Her Late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II
Lord Shipley Excerpts(1 year, 10 months ago)
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Lord Shipley (LD)
My Lords, like many, I remember watching the Queen’s Coronation in 1953 on a small black and white television. As we have heard, the world today is very different from the world of that post-war period. But, although it has changed dramatically, the values of our society have remained constant, as our new King reminded us last night. The Queen promoted those values through her absolute commitment to parliamentary government, through her dedication and sense of service, through her loyalty and through her resilience.
Among her many achievements, two stand out for me. First, she was our Head of State, with a clear constitutional role. She was an extremely successful Head of State, understanding the requirements and limitations of the role. But, in truth, she was something more: she was the head of our nation. She reflected us—our country, our people and our society—and she knew when to provide support, such as in the recent pandemic. She had the gift of being able to bring people together—witness her visits to Germany and Ireland and the symbolic importance that those visits had.
Secondly, when she sensed a need for change, she made it happen—for example, in managing our transition from Empire to the Commonwealth, whose current strength owes so much to her leadership, as we have heard. She became the most widely travelled Head of State in the world, which I feel is a tribute to her resolution to build the Commonwealth.
Her Majesty visited my home city of Newcastle upon Tyne on many occasions to undertake official engagements. I remember her opening Eldon Square shopping centre on her Silver Jubilee in 1977 and distributing the royal Maundy money in St Nicholas Cathedral in 1990. She opened several of Tyneside’s major infrastructure projects, such as the Metro and the A1 western bypass. She also opened our new city library and the Great North Museum. In Gateshead in recent years, she opened the Gateshead Millennium Bridge and Sage Gateshead. I was present at many of these visits and several things stood out: her genuine interest in what she was seeing, her desire to learn from those she was meeting and, when she did walkabouts in the city centre, the happiness with which she was greeted by the thousands of people who had made the journey to welcome her. I remember their cheering, the flags and the flowers, which always made for a memorable occasion.
When her father died, the Queen promised to devote her life to the service of our country, but, as the King pointed out last night, it was her personal commitment that defined her life. It was not just a promise; it was 70 years of personal commitment. So we express our profound sorrow on Her Majesty the Queen’s death. We thank her for her lifetime of service and achievement. To our new King, we express our loyalty and support.
Public Health (Coronavirus) (Protection from Eviction) (England) (No. 2) (Amendment) Regulations 2021
Lord Shipley Excerpts(3 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Shipley (LD) [V]
My Lords, it was on 18 March that we last debated this matter. We knew then that there would be yet another extension—and here we are. However, I am left wondering what the Government’s plan is. Indeed, I wonder whether they have a plan at all.
We are now a year on from the introduction of the ban on evictions; a year in which more and more tenants fear becoming homeless—one in four, according to Shelter; a year of not addressing the pending crisis in landlords’ loss of income; a year of building up the backlog of claims for possession.
Landlords’ and renters’ organisations have talked to each other and have come up with a plan for a Government-led rent relief scheme which would help both landlords and tenants. We should bear in mind that Scotland and Wales already have schemes in place.
A year ago, the Secretary of State gave a commitment that no one would be forced out of their home because they have lost income as a result of coronavirus. He also said that no landlord would face unmanageable debts. Given that, what discussions have the Government had with those organisations about their proposal?
This further extension is clearly right, given the circumstances, but the problem is not going away because many tenants in the private rented sector are carrying substantial debt and must rely on that sector, because they have no choice. This is the consequence of the failure to build enough homes for social rent, which is making the situation so much worse.
Public Health (Coronavirus) (Protection from Eviction) (England) (No. 2) Regulations 2021
Lord Shipley Excerpts(3 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Shipley (LD) [V]
My Lords, I too very much look forward to hearing the maiden speech of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton, this afternoon.
A further extension to the ban on bailiff enforcement is right, given the long duration of the pandemic, but the previous debate on private rented sector evictions was only a few weeks ago, which makes me ask why the Government keep coming back with short extensions. It would be better to draw up a policy now for addressing the underlying crisis, which is not going to go away, which is the huge level of debt of many tenants who will continue to be dependent on the private rented sector. At its heart, this is an issue of low incomes and job insecurity caused by the pandemic. So, are the Government going to keep their promise, made by the Secretary of State, Robert Jenrick, a year ago, that
“no renter who has lost income due to coronavirus will be forced out of their home”?
