Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Lord Shipley Excerpts

Tuesday 20th December 2011 Lords Chamber

[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.

Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Lord Shipley Excerpts

Monday 21st November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Shipley]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Thomas of Gresford indicated that I would say something about access to justice. My concerns relate to the planned reduced availability of legal aid and the impact on the voluntary sector, in particular on law centres, which helps those who lack the resources to buy their own representation. I wish to address the issue from two perspectives—first, law centres, and secondly, the court system.

Law centres are non-profit legal providers. In 2010, Newcastle Law Centre opened 550 casework files on a mix of welfare benefits, housing, immigration, asylum and employment—including discrimination—cases. The law centre works closely with and complements the work of Shelter and Citizens Advice and it meets a gap in provision. All 550 cases were for clients on low incomes who might not otherwise have received legal representation. In addition to those 550 cases progressed, Newcastle Law Centre gave some 2,000 instances of one-off advice to individuals—people who might manage themselves or could secure advice and help from elsewhere. In that year this law centre’s income was just £346,000 with nine full-time equivalent workers. Experienced solicitors were paid on average £29,000 a year and experienced caseworkers were paid £25,000 a year. That figure of £346,000 is made up of £206,000 from the Legal Services Commission, £60,000 from the Equality and Human Rights Commission, £65,000 from Newcastle City Council—I declare my interest as a member of that council—and other incidental income. Within this year’s budget there has been a 10 per cent cut in contract fees already.

In England and Wales there are 52 law centres and all of them have a legal aid contract with the Legal Services Commission. The Law Centres Federation estimates that up to 18 of the 52 law centres—that is just over a third—receiving Legal Services Commission funding would close as a consequence of this Bill. These 18 are primarily or entirely funded by legal aid work. The curtailment of the scope of civil legal aid hits law centres hard as it focuses on those areas in which law centres specialise—welfare benefits, employment, housing, debt and so on. In Newcastle funding will be reduced from £206,000 to £48,000 as a consequence of the abolition of the Legal Services Commission. This cut cannot be taken in isolation since the Equality and Human Rights Commission grant of £60,000 is disappearing as well. In total at least 63 per cent—effectively two-thirds—of Newcastle Law Centre’s income is set to disappear, which leaves us with the question of what will happen to those 550 cases and where those people will get the detailed help that they need.

Secondly, I want to address the issue of access to the court system. In December 2010 the Ministry of Justice announced the closure of 142 courts—93 magistrates’ courts and 49 county courts—out of a total of 530 courts in England and Wales. Although the business of these courts is being transferred to other courts, the court closure plans have caused the loss of experienced caseworkers and counter staff, while simultaneously making it more difficult to access a local court.

The proposed removal of public funding from private family cases—essentially, divorce, contact and residence disputes—will decimate the legal profession in these areas. Legal aid firms already typically work for only £50 an hour for this type of work. They provide excellent value for money in these critically important cases. Without their continued help, access to justice for our most vulnerable will be severely harmed and social cohesion damaged. Without that help, legal rights may not be enforced. With this modest but crucial income stream removed, many legal aid firms will withdraw from this work and many will go out of business altogether. If they do, there will be no going back. Having left this type of work, it is unlikely that firms will return to it should there be a later change of mind by government.

Initial access to proper matrimonial legal advice is often a gateway to other areas of social welfare law, including housing and debt. It may minimise conflict between separating parents and head off social services involvement and potentially expensive, harmful and disruptive care proceedings at much greater cost to the state.

Those members of the public who avoid the temptation simply to take the law into their own hands will be forced to attempt mediation. Should mediation fail, the parties will be forced, unrepresented, into a complex and technically difficult arena. While the judiciary are experienced in dealing with litigants in person, there is likely to be a flood of unrepresented litigants, which will severely impact on the courts’ business and lead to delay, lack of proper presentation of cases and potential injustice. The reduction in experienced court staff will exacerbate the situation, as there will be no one to help guide the public through the procedures and forms they need to complete to prepare their own cases. Cases which might have proceeded smoothly through the system will require direction hearings, with greater judicial input, for the judge to explain to the parties in layman's terms what is required to prepare and present their cases, and final hearings will be lengthened.

Budgetary cuts have already led to a reduction in the number of sitting days for part-time judges, leading to overlisting of cases, longer adjournments and greater inefficiency in the court system. Justice delayed is justice denied, and there is a very real and serious risk that those delays will only worsen when the flood of litigants in person starts to come through the system.

The removal of legal aid as proposed could have many unintended consequences. I hope that we shall be able during the passage of the Bill to make changes which guarantee effective access to justice for all. That means access to good-quality, face-to-face, free advice from a qualified person, and representation when it is needed for those without their own resources to enable them to pursue their right to equality under the law.