Draft Civil Legal Aid (Housing and Asylum Accommodation) Order 2023

Afzal Khan Excerpts

Wednesday 18th January 2023 General Committees

[Afzal Khan (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I thank the Minister for his opening remarks. The Labour party will not oppose the draft Civil Legal Aid (Housing and Asylum Accommodation) Order 2023. We support in principle the introduction of non-means, non-merits tested initial advice for housing, welfare benefits and debt, but we are concerned about the sustainability of providers and whether they have the resources to deliver advice, particularly on welfare benefits and debt, as they were largely removed from scope by LASPO in 2012.

This Government’s track record on both criminal and civil legal aid has proven to be nothing but disappointing and has led to a justice system on its knees. We are now 10 years from the passing of LASPO. Post pandemic, and in the midst of a cost of living crisis, morale in the public sector is at an all-time low. Years of under-investment in the legal aid system, coupled with cuts in 2011 and 2014, have resulted in large numbers of practitioners leaving legal aid practices, and firms are struggling to recruit across the board. There are also issues of firms taking on less work under a legal aid contract as the work is deemed to be loss-making. Law Society analysis suggests that the number of providers starting legal aid work could drop by a third by 2025. Between 2011 and 2022, we have seen a drop of nearly 40%. What assessment has the Minister made of the impact of that on the courts backlog?

The last time fees were increased was in 1996—over 25 years ago. The Government imposed a further 10% fee cut in 2011. That represents a real-terms cut of 49.4% in fees to 2022—almost half. Not only are we still waiting for answers as to why the Government have not committed to the recommendations of their own criminal legal aid review; on civil legal aid, we must wait until 2024 to have a review, so any changes are not likely to take place until 2025 at the earliest. That delay creates a threat in itself. Unless interim measures are put in place to shore up existing provision, the risk is that there will be no system left by 2025. Can the Minister explain why it will take this long? These delays are doing nothing other than worsening the current chaos in the courts. What assessment has he made of the impact of these delays on the existing courts backlog?

Across England and Wales, 65% of the population do not have access to an immigration and asylum legal aid provider. In the Minister’s own constituency of Finchley and Golders Green, there is a total of zero immigration and asylum legal aid providers. What advice is he giving to his constituents? What steps are the Government taking to tackle legal aid deserts, so that victims can have access to justice?

Turning to housing, this winter the system is at crisis point. According to the June to September 2022 mortgage and landlord possession statistics, landlord possession claims have more than doubled in the last year, and possession orders have nearly tripled. The demand for legal services in housing is, understandably, growing, yet currently around 12.5 million people in England live in a housing legal desert.

We are witnessing a growing and dangerous justice gap in the civil legal sector. The consistent lack of serious action from this Government threatens the sustainability of our entire justice system. We currently have a legal aid system running on empty. I therefore urge the Minister to urgently review the scope of civil legal aid and the worsening decline in the number of civil legal aid providers. With the current cost of living crisis, it is simply unfeasible for people up and down the country to travel hundreds of miles to access their closest legal aid provider.

This statutory instrument will do little to improve the wider state of disrepair that the civil legal aid system is currently in, as civil legal aid is put out of the reach of more and more people who need it. The Government have had 13 years to nurse the justice system back to health, and they have failed miserably. I hope the Minister will consider the concerns I have raised. The Labour party supports the draft statutory instrument.

[Mike Freer]

I am grateful for the shadow Minister’s contribution and support for this extension to legal aid. Let me answer a couple of his points.

I do not have the figures on civil legal aid, but I reassure colleagues and the shadow Minister that the recent injection of more than £135 million into the criminal legal aid system has, since the new contracts came into force in October last year, seen an increase in providers, firms and duty solicitors. It is, then, simply not true to suggest that the legal aid system is about to collapse. I expect the reform of the civil legal aid process to result in a similar improvement in provision.

[Afzal Khan]

The Minister says it is not true that the legal aid system is collapsing; perhaps he can explain why the courts have a 60,000 backlog and we see, year after year, a decline in the number of people who practise legal aid.

[Mike Freer]

Without getting into a debate that is not really to do with this statutory instrument, let me put it firmly: the outstanding case load in the criminal courts was on a downward trajectory until the industrial action by the Criminal Bar Association. The uptick in the backlog was a direct result of that action. Since the members of the Criminal Bar Association went back to work, we have started to see a downward trajectory in that case load.

On sustainability, I repeat that the early indications from the injection of more than £135 million into the criminal side of legal aid are that there has been an increase in the number of legal aid practitioners. I expect the same impact once we have reformed civil legal aid.

The particular changes in this statutory instrument will see a £10 million injection into civil legal aid, on top of the £30 million increase in the previous year. We are spending a significant amount of money to support people through civil legal aid. It remains a focus of the Department to reform all aspects of legal aid to make sure that it is both efficient and effective and that the money is well spent. I make no apology for that.

I thank the shadow Minister for his interest in my constituency. I reassure him that we have no shortage of a vibrant legal ecosystem in London. On top of that, the area of Finchley and Golders Green and the neighbouring seats of Hendon and Chipping Barnet are well served by excellent MPs.

Question put and agreed to.