Prisons and Probation

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Tuesday 14th May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Richard Burgon]

My hon. Friend makes some important points. No one is saying that the publicly run prison system is without problems, because the crisis extends across public sector prisons, but my hon. Friend explains eloquently that lessons can be learned from the experience at places such as HMP Berwyn. His point about accountability is crucial. With a privatised justice system and private prisons, accountability, which is so important for our democracy and so important to turn the justice crisis around, is sadly deficient.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

On accountability, the previous Prisons Minister, the right hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart), was going to resign if he did not improve the prisons, so I wonder whether we will hear about the current Prisons Minister’s attitude to that. The previous pledge was based on improvements at 10 institutions, including Wormwood Scrubs in my constituency, but of course there are another hundred or so prisons. We want to get away from this ad hoc approach. We need consistency across the Prison Service.

[Richard Burgon]

My hon. Friend, who makes an important point, has always been a passionate advocate for the improvement of conditions at Wormwood Scrubs. He is right that the former Prisons Minister had pledged to disappear from that role if he did not improve things in those 10 prisons.

[Andy Slaughter]

He has! [Laughter.]

[Richard Burgon]

He has, but under different circumstances. The key point is that the 10 prisons were cherry-picked and were not the 10 worst. If we are to turn this justice crisis around, we need a serious, measured, objective approach based on the evidence, not on chasing headlines for political promotion.

Legal Aid for Inquests

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Wednesday 10th April 2019 Westminster Hall

[Stephanie Peacock]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. The system is simply unfair. Others have spoken of how the inquisitorial hearings are anything but. Instead, they are adversarial, law-drenched, distressing journeys, where already traumatised families are silenced and a well-oiled state machine sets about cementing a wall of denial. The families did not ask to be in such a situation. It was not something they sought or could prepare for. They are thrust unexpectedly into intense grief and pain and forced to go through further trauma.

One father spoke of how his family was forced to use money that they had been putting away for his daughter’s wedding to pay for legal help following her death. Such stories are utterly devastating. The Government must do more to help. They cannot continue to turn a blind eye to the suffering of some of the most vulnerable in our justice system.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

The Government seem to rely on this point about the inquisitorial process, so one must ask why, if the family does not need representation, the various state bodies always need to be lawyered up. Indeed, there is something deeply cynical about the Government saying that in their final report—

[Mrs Anne Main (in the Chair)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman has applied to speak, but he cannot make his speech now. He has made his point and hopefully the hon. Lady will tackle it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to be here under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mrs Main.

To be fair to the Minister, as I always try to be, the issue is not a new one, and has not appeared on her watch. I remember appearing at inquests more than 20 years ago when lack of representation for families, including in death in custody cases, meant that Inquest—led then, I think, as now, by the admirable Deborah Coles—was going around finding pro bono lawyers to act for families.

I do not entirely agree with the hon. Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis) about lack of need, and indeed the Government’s report includes something about families receiving legal aid, and being represented. Not all coroners treat families well in those situations, not all lawyers acting for state agents behave well, and not all witnesses tell the truth, particularly when they may be found negligent, or even culpable of causing death.

I share the concern of my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff Central (Jo Stevens) about the Government’s report, that the process was not entirely right. The fact that it came out with the rest of the LASPO review meant that it got rather lost in all that. It shares some of the faults of the LASPO review in that the facts are well marshalled but do not appear to bear out the conclusions. In particular, the report states that

“a number of stakeholders pointed out that it should not be assumed that in cases where the state has legal representation, representation for the family is necessarily required nor that it enhances the results of the coroner’s investigation. They suggested that the addition of further lawyers might actually hinder the process, by making the process more adversarial and legally complex.”

The Government hide behind other “stakeholders”, whoever they are, but that is a rather cynical way of dismissing families’ concerns. How else, other than by the provision of legal aid—because pro bono cannot carry the weight of inquests in its entirety, although lawyers do a good job—are we to deal with complex medical and legal issues, with coronial rules that are not straightforward and are unique in the way they work, as well as securing evidence, preparing cases and challenging witnesses? As an analogy, public family law cases are one of the few areas where there is still representation for families, because it is perceived that the issues are crucial and the state has a lot of power in those cases. I do not see that inquests are different.

The case of Molly Russell was mentioned. I am not going to deal with the facts of that case, but nevertheless it is true that legal aid was refused on the basis that the matter is not of “wider public interest” and because of the means test. The matter was being appealed, but then the Legal Aid Agency just changed its mind, which shows rather faulty logic. I have been involved in a number of cases, including the tragic case of my constituent Natasha Ednan-Laperouse, who died on an airline flight because of an allergen in a Pret a Manger sandwich that she was eating. That led to a prevention of future deaths report that made substantial recommendations to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and other Government agencies.