Why are tenants with more than six months’ rent arrears not covered by the ban on eviction, when the pandemic has now lasted for just over a year? The Government should increase the budget for discretionary housing payments and local housing allowance and reassess the housing benefit cap. There is then a need for a Covid rent debt fund—a level of £300 million has been suggested—to compensate landlords, as proposed by both the National Residential Landlords Association and Generation Rent. The problem is that without this policy change, debt levels will continue to rise. The Government should look at the subsidies they give for owner occupation and compare those to the subsidies they give to the rented sectors. There is an imbalance which the Government will have to address.
European Union Referendum Bill
Lord Shipley Excerpts(8 years, 8 months ago)
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Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)
My Lords, with respect it is easy to distinguish between those in Singapore and elsewhere, and those within the European Union. The essential principle should be not only to avoid anomalies or absurdities but to ensure we include those British citizens who have a clear and direct interest in the outcome—those who are clearly stakeholders because of free movement and because they perhaps still have pensions here, and so on. Because of the network of arrangements between us and our partners within the EU, they will be very closely and directly affected, far more than those in Singapore or various other areas. We should seek if possible to try to meet them.
I know from personal experience of having a residence in a part of south-west France that many people there keep a very close interest in what is happening in this country and have a direct financial interest. It seems to me that they have as great an interest as, for example, someone who may come here from outside the EU as a result of marriage, who may have very limited English and who may know very little about our culture and our history. Quite rightly, if they assume citizenship through marriage, they have a say, and so also should those who have perhaps spent a lifetime in this country until they go abroad in retirement. They have very close links with this country and a direct interest in it. Yes, those in Singapore may have that as well, but no one can seriously argue that they have as great a stake as those who live in the EU and keep very close links with us.
Lord Shipley (LD)
My Lords, I support this group of amendments, as I did in the Private Member’s Bill last year and also at Second Reading and on the first day of Committee. They represent a very major issue of principle. The Minister said on the first day in Committee that the Government had decided to use the Westminster franchise. I think the reasoning was that it is an established system that is easy to implement. The problem is that it is actually a very weak system because of who it excludes. We have heard all the reasons for that in the debate so far. The Government have accepted the principle of votes for life, and planned legislation to amend that anomaly, so I find it very puzzling to understand why the Government feel unable to implement it in time for this referendum, given that there is a fairly good chance that the referendum will not be held until early 2017. I hope that the Minister will explain in some detail why the timetable for legislation cannot permit the votes-for-life legislation promised in the Conservative manifesto to be implemented in time for it to apply.
One point that has not been made so far in the debate is that it is not difficult, in administrative terms, to resolve this problem. All those who qualified for a vote in this year’s general election and who may exceed the 15-year limit when the referendum is held are known to electoral registration officers, and extension of their right to cover this referendum would be straightforward to implement. Those not registered to vote in a general election who have lived outside the UK and the EU for more than 15 years could be invited to register using passport, national insurance number, evidence of current residence and evidence of their last residence in the UK.
The noble Lord, Lord Green of Deddington, talked about the numbers involved. Of course, this is an issue of principle—there may well be a lot of people, but the issue of principle seems to me to transcend the issue of how many people might be entitled to vote and how many people might register to vote. I agree with the noble Lord that if the votes-for-life Bill is for all those who live outside the United Kingdom, whether in the EU or elsewhere overseas, that is an issue we need to address. I would be very happy to support an extension to all UK passport holders wherever they live in the world. However, this group of amendments relates to those who live within the European Union. Of course, I accept that an extension of the kind proposed by this group of amendments would give the Government a bit of work. However, set against that should be the rights of all UK passport holders living in the EU to have a say in their future.
We have heard of the concerns that people have. I am particularly concerned as to whether the UK Government will continue to uprate pensions. In many parts of the world, pensions are not uprated. They are uprated within the European Union, because it is part of our agreement as a member of the European Union. Other issues have been raised, but this is really important to those living within the EU outside the UK. It is very important to be clear about these matters, and very important to acknowledge the right of those with a stake in the outcome to have a say. I hope, when the Minister comes to reply, that he will explain why the Government think it is appropriate for them not to have a say.
Lord Lexden (Con)
My Lords, the noble Lords who have tabled these amendments have performed a most valuable service which has wider international dimensions, as my noble friend Lord Flight and others have pointed out. I have strongly and consistently supported the removal of the arbitrary 15-year limit on the right of our fellow countrymen and women living overseas to vote in our parliamentary elections—a right first conferred by Margaret Thatcher’s Government. I urged its removal in my first speech in this Chamber in early 2011. I tabled amendments to the Electoral Registration and Administration Bill in 2013 in order to press the case for change. I took part in subsequent discussions on overseas voting arrangements in a cross-party group chaired by my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth—a group in which my noble friend Lord Tyler played a conspicuous part.
