Legal Aid

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Wednesday 11th May 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

May I start, Mr Weir, by saying what a pleasure it is to serve under your chairmanship? I also want to congratulate the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert), not only on securing this debate but on making a very thorough and persuasive speech.

It was in November last year—six months ago—that the Minister first produced his proposals to restrict the scope and availability of legal aid. A lot has happened since then. In fact, this is our third debate on the issue in this House and I know that the Minister has also debated it outside the House with others, including my noble Friend Lord Bach. The other place is debating the issue again next week. As a result, many of the arguments should be familiar to the Minister, but what we have not had so far is any effective response to those arguments.

Several Members have already spoken in the debate. We have heard from Members from all parties who are committed to legal aid and understand its importance in our system. Among the many good points that the hon. Member for Cambridge made was one about viability; he asked whether the cuts will actually leave a viable legal aid service at all.

My hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue) drew on her own experience to make the point that telephone advice, however important it is, cannot be the only entry point to the system. She said that the alternative provisions that have been suggested are not adequate and that the alternative providers suggested by the Government are not equal to the task that has been set them; they have said so themselves.

In addition, the hon. Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland) nailed the allegation that legal aid is hugely expensive in this country. As he said, spending on legal aid as a proportion of the costs of the legal system is not high. Clearly, it must be restrained but I think that there have been false arguments that it is disproportionately higher than similar spending in other jurisdictions.

The right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd), who has, I think, more experience in this field than any other Member here, urged the Minister to think more slowly and carefully, and to make the decision not in the rushed way that has been portrayed so far, but in a way that takes account of all the views that have been expressed. That, perhaps, is the key point coming out of this debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) talked about housing—a subject very dear to my own heart as well—and the effect on our constituents in London, and the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) talked about the false economies that there will be in making the cuts to legal aid.

All those arguments might be familiar, but the Minister needs to respond to them today. He has had the benefit of the report from the Justice Committee, which took evidence from senior judges, the Minister himself and leaders in civil society, and criticised the lack of an evidential basis for the Minister’s proposals. On issue after issue, from the increase in litigants in person to the additional cost to the public purse and the inability of alternative providers to pick up the pieces should the proposals come into force, the Select Committee told the Minister to slow down, do some research and come back with revised proposals.

Other organisations, in particular practitioner organisations, have done the work that the Minister and his civil servants have not done, in providing evidence of the effect of the changes. I mention in particular the Legal Action Group, which took the original figure of 500,000—my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North said it was more than 600,000—and added in the most up-to-date figures for the past financial year and for the telephone advisory service. The resulting figure was nearer 725,000, which is almost 50% more than the Government initially said.

The Legal Aid Practitioners Group has considered the point about viability. The fact that the entry point has to be through telephone advice has its disincentives. Many people will not be able to cope with the telephone system; they rely on face-to-face advice, and will simply not access the system at all. The figures by local authority area show that if we relied on such a system, the reduction in the service that could be provided face to face would bring the service down to something like 7% to 10% of existing levels, which would not be sustainable. Purely by way of example, in my own borough of Hammersmith and Fulham that would take us from the current 1,600 case starts to 155 under the new system, which would not be sufficient to pay one person’s salary for a year. If that situation were replicated across local authority areas, there would be no service at all.

The Law Centres Federation has looked at the impact of cuts that have already taken place, including local authority cuts, which are at 53% in law centres—61% in London and 100% in my own borough. Those figures ought to be considered before any legal aid cuts are brought into effect this financial year. A Citizens Advice survey has shown that more than 50% of its members do not believe they will be financially viable once the cuts take effect.

I ask the Minister to listen to those hugely experienced and articulate voices. Labour Governments over the past 65 years have fielded a good record in this area, setting up the legal aid system, funding the first law centres and increasing spending on advisory services such as Citizens Advice, and on social welfare legal aid. But we also restricted the growth in legal aid funding from 2003 onwards, and would continue to do so if we were still in government.

I am at a loss to understand why the Government have abandoned some of the plans that we had to restrict that growth further, particularly in the tendering process, and particularly in the criminal legal aid field. Social welfare legal aid is only 5% of the total legal aid budget, and I hope that the Minister is giving a lot of scrutiny to that area in deciding on the revisions to his plans. Removing social welfare legal aid from scope will, I believe, give the whip hand to large public and private corporations, and will allow an inequality of arms that is unacceptable in our civil and criminal justice systems.

I would like briefly to deal with the issue of who is most affected. The Minister has said previously that it is inevitable that poorer people will be affected because it is they who are in receipt of legal aid—but that is a slightly glib answer, if I may say so. The excellent brief prepared for this debate by a young legal aid lawyer drills down into the figures and shows that, were the proposals introduced, 44% of people who received representation last year and 68% of those who got legal help would not now receive that assistance, and that more than 80% of people who would lose the assistance are in the poorest fifth of the population. Also, 80% of people who will be affected by the eligibility changes are in the poorest fifth of the population. Not a lot has been said about those changes, but they are highly significant.

When one looks at the discriminatory effects of what the Minister proposes, one sees that 31% of those affected by the scope changes in housing are from the black and minority ethnic population, compared with 8% in the general population; some 63% of those affected by the scope changes to welfare benefit legal aid are disabled, compared with 18% in the general population. The Minister might say that that is a truism, but his Government should be ashamed that changes of that kind are being proposed, given the disbenefit that they will have. It is a myth that representation is not for legal purposes, but for general advice—people need it to understand complex legal issues and to make appeals to higher courts—and that the people who currently benefit are in a position to represent themselves.

The Minister has heard from both sides of the House today, including very eloquent speeches from Government Members who have many years’ experience of this issue. I notice that Joanna Lumley has joined the growing campaign, which should provide the Minister with pause for thought, given her track record on such matters. I do not expect a full response today, but when the Minister finally comes to respond to the 5,000 responses—compared with the 50 received in the last consultation on legal aid by the previous Labour Government—I hope that, even if he has not read each response, he will have considered the overwhelming weight of opinion on the effect that the measures will have, not only on very vulnerable people and on those of us who still try to provide an advice service with very limited means, but on the whole criminal and civil justice system. That will be in jeopardy if we take away access to justice, removing the right of anyone with a meritorious case to get the initial advice, representation and assistance that they need to bring the case to court.

That is not, I hope, something that the Minister, given his background, would wish to see. I hope that he will give an indication in his response today, and a fuller indication in that formal response—the date of which he will no doubt provide now—that the Government have been listening to all those voices and will respond with a more sympathetic and pragmatic attitude to the continuation of legal aid.