I could mention, also—I wish I had more time—some of the cases involving the Whirlpool company. I have had incidents in my constituency, but in particular I want to talk about the death of Douglas McTavish and Bernard Hender in Llanrwst. That was caused by an electrical fault in a Hotpoint tumble dryer, which caused the fire which led to their death. In all these cases, there is a need for proper representation in the public interest, even though those involved are not state actors.

Why should there be legal aid in such cases? In many cases, the Government should have been aware of the risks, but took no action—whether that involved the Office for Product Safety and Standards, the Food Standards Agency or the internet and internet regulation, which are very topical at the moment. The Minister cannot get away with the report that has been done so far. These matters need to be properly looked at again.

Knife Crime

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Monday 25th March 2019 Westminster Hall

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to be here this afternoon under your chairmanship, Sir Graham.

We were here just a few weeks ago debating this subject, and indeed knife crime has come up regularly—we had the urgent question on Friday in the main Chamber. It is also right, as my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) said in his extraordinarily passionate and persuasive speech, that it is several weeks since we first heard about the knife crime summit, which apparently will happen some time next week. In asking a Minister a question about that on Friday, I said that I sincerely hoped that the summit would not be a talking shop and that we would see resources and action as a consequence of it.

I am glad that we are at last taking this seriously and debating it on a regular basis—I just hope that these debates lead to action—but I cannot help but observe that, since the last knife crime debate in Westminster Hall, and since the knife crime summit was announced, there have been two murders in my borough: one was of a 17-year-old boy, for which offence a 15-year-old has been charged; and the other, just a week ago, was just outside my constituency and was the murder of a 29-year-old man, who was stabbed to death needlessly and pointlessly in an ordinary street. It is often said—this is one reason we are now taking this very seriously—that for every one of these tragic murders, there are a hundred other stabbings and similar incidents. Some are not even reported to the police, and some are known only to the doctors who treat those involved. There could be thousands of instances of young people carrying weapons.

I do not want to exaggerate, because on the whole our constituencies are still safe places and walking around them at night, or at any time, is a perfectly safe and reasonable thing to do, but there is a cultural change and a change in how communities feel about knife crime. They feel that it is not just about one or two people, or gangs, or known criminals. They feel that it is now inculcating the atmosphere of where we live. That is why I do not think it is an exaggeration to say that knife crime is a national emergency or a matter for Cobra—we have to take it extremely seriously.

One of the young people who died in my borough, Ayub Hassan, was 17 years old. He was born and lived in my constituency, and he was killed in my constituency. As his mother told me, he was her best friend. She is inconsolable at his death. Although there is almost a pyramid, of which the killings are at the top, and although we worry about every offence, there is something absolutely significant about young lives being taken in this way, and the opportunity that is lost, and the way that people did not have a chance to live their lives, and about how it affects their siblings, their parents, their wider family and often the whole community where they live. We have to get to grips with knife crime. It is an incredibly complex, multi-layered issue, and will take a number of years to get right. However, it also requires urgent action.

This debate is about sentencing. That is an important aspect but, as we have heard in all the speeches so far, it is only one element. I suspect that my views on sentencing are probably closer to those of the Minister than they are to those of the hon. Member for Dudley North (Ian Austin). I am a former shadow Justice spokesman and have looked into this in some detail. I am not a big fan of mandatory sentencing. As has been pointed out, mandatory sentencing itself often has a degree of discretion of which the courts make due and proper use. There are sentencing guidelines, but we have to leave individual cases to the judiciary. We have a very competent judiciary —it is not a soft judiciary—in this country. As we have heard, we have one of the highest incarceration rates. Yes, there should be appropriate sentencing and, yes, people should be locked up for many offences, whether it is for carrying a knife, using a knife, or for any serious violence that results from knife crime. However, we will not solve this problem by sentencing policy.

[Geraint Davies in the Chair]

We need to start with something a number of Members have mentioned: proper community policing. The loss of that in London over the past few years has made a dramatic difference. When it started, it was an experiment —we were told it was about reassurance. Those were times of greater plenty as far as public funds go, and it was felt that, in addition to everything that was supposed to work, including response policing and detection, we could afford the luxury of putting police back on the streets—bobbies on the beat, community officers.