I was delighted when my party included an unambiguous commitment in its recent general election manifesto to sweep away the iniquitous 15-year bar. Swift implementation of that commitment would have dealt with all the aspects of this issue, both as regards the parliamentary franchise and, as a direct consequence, the forthcoming EU referendum. However, the Bill to give effect to the unambiguous Tory commitment has not even been published. I was greatly taken aback to be told, in answer to an Oral Question in July, that there was no certainty whatever that the Bill would reach the statute book before the referendum took place—and it has become even less certain since then. This is deeply disappointing. Nothing could have been more precisely predictable than the emergence of the huge problem with which we are now confronted if swift and early action was not taken.
It is extremely unfortunate, to put it mildly, that work was not set in hand at the earliest opportunity. The Tory pledge was made in September last year. A branch of the Conservative Party’s organisation with which I am closely connected, Conservatives Abroad, has two outstanding experts on all the issues involved in extending the right to vote to all British citizens living overseas. They could have helped prepare the way for the Bill, which, if it were now before Parliament, would have prevented the wholly foreseeable problem that the amendments seek to address; unresolved, it will inflict great injustice on a significant number of our fellow countrymen and countrywomen overseas.
It simply cannot be right to hold a referendum in which some British citizens living in another EU member state or elsewhere in the world are able to take part, while others are excluded because they happen to have been absent from our shores for more than 15 years. The outcome within the EU will affect them all equally and profoundly. It will surely be incomprehensible to our fellow citizens living abroad that an election manifesto commitment cannot be implemented by one means or another in time for them to participate in a vote of such overwhelming importance for the nation to which they belong.
We need to imagine ourselves in the shoes of Harry Shindler, to whom the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, paid tribute, and our other fellow countrymen and countrywomen who have been living overseas for over 15 years and have retained a strong sense of British identity. How would we feel about being excluded from this momentous referendum while those who have not reached the 15-year limit can take part? The Bill should be returned to the other place and amended in order to include British citizens who have been living overseas for more than 15 years. In that way, we would uphold the principle enshrined in the Conservative election manifesto.
European Union Referendum Bill
Lord Shipley Excerpts(8 years, 8 months ago)
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Lord Blencathra
My Lords, I agree entirely with my noble friend. I could not say it better myself so I shall shut up and conclude my remarks.
Lord Shipley (LD)
My Lords, I said at Second Reading that there was a very important principle at stake in this issue: that those who will be directly and personally affected by the outcome should be entitled to a say in the decision. I stick by that principle because it is exceedingly important.
I am grateful to the noble Lords who tabled Amendment 13, which defines the five-year rule, because I had wondered whether it was justified for shorter-term or seasonal workers to have the right to vote. In the Scottish referendum people who had lived in Scotland for less than five years had the right to vote because the local government franchise and electoral roll were used. I am unaware of any trouble or problems caused by the fact that EU residents living in Scotland had the right to vote.
The compromise proposed in Amendment 13 is entirely reasonable. It gives the franchise to those who can demonstrate a longer-term residency commitment to the UK. I assume that it means five continuous calendar years, as opposed to any five calendar years, but on that basis—and the fact that people will have to prove residency for five years, which in itself might be a complicated task for some—it seems entirely reasonable.
I noticed that in the contribution from the noble Lord, Lord Green of Deddington, we had the accusation that no other country does this and that we therefore should not. Of course, nothing ever changes if you always have to abide by what other people do. As we heard, Austria permits votes at the age of 16. Somebody took the lead there. It seems to me that there is nothing wrong with the United Kingdom deciding to make its own decision about how it wishes to conduct a referendum.
Lord Green of Deddington
I apologise for interrupting the noble Lord, but does he accept that mine was a point of fact, not an accusation?
Lord Shipley
I accept that it is a point of fact, although I am very uncertain about the number of voters that the noble Lord came up with. I am not sure that that base can be proven accurate.
Lord Green of Deddington
I made it clear to noble Lords that that calculation was based on the Labour Force Survey, which as they will know is a survey and is therefore subject to some variation. However, when the noble Lord talks about 1.9 million he is talking about a lot of people who have been resident here for five years.
Lord Shipley
The figures would clearly have to be checked, but people will have to register. They will have to demonstrate that they have a legal right to register. Then, of course, they will have to vote. We may have to do some further work on this prior to Report, but we need to examine those numbers very carefully indeed.
