Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (Amendment of Schedule 1) Order 2013

Lord Richard Excerpts

Wednesday 27th March 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Richard]

I am flattered that the noble Lord should find me menacing. Does he not see that there is a clear distinction between access to justice and access to legal aid? Does he not see that in certain circumstances certain people who are denied legal aid are denied access to justice? That follows as night follows day. If someone cannot afford to go to the courts in order to get justice, that is denying them justice.

[Lord McNally]

Access to justice may also be by other forms of advice. Not all advice is legal advice.

[Lord Richard]

When a tribunal is involved, it is not a question of advice but of having to go to a tribunal to get a decision. That is where the justice comes from—the decision of the tribunal, not the advice that one is given before one gets there. Surely the noble Lord sees that distinction.

[Lord McNally]

Built into the system are corrections to the tribunal. The noble Lord will know that the tribunal system was initially conceived as a relatively lawyer-free zone where people could make their case. The other part of our reforms of justice is, in a whole range of measures, to offer different forms of mediation and arbitration that reduce what was becoming an over-lawyered system, including in tribunals.