeking to create a type of monopoly for not-for-profit organisations is not the way to address this.
As noble Lords will be aware, it would not be possible for the Government to commit to awarding contracts for telephone services solely to a specific sector, as any services commissioned by public bodies are subject to EU procurement rules. However, not-for-profit and charitable organisations can and already do bid for contracts to provide specialist telephone advice under the existing community legal advice helpline. At present, six of the 15 contracts for specialist telephone advice through the helpline are held by not-for-profit or charitable organisations. Future contracts will continue to provide opportunities for such organisations to bid to deliver specialist telephone advice services through the helpline and the telephone gateway. Of course, such organisations are also able to bid for the telephone operator contract for the helpline. The amendments would also mean that the criminal legal aid telephone advice service, CDS Direct, could be provided only by the not-for-profit sector. Not-for-profit organisations do not currently provide telephone criminal legal aid advice and I am not aware that they wish, or are currently equipped, to do so.
Related to general concerns about the future provision of face-to-face advice services is the decision to limit the initial scope of the telephone gateway to four areas of law, which will have a more limited impact when compared with the original proposal set out in the consultation paper. The Government are confident that implementing the telephone gateway in limited areas of law will enable better monitoring of the impact on clients and providers in order to inform future decisions about any further expansion of the gateway.
On future civil legal aid advice provision more generally, the Government are committed to ensuring that people continue to have access to good-quality, free advice in their communities. This is why the Government have launched the advice services fund and a review of free advice services. They have set aside £20 million—I say to the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, that it is the same £20 million; I am not announcing yet another £20 million—to support the not-for-profit sector in the short term. The fund will provide immediate support to not-for-profit advice service providers in England to deliver essential debt, welfare benefit, employment and housing advice services. The details of the fund were announced on 21 November by my honourable friend Nick Hurd MP, the Minister for Civil Society.
Lord McNally
I will write to the noble Lord to clarify that. If there is a problem of cost, a person will be able to make a short call or send an e-mail asking for a call back. I will have to seek advice on whether the 0845 number is a free number.
Lord Bach
I am not concerned about that tonight, but the position is not clear yet and we need to be clear. The real problem is the mandatory nature of this provision, which is what worries us. It is not the fact that there will be telephone advice. Such advice is excellent. When the Minister gently chides some of his noble friends for taking the argument too far, surely the Government are taking it too far by insisting on a mandatory gateway. Flexibility is everything in something like that.
The Minister almost gave the game away when he said that someone who was unable to make a telephone call would somehow get advice from someone. No, they will not necessarily. Perhaps they will but they may not. Nor will they get legal advice, which they probably need, from anyone. The Government cannot be as vague about it as they currently appear to be.
What worries us is that the present system does not work badly. I wish to refer to two points made in the debate. The noble Baroness, Lady Prashar, said that these not-for-profit organisations and solicitors are embedded in the community. They are part of our way of life. The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, has a great deal of experience and knowledge in this field. He talked about the right advice from the right place. That is the British way of doing this and it is a system that works pretty well. There is flexibility and various ways in which a person can get advice. It is not that a person has a choice between all sorts of ways of getting advice—the best way for them will be obvious. But to restrict it to a mandatory gateway sounds almost too dirigiste for this country. We should be much more flexible, which is much more in our political tradition. What makes it even better is that it works. The great danger is that in their attempt to change everything, the Government will change this for much the worse. Of course, tonight I will withdraw the amendment but the noble Lord knows that we will certainly return to this issue.