Then the police would have told us, “We’re not going to catch people doing crimes. We’re not going to solve crimes, but it’s an important community role.” Many senior police officers now admit that they were wrong about that, and that community policing has played a valuable role in reducing crime. A dedicated, in both senses of the word, group of police, even a small group—it was typically six per ward—got to know the community and which people were good and bad. The intelligence they collected and their knowledge of what was going on meant that it was not about just reassurance; it was about policing in the way we do best in this country, by consent and with the support of the community. It was resource intensive, and it is impossible for those who agree about that policing, whichever party they come from, not to acknowledge that the resources were just taken away.

The Mayor of London has done a very good job in putting resources back—we were down to one officer per ward at one point. It is a semantic thing to say that ward boundaries are the problem. The resources are the problem, and they need to be increased quickly. If that prevents further serious injury and death, it will go at least some way to turning this juggernaut around—all the indications are that we are going in the wrong direction.

I will make a pact with Government Members if they concede that resources have been cut back too far. Local authorities have lost 50% of their funding, meaning that things that are often discretionary, such as youth centres and youth funding, have been cut by even more than that. Most of the youth clubs in my constituency have closed over time. When they were being closed, it was fashionable for some politicians to say, “How on earth does youth work—diversionary activity—decide whether people will go out with a piece of metal and stab someone?” Such comparisons are crass. The opposite argument is that if young people are given something useful to do, are made to feel they are worth while and are shown that there is investment in them, their neighbourhoods and their communities, they have a different outlook on life. Life does not become hopeless. It does not become just a wasting of time and getting into trouble. If Members on both sides will admit that we must reverse that absolute drain on resources in our local communities, I will not make a party political issue of it. I concede that I think everyone is of goodwill whatever their views on aspects such as sentencing, penal policy or investment. I believe that there is a will across political parties to get this right in response to the horrific things we have seen. Having that intention is a good start, but it is not where we need to go.

The second thing we need to do is engage some of the expertise and knowledge that is out there. Part of that is in our policing and our judiciary, and among our medics and the experts in the field, but part is in the community. I spent half an hour at surgery this morning with the mother of a young boy in my constituency. She had not come to ask me to do anything. In fact, the surgery was almost the other way around—I learned far more from her than she did from me.

We spent half an hour talking about exactly this problem. Her son had a very late diagnosis of special needs, and all the trouble he was having at primary school was put down to bad behaviour. He ended up being excluded from secondary school at an early stage and going into alternative provision, which, his mother said, was dreadful and dire. It was not just that he was not being properly educated and his needs were not being identified and no action taken; before he was a teenager even, he had been cast out—he was now excluded, no longer part of acceptable society.

The second thing that happened, of course, was that he was put with all the other naughty boys, and when naughty boys go around together, perhaps not doing terribly bad things to begin with, after a while one or two of them will get into trouble and get convictions for this, that or the other—a bit of criminal damage perhaps. My constituent’s son now has a conviction for carrying a knife. That comes about either from neglect, bureaucracy or lack of intervention by, or resources from, statutory bodies of all different kinds.

Where does that leave the parents? My hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury), who is no longer in the room—she tragically had a death in her constituency over the weekend—said to me, “Where is the support for parents of victims but also for parents who have tried to do their best to keep their children out of trouble and who worry every night about where their sons or daughters are?”

[Mrs Hodgson]

On my hon. Friend’s powerful point about who people come into contact with when they are first getting into trouble, if there was an automatic 10-year sentence on first arrest for carrying a knife, a young person who had not been in trouble at all could find him or herself not just in a young offenders institution but among the prison population, with some very, very bad people who had done much worse things. Turning someone who is carrying a knife because they are scared into a hardened criminal eventually could be an unintended consequence of what we hope to achieve with sentencing.

[Andy Slaughter]

My hon. Friend shows a lot of compassion and understanding.

I do not advocate a soft approach; on the contrary, we need rigour in the system, but not the knee-jerk reaction that we will suddenly cure this by sentencing. How often have we heard that in relation to every possible offence? Is that not what has driven the prison population to double, and the conditions in prisons and the assistance for those leaving to be so dire in this country that this is an international embarrassment?

I do not want to say much more. I believe not just that we are well-intentioned but that we are resolved to tackle the issue. The expertise is there, and part of that is listening to our communities.

I am almost dreading the summit next week, because I fear it will be a talking shop, a couple of press releases and not much more to get the Government through another week or two. I hope the Minister will tell us that that is not the case. I also hope that we will hear from him before 7 o’clock—I apologise, Mr Davies, that I will not be here after that. If I miss the end of his speech, I will read it diligently, as I always do. I know that it will be worth reading because he shares that view.