I think the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton of Epsom, said that this will be a referendum for British people. I agree that it has to be a referendum for British people, notwithstanding this set of amendments, but I wonder whether he includes those who have lived abroad for more than 15 years. They are British people and British passport holders and a very large number will be denied a vote. We will come on to that in a further group of amendments.
In conclusion, this is an opportunity for those who have demonstrated that they have a commitment to contributing to the life and economy of the United Kingdom to be trusted with a vote about the future of the United Kingdom in the European Union. I believe that it is right to have a policy for those who have lived here for five calendar years. It is appropriate because it demonstrates our confidence in those who are not British nationals.
Assisted Dying Bill [HL]
Lord Shipley Excerpts(10 years ago)
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Lord Shipley (LD)
My Lords, I am not a lawyer nor am I a medical professional. I have no strong religious faith and I have had no preconceived views on this Bill. I believe we should give it a Second Reading, first, because the Supreme Court has asked us to clarify the law and, secondly, because opinion polls show a large majority in favour of a change in the law. We have a duty to consider the Bill further at Committee stage when we can examine the detail.
My position is that in principle I believe individuals have a human right to exercise their own choice to end their own suffering. It is a right I would like for myself, to be taken with my family. But that human right for me does not mean that it must transcend the human rights of others to safety and security under the law. No person should feel threatened by any change in the law. As we consider the Bill, this issue should be paramount in our minds.
I have deep reservations about the Bill as it stands. The safeguards seem very weak. Surely it is not enough to have only the promise of an undefined code of practice to be issued by the Secretary of State. I think we run the risk of unintended consequences.
I shall raise some specific issues that we need to clarify. How will it be known that there is a reasonable expectation that an illness is terminal within six months? Why are only two doctors required? Who will select those doctors? How will it be known that a patient’s mental capacity is unimpaired, particularly if the doctors do not know the patient? How will it be known that a patient is making an informed decision free from pressure or coercion? And, crucially for me, why is there is no judge or examining magistrate involved in the case?
The President of the Supreme Court has said that a High Court judge should consider the evidence and be satisfied that a wish to die is,
“voluntary, clear, settled and informed”.
That is very different indeed from permitting assisted suicide within the NHS. Why does the Bill disregard this fundamental principle and leave all decision-making within the NHS? In any case, despite some notable individual exceptions, the medical profession has indicated its significant opposition to the Bill. The difficulty is that, without the support of the medical profession generally, it is hard to see how the Bill can proceed without very major changes. I agree with the BMA that legalising assisted dying could have a profound and detrimental effect on the doctor/patient relationship. I agree also that it is unacceptable to put vulnerable people in a position where they feel that they have to consider precipitating the end of their lives. In a loving and supportive family relationship, I know that appropriate safeguards may of course prove adequate, but the Bill as currently drafted needs radical revision in Committee.
Transfer of Tribunal Functions (Mobile Homes Act 2013 and Miscellaneous Amendments) Order 2014
Lord Shipley Excerpts(10 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Shipley (LD)
My Lords, I declare that I am a vice-president of the Local Government Association and a former council leader. Therefore, I have a keen interest in all aspects of local government matters.
I would like to ask about the level of fees to be charged rather than the transfer of jurisdiction, which is what the order is mainly about. My query relates to paragraph 7.2 of the Explanatory Memorandum, which states:
“The normal policy is that fees should be set at a level to recover no more than the full cost of providing the service”
I agree with that; that is the correct policy. However, will the Minister clarify whether the definition of full cost actually is full cost in this instance? It is a fee level of £155. Has that fee level been set to include a contribution to a council’s overheads rather than just being the recovery of the immediate direct cost?
I raise this because I think that it is an issue of principle. When I was a council leader, I discovered that in many instances, particularly in the regulatory and licensing areas, fees and charges were not, in fact, related to the total cost that a council incurred. That total cost includes its overheads for its premises, heating, lighting and so on. Too often fees were set to cover the cost of undertaking the immediate work involved. I seek assurance from the Minister that the total cost to a local authority has been included in paragraph 7.2 in setting the fee at £155.
