Citizens Advice Bureaux

Lord Newton of Braintree Excerpts

Thursday 8th December 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newton of Braintree]

My Lords, the noble Lord has confirmed the view I have always held that in every Chief Secretary there is a warm-hearted person trying to get out. It has come out this afternoon in a debate in which I judge the noble Lord has done the House a service, and I congratulate him on that.

I have never seen a speakers list that is a better list for the Whips’ Offices, particularly for the Conservative Whips’ Office, of the usual suspects—that is excluding the right reverend Prelate, of course—so there is some interest in this. I have a little history on this, so I can hardly avoid being a usual suspect. I go back a long way. In the early 1960s, as a rookie in the Conservative research department, I worked with the late Lord Barber to produce a pamphlet on consumer protection that drew attention to the parlous state of citizens advice bureaux and the desirability from the point of view of the Government of encouraging and fostering them. Happily, that has happened, and the movement has grown significantly in the intervening period.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

Does my noble friend Lord Newton remember—I nearly said “the late lamented”—Mr Vaughan, who I seem to remember attempted, as a Conservative Minister, to make massive cuts in the CAB and lost the argument and his position as a result?

[Lord Newton of Braintree]

I have some recollection of that, but I do not want to go into other people’s grief on this occasion. However, I am pleased to take the intervention from my former constituent, my noble friend Lord Phillips of Sudbury.

I was involved with that pamphlet, and later, as a junior DHSS Minister, I remember a lot of contact with CABs. I used to go back to the department and say, “Why are our leaflets so much worse than theirs?”. Our explanatory leaflets were not good, but we got better at them. Of course, I had a lot of contact with local CABs in Braintree and Witham.

The noble Lord made one of the key points, which is that CABs were the big society in action before the phrase was ever invented. We need to bear that in mind in talking about CABs tonight. The fact is that if citizens advice bureaux did not exist, the Government would have to invent them against the background we have at the moment. In my judgment, at present that need is not diminishing but growing. I do not dispute the need for difficult decisions about public expenditure or the fact that they are going to cause pain to some degree for everybody because of the situation we are in, and I am not seeking to debate the priorities, although I have doubts in one or two areas. That is not today’s subject. The fact is that a lot of relatively poor, relatively vulnerable people will be and are being affected by these changes. They are affected by changes in the Welfare Reform Bill, the Localism Act and, not least, the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill, which we are about to go into detail on.

I am not going to go on much longer, but I have one letter from the Cambridge CAB, which is a page and a half long. I will quote three or four sentences. Sentence one:

“We have already had to withdraw desperately needed specialist help to people with mental health problems because of the loss of County funding”.

Sentence two:

“As you know, many CABx are already in the situation where they cannot afford to keep going”.

The last two sentences:

“You have probably seen much evidence from Citizens Advice and individual CABx about our role as Legal Aid advisers. The proposed scrapping of most of the Legal Aid budget next year will result in the loss of most of our specialist debt, benefit and housing advisers”.

Those words would be echoed by a lot of others, including law centres such as the Mary Ward Legal Centre in Camden.

I ask my noble friend not to give us all the answers this afternoon, but to take account of the fact that there is real concern here, real need, and to respond in as constructive a way as possible.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Young of Norwood Green]

My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend Lord Boateng for securing this debate at a very appropriate time given all the other relevant legislation that is going through the House. He gave us a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis of the impact of the Government’s proposals and rightly suggested that they ought to think again.

Given the unanimous view of noble Lords on this issue, I was tempted to make the shortest contribution ever and say, “Ditto”. However, I thought that that might be misunderstood and that I should provide an analysis as I am speaking on behalf of the Opposition Front Bench.

The noble Lord, Lord Newton, reminded us that the CABs existed before the term “big society” had been invented and that if they did not exist, they would have had to be invented. I have only one slight caveat as regards his contribution when he said that the impact of any reduction in this service would be felt by the relatively poor and vulnerable. However, I think we should delete “relatively” as I think that such a measure will have an impact on the poor and vulnerable, and on people with disabilities even more so.