I respect what the people who drafted, motivated and signed this petition are trying to achieve, because they are expressing the same frustration as the mother who came to see me today: that Members are standing around, looking powerless—they might think we are uninterested, but we are not—and are not solving problems that are solvable. Those problems are getting worse and worse: they are now affecting not just individuals, but whole communities. This is a national emergency, and we need to act.

[Geraint Davies (in the Chair)]

I invite my successor, Sarah Jones, to make a contribution.

Legal Aid: Post-Implementation Review

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Thursday 7th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gauke]

As I have said, the change that we have announced today in the context of unaccompanied minors is an important step. I am grateful to the hon. Lady for welcoming that. We do spend money on the legal aid system—I think it is something like £40 million on immigration and asylum—and it is important that we provide support in this area. There is a wider point that must be accepted: there are limited resources available, and we need to ensure that they are targeted in the best way possible. It is right that we have announced changes today in the particular context of unaccompanied minors and immigration.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

May I ask the Lord Chancellor two things? First, will he use his considerable influence to get us a whole-day debate on these reviews? The Act took about a year to get through. We have had three reviews and an action plan—almost 500 pages today—and this review has taken two years. With the best will in the world, I do not think that this statement will do justice to that.

Secondly, can we look at the overall cumulative effect on his Department of the 40% cuts that will take place in legal aid and the courts? Will he sit down with the profession and the judiciary to discuss that? I was the shadow legal aid Minister during the passage of the Act. We did warn about many of the consequences, but we probably underestimated the overall effect on the court system. This is very important to individuals who are seeking redress. There is also a dysfunctionality in the courts now, particularly in areas such as the family courts, and we have to sit down seriously and address those issues.

Courts IT System

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Frazer]

I am very glad to give the confirmation that the Prison Service system is a different IT system and no defendant has been released as a result.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

My constituents have contributed £43 million to the stalled digitisation process, thanks to the closure and sale of Hammersmith magistrates and county courts. Their reward is to travel for an hour or more to courts at Clerkenwell or Hendon. The Minister says the courts system is running well; it is not: it is in freefall. Will she at least postpone any further closures until she can guarantee a working service?

[Lucy Frazer]

I know the hon. Gentleman does a great deal of work in this area; he is very involved in the local law centre and has a great deal of knowledge. He will therefore be aware that we have recently consulted on what our guidelines should be in relation to any future closures. We will be guided by the response to that consultation, which is due out shortly.

Bailiffs: Regulatory Reform

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Wednesday 9th January 2019 Westminster Hall

[Emma Reynolds]

I could not agree more. I have had contact with that trade association. It is simply not realistic to expect a trade association, which is there to represent its members, to take action against those members. In fact, the lead of that organisation was on “World at One” on Radio 4 today claiming that there was a robust complaints procedure. I beg to differ and will address that point towards the end of my speech.

The worst case of this kind that I have heard—I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central (Sarah Jones) has raised it with the Minister and will speak about it today—is the devastating case of Jerome Rogers, who took his own life. He had offered to pay back the debt in stages, but the bailiffs refused. I pay tribute to the brave campaigning of his family, who are here today. We owe it to them to do all we can to change the culture of the bailiff industry so that they are there to help, not penalise people. There is a positive example from Hammersmith and Fulham Council in London, which has stopped using bailiffs to enforce the collection of council tax arrears because it thinks it is better to try to work with the people involved and help them pay back that debt rather than forcing them into a spiral of ever more debt.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for mentioning Hammersmith and Fulham Council, which as she correctly said stopped using bailiffs to enforce council tax debts from April last year. Collection rates have not gone down since. One council cabinet member said:

“We have done this by intervening early with residents who may have trouble paying council tax, speaking to them in a respectful and supportive way to develop a sustainable repayment plan that both protects the council’s income while avoiding forcing people into making bad financial decisions to avoid bailiffs, such as resorting to payday lenders or missing rent payments.”

Should not all local authorities and anyone trying to enforce debts adopt that as their philosophy?

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Evans. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton North East (Emma Reynolds) for introducing the debate so eloquently that it is almost impossible to imagine the Government not wanting to act. I think there is cross-party agreement that action needs to be taken, which has to be incredibly powerful. I know that the Minister is listening, as she has listened to me previously, and that she will have listened to everything that my hon. Friend said.