Lord Beecham (Lab)
My Lords, I must follow the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, in declaring an interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association and as a former leader of the same council for, if I may say so, quite a bit longer than the noble Lord. I have a certain sympathy with his view on this order to the extent that we are talking essentially about commercial organisations bearing the cost. The implication behind the noble Lord’s question is clear enough: is this a sufficient amount? If it were to fall on the occupier of a mobile home, I would be somewhat concerned about that. If the intention is that it should fall on the owner of the site as a commercial proposition, I think he makes a significant point. I am glad that he has made it because my only reservation about this order would have been to point to the split infinitive in the Explanatory Note.
Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill
Lord Shipley Excerpts(12 years, 4 months ago)
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Viscount Slim
Thank you. My question is simply: have there been discussions between the Ministry of Justice and the MoD and a methodology put forward to ensure that free legal aid and advice will be given to disabled veterans where necessary?
Lord Shipley
My Lords, I speak to Amendment 101. As we have heard, this group of amendments relates to two matters: first, ensuring equal access to justice for those who are vulnerable or on low incomes; and, secondly, dealing with the impact of the very fundamental changes made by the Welfare Reform Bill, which will inevitably increase substantially the number of people who need help and who are unable to represent themselves.
Quite separately from these two issues, the cuts already made to CAB budgets and to third-sector advice bodies as a whole have been very high and have caused significant dislocation to their services. The consequence of all this is that, as things stand, there will not be equal access to justice, and yet, for a comparatively small sum in the context of the legal aid bill as a whole, many of the problems could be dealt with. It does not help, of course, that relevant funding streams lie across several Whitehall departments, so I still hope that cross-Whitehall discussions might enable solutions to be found to the serious loss of resource faced by the sector, amounting to three-quarters of the legal aid funding currently received, all of which impacts on the estimated 650,000 people who currently secure early and preventive help.
I spoke on this issue in Committee. The danger is that the exclusion of benefits work from legal aid will tie the hands of advisers who are trying to prevent homelessness, for example, for which legal aid may apply, leading to many more unresolved cases filling the courts. The courts will then have more adjourned hearings and will ultimately have to make more possession orders because there is no one to resolve the benefits issue. This will result in higher costs to the taxpayer. The Bill proposes that all benefits work is to be removed from the scope of legal aid except for cases that go to judicial review, yet early intervention to resolve benefits issues often prevents these situations escalating into more serious proceedings, with all the costs involved in that.
Amendment 11, moved by my noble friend Lady Doocey, seeks to retain legal aid help for those facing welfare benefits reviews and appeals at the First-tier Tribunal. It is a relatively low-cost amendment that would address the problem whereby the removal of social welfare advice from the scope of legal aid will have a disproportionate impact on vulnerable people, particularly disabled people.
My Amendment 101 also relates to funding advice and representation, and seeks a solution by giving a power to the Lord Chancellor to add new civil legal services to the scope of the Bill and to make funding available on a permanent basis through the provision of grant in aid, where doing so would reduce knock-on costs or secure equal access to justice.
My primary concern relates to ensuring that there is long-term funding for CABs, law centres and third-sector housing advice centres to help vulnerable clients. Earlier this week, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury said that there would be additional funding in the current spending period and that details would be announced in the Budget. It is essential that advice services are made sustainable in the long term, and I am grateful to the Minister for understanding the financial problems that face the sector and for being willing to seek solutions to the funding issue. We await the outcome, but it should come before we return to the Bill at Third Reading. For those of us who have supported the work of the advice sector and CABs in particular, I hope the Minister will be able in his reply to set our minds at rest regarding securing the necessary resources to finance the sector adequately and maintaining the principle of equal access to justice.
Baroness Grey-Thompson
My Lords, I rise briefly in support of Amendment 11 because I covered the appeal process extensively during our debates on the Welfare Reform Bill. I completely agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, who is absolutely right to say that the current proposals will represent the most major and life-changing reform to the welfare system. Her amendment offers some protection to ensure that the right people are supported. Both inside and outside your Lordships’ Chamber, we hear an awful lot about how we want to help and support disabled people. If we want to do so, this is our chance to prove it. I strongly support the amendment.
Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill
Lord Shipley Excerpts(12 years, 6 months ago)
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Baroness Mallalieu
My Lords, I support this amendment as far as it goes. We are all worried about who will fund organisations such as law centres, which at present are largely reliant on legal aid. Clearly, many of them will go under if there is not some alternative form of funding. What troubles me about the amendment in its present form is that there is absolutely no break on the way in which this Lord Chancellor—or a future Lord Chancellor—may choose to hand out the money. I should like some requirement on him to consult and some way of knowing that a distant Lord Chancellor—of course, not the present one—could not operate for reasons of political expediency, or simply on a whim to withdraw funding from an organisation which, for example, might be involved in action against the Government. Although I welcome the amendment in its present form, I think that it needs more added to it.