[Lord Newton of Braintree]

That is being semantic, if I may say so.

[Lord Young of Norwood Green]

It is. I spoke in that way to create a certain effect—nothing more than that. I do not need to quote the Cambridge CAB briefing because the noble Lord has already done that. There is another quote that I shall come to later.

The noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, rightly reminded us of people’s ability to make use of the law as regards social justice. He is absolutely right. Sixty-four per cent of CAB staff are volunteers and the key issue expressed by nearly every speaker, and by the CAB itself, is the real concern about the impact if the funding for training is not around. Some of the bureaux are saying that there is already an impact and that they are losing staff and volunteers. That precious reservoir of experience built up over the years is a loss that will be hard to replace.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle gave a graphic description of the impact on rural areas. That is an issue to which we do not pay enough attention. He was also right to draw to our attention the fact that while many people are quite comfortable with making a query by using a PC and the internet, or even perhaps a smart phone, they do not suit everyone—certainly not the most vulnerable. We cannot take for granted access to those forms of communication.

My noble friend Lord Bach rightly, as did a number of noble Lords, talked about the Ministry of Justice proposals, as a result of which some CABs, given the loss of funding, may even close. He pointed out that they were trusted and respected, and he also raised the issue of access to justice and the startling cut from £28 million to £5 million. The message we want to convey to the Minister is that these are false savings. That is the unfortunate thing about this matter. Another statistic is that some 65,000 cases taken up by CABs were funded by legal aid. There is likely to be a 75 per cent cut in the number of those cases.

The noble Lord, Lord Phillips, said that he was starting to feel sorry for the Minister. I reflected on that and thought: we are coming up to Christmas, and even Scrooge managed to see the light and repent. I do not address that to the Minister in particular, but the ghost of Christmas to come might be haunting her, or at least the Government collectively. There is still time. The noble Baroness, Lady Howe, rightly reminded us of the impact of the Welfare Reform Bill.

I return to the statements made by the chief executive of Citizens Advice, Gillian Guy. She said:

“Everyone who supports Citizens Advice—and we are pleased this includes David Cameron—should be deeply concerned by the news”,

of a 7 per cent drop in the total number of people that CABs were able to help. She continued:

“It’s now clear that cuts are beginning to disrupt our front line services across the country, just as people struggle to cope with the impact of job losses, reductions in public services and a massive jump in the cost of living. We want to be there for all who need us, but when bureaux have their funding slashed, there’s simply no alternative to cutting back the help we offer”.

Ms Guy warned that there will be much worse to come if planned changes to legal aid go ahead and funding for face-to-face specialist debt advice ends. She added:

“Our clients tell us that CAB advice is a lifeline when they face debt, benefits housing and employment worries. Unless sustainable funding is put in place for the future”—

I stress “sustainable”; there has been some additional funding, but it is temporary—

“more and more people will have nowhere to turn”.

She again stresses:

“Every £1 of legal aid spent on housing, debt, employment and benefits advice can save up to £8.80 in costs to the taxpayer further down the line, by nipping problems in the bud before they escalate out of control”.

She adds:

“When bureaux are forced to reduce services, they also lose highly skilled, dedicated volunteers or staff—a tragic waste and a false economy when you take into account the resources invested in creating a highly trained volunteer workforce able to provide a professional service to the public”.

She cites a couple of examples. The noble Lord, Lord Newton, has already mentioned the Cambridge CAB. Mansfield CAB, along with other bureaux in Nottinghamshire, has had a 60 per cent cut in funding from Nottinghamshire county council, rising to 74 per cent in 2012-13, leading to difficult decisions about how to make those savings with the least impact on the service to clients. The bureau estimates that at least 2,000 fewer local people will be able to get the in-depth advice they need as a result of the cuts to its funding. It has also had to make redundant the post-holder whose function was—this is a cruel irony—to recruit, train and support volunteers, meaning that it is currently having to turn away people who want to train as volunteer advisers. That seems not only a terrible false economy but something that flies in the face of reason and the big society concept.

I am conscious of the time. I trust that the Minister will respond to the cogent and vital points that have been made, and I look forward to her reply.