Ministry of Justice: Legal Aid Spending

Alex Chalk Excerpts

Thursday 22nd October 2020 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Alex Chalk)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McDonagh. I congratulate the Chair of the Justice Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill), on securing the debate and on opening it in such a full, balanced and helpful way.

In preparing this speech, I looked back at previous debates, and what a joy it was to see that the hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) secured a debate here in 2010. The hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) was there, as indeed was the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy). There was a rather lovely moment when the hon. Member for Hammersmith paid tribute to the hon. Member for Westminster North’s

“unrivalled record in pursuing such matters”—[Official Report, 14 December 2010; Vol. 520, c. 207WH.]

If she had an unrivalled record in 2010, it is even more unrivalled now. I genuinely congratulate her on the work she has done over so long in raising these issues.

I begin by emphasising some important points that have been made powerfully but bear emphasis. Legal aid stands as a pillar of our constitution and a bulwark of our freedoms. For a great many people, it operates out of sight; they may go through their entire lives without encountering it, and in that way it is not like the NHS or schools or policing. However, for those who do encounter it, its importance is immediately understood. Legal aid ensures that the guilty are convicted and the innocent walk free; that those facing conviction, punishment and disgrace on the accusation of the state will have those allegations properly tested. It is there to ensure that the rights and liberties of ordinary citizens, often created by this Parliament, are upheld. To paraphrase Lord Reid in the Unison case, legal aid ensures that statutes are not rendered a dead letter.

I echo the points that the hon. Lady for Westminster North made about practitioners. She referred to the good will, dedication and vocation of those who practise in legal aid work, and I cannot use any better words. She put it very well. They are not fat cats. I make the point, as I made in an earlier debate, that those who act in these cases, or indeed any cases, may very well not agree with their clients on the substance of what is being advanced, but they know that their first duty is to the court and their second duty is to their client. They must defend those interests and fight that case, within the law, without fear or favour. Those principles underpin why the Government spent £1.7 billion last year funding legal aid for those who need it. It is imperative that we properly protect this support and that it continues to be available in the future.

The hon. Member for Hammersmith asked me to concede that funding is less now than it was in 2012. That is a fact, so he is right about that. In fairness—I pay tribute to the entirely appropriate tone that the debate has been conducted in overall—in 2010 there was a sense that, whichever Government came into power, there were going to be some cuts. However, the question at this stage, as we take stock, is what legal aid should be required for and to what extent. That is a careful consideration that we intend to apply.

Over the past few months, the importance of the advice and legal sectors has been brought into sharp focus. My officials and I have been engaging extensively with various organisations across the advice sector throughout this period, and I know how challenging it has been for providers and their service users alike. I also know how many providers and practitioners across England and Wales have gone above and beyond to ensure that vulnerable people across society can continue to get the help they need.

As a Government, we have tried to support that work as best we can over this difficult period. I am delighted that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Laura Farris) pointed out, we were able to secure £5.4 million of emergency funding for the not-for-profit advice sector, to ensure that providers across England and Wales were able to adapt their operations and continue to provide their important services. In the early days of the pandemic, we understood that almost half the law centres in England and Wales were facing potential collapse, and I am extremely pleased that our funding helped to prevent that outcome. I do not suggest for a second that it solved all problems, but I hope it is fair to say that it was of some significant assistance.

I am also grateful for the close working relationships we have built with actors across the sector to ensure that funding can be utilised in the most effective way possible. Beyond the funding, we made a number of changes to support legal aid providers in the short term, including changing rules for payments on account and ensuring that providers can claim the same for remote hearings as they can for face-to-face hearings. In August we announced additional funding of up to £51 million for criminal defence lawyers through the criminal legal aid review.

Respectfully, and notwithstanding the point that can always properly be made that there needs to be more, £51 million is a significant sum. The point that I would gently make is that that was the first occasion when people were being paid for reviewing unused material. As practitioners in this room no doubt well understand, it is those hours spent between 10 o’clock at night and midnight reviewing the unused material that all too often discloses that critical point that allows them to advance in court the key issue that might lead to the acquittal of their client. That is now being remunerated in a way that it was not before.

I have very limited time, so let me try to deal with the issue of sustainability. Although I maintain that we have made some positive changes in the time available, I think everyone here would acknowledge that there is more to be done to ensure that the legal aid and advice sector thrives into the future. Many of us here will be well aware of the challenges faced by the sector, and we do not seek to suggest that they do not exist or to downplay them. The demands on providers, and indeed on the courts, are high and will likely remain high over the coming months as the covid-19 recovery gathers pace. Those impacts will no doubt be felt across society.

We are already doing important work in this space, and we want to go further in the coming months. As has been trailed, I recently launched our new legal support for litigants in person grant, which builds on the more than £9 billion that the MOJ has invested. There are some who would say, as did the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Bambos Charalambous), who is no longer in his place, “Look, it’s not enough.” I understand why he says that, but we need to look forensically at what it is going to develop. The answer is that law does not stand still, just as the rest of the world does not stand still. There are other mechanisms by which legal advice and assistance can be delivered using technology, and we must be alive to that.

In some of the excellent conversations that I have had with law centres, they have started to recognise that maybe their catchment area of need is not simply the area around, say, North Kensington for North Kensington Law Centre or the area around Hammersmith for the Hammersmith and Fulham Law Centre—which, incidentally, I know fine well the hon. Member for Hammersmith has spent many years supporting. Is there scope for technology to widen that catchment area, to broaden access to justice?

We have also launched a new project considering the issues relating to the wider long-term sustainability of the civil legal aid system. I am only too well aware that many practitioners and stakeholders say that this is a long-standing issue, but now, of course, it has been made more pressing due to the current situation, and we are taking a broad look at the system. Some hon. Members have raised the point about fee levels, and that is fair. In addition to considering the fee levels, we will look at structural issues such as the delivery model for civil legal aid and will seek to improve the remote delivery of advice where appropriate, to ensure support is available for those in hard-to-reach places, learning both from what has worked well during the pandemic and what has worked less well.

I have only a minute left, sadly, and I want to give my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst time to speak. I could have talked about the means test review. I wanted to talk about CLAR, the accelerated areas, the courts estate, which is getting more money, and my principal passion, early legal support and advice. I am absolutely of the view that intervening early makes a huge difference.

Let me end by saying that covid-19 presents a great challenge to our way of life, perhaps unknown in the modern era outside wartime. Other priorities will likely dominate the headlines—jobs, schools, hospitals, debt—but in a nation of laws, legal aid is vital, now and in the future. Legal aid work will never provide the personal financial rewards for practitioners of a commercial or chancery practice, and nor should it, but we need a system that continues to attract lawyers of sufficient calibre, prioritises acute legal need, achieve redress and improves people’s lives. That is the platform for those priorities that I have set out today.

[Sir Robert Neill]

Even I can’t be that short.