Lord Shipley
My Lords, I support the amendment moved by my noble friend Lord Thomas of Gresford. It addresses a question that is crucial for the success of legal aid advice at local level. The question is how the Ministry of Justice can deliver its legal aid budget cuts of £130 million out of £250 million while still delivering an effective system of support for legal aid. After a lot of thought, I have concluded that a centralised system of contract procurement is not likely to work well. It would mean high overheads and poor flexibility at a time when a significant number of third-sector providers will be forced to close because of lack of finance, with the consequence of problems that could be sorted out early not being sorted out, and a greater cost to the public purse.
We should note that the Legal Services Commission has very high costs. It spends £120 million on administration. After the cuts, with the new director of legal aid casework, the amount spent on administration is likely still to be around £120 million. That figure is very high. Of course, it includes criminal legal aid, but this has barely been cut at all. However, at local level, the budget cuts will be very significant. They will be in exactly the places that require a seamless service that will enable clients with problems that cut across agencies to benefit from integrated support.
I have a potential solution. I am grateful to Citizens Advice for its suggestion of how we might solve the problem. Could the Legal Services Commission, or its successor body, be moved from centre stage? Could, say, £20 million be reallocated from its administrative budget—which would thereby be reduced to £80 million —to front-line funding based on local legal advice partnerships that would map local advice needs, share back-office services and be based on clear professional standards? There would have to be—
Lord Beecham
Do I take it that the noble Lord is referring to £20 million a year rather than a one-off payment of £20 million?
Lord Shipley
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Beecham. I do mean £20 million a year from the recurrent cost to provide for those local partnerships. There would have to be a co-ordinating charity, but that should be possible.
In a short debate on citizens advice bureaux on 8 December, I talked around this point and said that there was capacity at a local level to help the Government to solve the problem. Of course, all of this would be in the spirit of localism. The Government have just enacted the Localism Bill. The Localism Act has as its basic principle the principle that far more should be devolved from the centre to local areas.
The first part of the amendment simply gives the Lord Chancellor discretion to permit transfers from the legal aid budget to other funding streams for the provision of advice on issues to which Schedule 1 does not apply. The second part facilitates a cheaper delivery model based on local partnerships. On a practical level, it is important to note that it would be a waste of resources if legal aid clients could not receive holistic advice. There could also be many cases at the margins of situations covered by Schedule 1, and we should note the Legal Services Commission's response to the Green Paper, which highlighted the problem of boundary issues and warned that,
“the administration costs of considering such cases could erode the revenue savings that the Ministry of Justice has committed itself to”.
I think this suggests that we ought to do some further work between consideration in Committee and Report and that we should not lose the opportunity to engage with finding a solution to this problem. I hope that the Minister will understand that in moving this amendment, we are trying to be helpful. There are suggestions that this approach, or one like it, could work very well. I hope that in his reply the Minister will say that he is willing to engage in further discussions prior to Report.
Lord Goldsmith
My Lords, in an earlier debate in today’s Committee I indicated my involvement in helping agencies that provide social welfare advice and legal help to consumers, employees and others. I am therefore very sympathetic to what lies behind this amendment, which is a recognition that the Bill as it stands will remove an important lifeline for individuals by removing legal aid from the agencies. As I said in that earlier debate, many people outside Parliament may not appreciate that legal aid is not just about giving fees to chaps in wigs; it is also about supporting agencies that provide a lot of excellent advice on a very good value basis. They are able to do that because some of the work they do is supported by legal aid. They are very good value for money and produce tremendous results.
My noble friend Lord Bach has already referred to the very interesting research produced by the Legal Action Group on the provision of social welfare law advice in London. That research points out not only what will happen in terms of dramatically reduced services but how that will cost the state more. As I think the report says, it is penny wise and pound foolish to go down this route. That has been debated before. I am very sympathetic to doing something that will provide funds for these agencies. That is not the only thing that needs to be done to the Bill, but it is an important point—and my noble friend Lady Mallalieu and the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, have made it as well. The problem is whether this amendment will do that. That is where I am concerned. I agree with the identification of the problem, but I am very worried that this is not the solution.
It is not the solution for the reasons that both of the previous speakers referred to. The amendment provides discretion to the Lord Chancellor, because that is what it says, but it goes further than that, as I will describe. The amendment would give the Lord Chancellor the ability to make funding available in circumstances that are completely ill defined. In other words, the criteria are entirely for him to determine. I will come back to what I mean by the word “him” in a moment. It reminds me that in the days before the law of equity and common law were separated, the Lord Chancellor had his own jurisdiction in legal cases. He ran the rules of equity. The criticism—I think the most famous criticism came from the jurist John Selden—was that because it was discretionary and the rules were not rigid or written down in the way that the common law was, you never knew what you were going to get. It was said that it was as if the measure of a foot in equity would be as long, as short or as indifferent as the Lord Chancellor’s foot. That is what worries me about this amendment. It leaves it to the person who has the discretion to determine whether to make any funding available, and if so, how much.
At one stage, I was going to describe this as the “Lord Chancellor’s foot amendment”, but it is worse than that because it is not actually the Lord Chancellor’s foot I am worried about. The present Lord Chancellor is—as no doubt all future Lord Chancellors will be—a man of generosity and kindness who understands the problems of the world and is desperate to help his fellow man. The problem is that Lord Chancellors do not get their money themselves; they get it from another person with the word Chancellor in his name. So I am going to describe this as the “Chancellor’s foot amendment”. I would love to see this amendment come back with tougher criteria and more obligations imposed. The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, suggested that more work be done on what is needed. I do not know whether £20 million a year is the right number for this area—I would be surprised if it is—but it is worth doing that work. This report deals only with London, which in my experience is the best served place.
I would like to see more work done on this, but the amendment will not work as it stands. I am really concerned that this will be put forward as a sop to those of us who would like to see specific areas of welfare law brought back into scope, and we will be told, “Don’t worry, because when this amendment goes through, all these cases can be dealt with through a decision to provide funding”. If this amendment said, “and the Lord Chancellor will have X hundred million pounds a year for that purpose and he will exercise that discretion in those cases”, I might be more favourably disposed towards it, but at the moment I am worried that this will simply be a sop. I too look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say about it, but as it stands it identifies the problem but not the solution.
Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill
Lord Shipley Excerpts(12 years, 7 months ago)
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Baroness Prashar
My Lords, I rise to support this amendment. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Bach, for introducing it in such a comprehensive way. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, for spelling out some of the broader implications of this matter. I will be brief as I want to underline just a couple of points. One is that I fear that the single mandatory telephone gateway will potentially reduce access for some of the most vulnerable members of the community. I think that the Government’s intention to deliver legal services through a single telephone gateway and to further provide some casework by telephone fails to recognise the difficulties this will present to many of those attempting to access the system, particularly those with complex or distressing legal problems, as has been spelt out by the noble Lord, Lord Bach.
As we have heard, telephone services are, of course, of value to many and their expansion is welcome. However, in my view they do not provide a universal solution to those seeking initial legal advice. When a problem arises, many seek legal advice from providers that they have used before and know and trust. A strong relationship between adviser and client is central to clients providing vital information about their circumstances. Remote mediums of seeking advice are not conducive to building trust with an adviser.
Research by the Legal Action Group has revealed that people in social classes D and E are the most likely to experience a social welfare legal problem, are most reliant on local advice centres for help and are least likely to use telephone advice. It is also the case that those who make initial contact by phone like to follow it up with face-to-face advice. As we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Bach, those with language difficulties and urgent matters to address prefer personal contact, and there may well be issues with literacy. There are real dangers that driving all advice provision to a telephone gateway will result in a substantial number of those who currently seek face-to-face advice dropping out and not receiving any legal aid at all. Their problems will be left to become more complex and expensive for the state to resolve further down the line. This in the long run will defeat the purpose of the legislation.
My second concern is the Bill’s implications for the sustainability of local legal services which are normally embedded in the community. One can see what will happen to those. With their local knowledge, these organisations not only promote good practice but campaign to improve services. We need more strategic provision for legal advice services drawing on the best practice of local solutions. Throughout this afternoon we have heard that access to justice is a constitutional principle. Initial legal advice provided in an appropriate way is a first step to accessing justice and can avert long-drawn-out legal wrangles. In my view it is therefore imperative that legal aid advice is provided in a range of forms and is accessible to those who really need it.
Lord Shipley
My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendments 114 and 116 and to all the principles that lie behind the amendments in this group. We are discussing a mandatory telephone gateway and whether it can on its own deliver equal and effective access to legal aid. Currently, signposting comes from a variety of sources such as library information desks, council customer services, GP surgeries, councillors’ and MPs’ surgeries, voluntary and public organisations, charities and so on. They all currently direct people to CAB, law centres and voluntary organisations such as Shelter. That system works. In the main, the signposting is of high quality and gets people who need help to the right advice from the most appropriate place.
There is a great danger in a call-centre approach. I hope that that is not what the Government intend, but a call-centre approach is dependent upon speed and low costs as its main drivers. The telephone can be very good, but in this case it would be very good only if: first, individuals can communicate via the telephone—for example, there could be significant levels of documentation to quote from, and there is therefore a strong probability of complexity in an inquiry; secondly, if individuals have the confidence to clearly prepare what they need to say and then say it; and thirdly and crucially, if the quality of the staff is sufficient to answer the initial inquiry in terms of their legal knowledge and ability to prompt the facts to come out in conversation. In conclusion, a telephone gateway should have, as a minimum, law graduates or experienced advice workers taking the initial calls, not unqualified generalists who may fail to pass on a call that should be passed on, or who may fail to diagnose a case because they think it is out of scope, when actually something that is related to it is within scope.
The telephone can never be the only means of accessing legal aid—nor should be electronic variations such as the internet and so on. Sometimes a face-to-face initial interview can be a more effective and cheaper option than the telephone or the web. We should bear it in mind that large numbers of households in the UK do not have access to broadband or the internet and are reliant upon public services such as public libraries and schools for access. Around a quarter of households simply do not have any access to that means of communication. Normally, but not necessarily, very many members of those households will be poor and unable to afford the relevant equipment. Expecting them to communicate across the web could be a significant problem.
Most contact for assessing an initial inquiry is currently face-to-face. I have not followed why, if someone accesses, say, a CAB, law centre or public library, the initial face-to-face inquiry that has already taken place cannot then be referred for another face-to-face discussion. Why should there be the additional cost of an extra loop in the system by generating a computer record that can then be accessed by a range of other people?
I have concluded that we must have a range of providers that can address the needs of all those likely to require help, some of whom may not speak English well. I noted recently research from the USA that shows that one-fifth of people who receive telephone advice do not act upon it because they have not fully understood what the advice actually means.
There is a further issue around cost. Is it cheaper? Figures have been quoted of savings of between £50 million and £70 million. In my view, the cost could prove to be much less than that because the current calculations compare the cost of face-to-face interviews with the cost of a telephone call via a community advice line, but they are not directly comparable because those who use the latter are a self-selecting group who are content and confident with using a telephone.
We need to look at a whole range of issues more deeply. I hope that my noble friend will be willing to undertake further work on the advisability of a single mandatory channel; that further work will be done on the relative costs involved; and that the proposal’s impact on equality and access to justice will be looked at very closely. There are real dangers that some of those most in need of help will fail to secure it through a mandatory telephone gateway.
Lord Howarth of Newport
My Lords, my noble friend Lord Bach and the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, have identified, imaginatively and sensitively, extensive groups of people for whom a mandatory telephone gateway would be entirely inappropriate. I hope that the Minister will reflect carefully on the apprehensions expressed this evening. The noble Baroness, Lady Prashar, and the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, both suggested that it would be a false economy to skimp on the cost of the initial advice and assistance. We could end up, perversely, having to spend a lot more because people did not receive the advice and assistance that they needed, it was not comprehensible to them, it failed to match what was appropriate for them or because they lacked the encouragement to explain themselves fully, so their cases were not taken further through the appropriate channels and their personal predicament deteriorated. We must take all those worries seriously.
The noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, touched on the question of training, and the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, talked about the need for the people who are to provide the service to be of high calibre. Those things are important. It would be helpful if the Minister would say more about what the Government envisage by way of training programmes and the level and standard of personnel who will be recruited to provide the service. We are in a familiar dilemma as we examine the legislation. It is perfunctorily articulated in extremely important aspects. We were asked to take the Government on trust. We are willing to take the Government on trust to the extent that they will explain themselves to us and we know what we are being asked to trust. I hope that the Minister will be able to be helpful to the Committee on those points.
I have two quick questions to put to the Minister. Will this be a freephone service? Secondly, does he envisage that there will be a network of telephones that people will be able to use when they make these calls? It could be a very sensitive matter for people explaining themselves to someone at the other side of the telephone gateway about issues concerning family breakdown, debt and so forth. It is not just that they are painful topics but that it could be positively hazardous for people not to be able to make those telephone calls in circumstances of privacy where they can be confident that they will not be overheard or interrupted. We need to know a lot more detail about how the Minister anticipates that the system will be made to work in practice.