As we know, bailiffs are the only part of the financial sector that is not regulated with an independent regulator. A powerful case has been made already in the debate, and by Citizens Advice and many other voluntary organisations, that the problem is worsening, that it is not being fixed by the changes made in 2014, and that something should be done. My involvement arose from a meeting with a constituent, the mother of Jerome Rogers from New Addington, who in 2016 ended his life at the age of just 20. Jerome had two £85 traffic fines from Camden Council that he had received in the course of doing his job as a motorbike courier. Due to the escalation of that fine and enforcement by Newlyn plc, the fines spiralled to more than £1,000. The Minister is aware of the case and last year she very kindly met with Jerome’s family and with me.

Jerome’s case is particularly tragic, but we must not think that it was a one-off. The coroner found that the bailiffs involved with Jerome had complied with the industry’s guidelines—guidelines that are self-written and self-enforced, as we have discussed. That is not something to be proud of; it simply highlights how flawed the guidelines are and how flawed the system of self-regulation is across the whole bailiff industry—especially in view of what Jerome was subjected to in the months leading up to his death. Each of these things underlines a systemic problem rather than a problem specific to Jerome.

Jerome was refused an affordable repayment plan. He called the bailiff after being told that he would be receiving a visit to his home and was told that he needed to call Newlyn. Newlyn then told him that he must pay the debt in full. After the bailiff visited his home, adding more money to his debt in the process, he was finally offered a repayment plan, but at £128 per week it was clearly not affordable. His average earnings were about £97 a week, and less than £20 after his work expenses. If Camden Council had offered him a repayment plan of £10 per week there and then, he could have paid off both £65 fines in three months.

Secondly, Jerome’s motorbike—his only means of earning money—was clamped. There was dispute over the valuation of the bike and whether it was even legal to clamp it, but looking beyond the valuation, it is surely wrong that a person’s sole means of income can be taken away by bailiffs. Thirdly, the enforcement fees were duplicated because the two cases were treated as separate, which is in the interests of no one but the bailiffs, who can charge £75 per case for simply writing a letter. It makes no sense that £150 can be added to a debt for a few pieces of A4 paper, or that two cases cannot be dealt with in the same letter. Bailiffs charge hundreds of pounds per case for every visit to a property, which might explain why they refused a repayment plan before the bailiff made his visit. The coroner viewed the bailiff’s behaviour as intimidating and raised the possibility that his actions could have been viewed as a form of harassment. They involved sitting outside the house for a prolonged period without telling Jerome why he was outside.

The fourth issue is one that has already been spoken about: the bailiff was paid by results. He had the potential to earn more if he seized assets, but if the debt was not cleared he would not get paid. Debt collection agencies are prohibited by their regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority, from paying enforcement agents through such commission models. Those models are common in the bailiff industry, but we cannot stop them leading to bad practice when bailiffs have the power to seize assets and enter homes. It is systemic.

[Andy Slaughter]

There is FCA regulation in the private sector to some extent, but not in the public sector, as in my hon. Friend’s example. Extraordinarily, the National Audit Office’s recent report found that in many cases Government bodies are worse at fulfilling their duties. Does she agree that the Minister should look particularly at what local authorities and central Government Departments are doing in the area?

[Sarah Jones]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. We must tackle all the aspects; we cannot just say that it is a problem for local authorities without also looking at independent regulation.

I realise that I have already spoken for longer than I should have, Mr Evans. I wanted to give other examples of cases and stories that people have written to me about, but I will write to the Minister about them instead.

The trade body is not fit for purpose as a regulator. Indeed, it has written to me, as have other bailiffs, threatening legal action:

“Please desist from using this tragedy to lobby for changes that are unrelated to the actions of the enforcement agents.”

The chief executive officer of the trade body called our work on behalf of Jerome’s family

“a means to attract publicity for a populist campaign on behalf of the debt advice sector.”

For shame! That is not what we are doing; we are trying to honour the memory of Jerome and fix a system that is clearly broken. I really hope that the Minister will listen. I will work with her, as we all will, to make sure that we bring in the right kind of regulation.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Tuesday 18th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Edward Argar]

As the hon. Lady will be aware, we have commissioned an independent review, which is being led by Charlie Taylor. I look forward to receiving his report in due course.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

When we debated legal aid last month, the Minister was expecting to publish the LASPO review before Christmas. It is already eight months late, so will she tell us the date on which it will now be published? Why are we not getting it until next year? What is the reason for the delay?

[Lucy Frazer]

I am happy to take the hon. Gentleman’s question. I remind him what he said to the Law Society several months ago—that it is important to take time to review this important subject. It is important and, as I have said, we have met over 100 organisations and individuals. We finished our final engagement with organisations at the end of last month and we will publish the review early in the new year.

Courts and Tribunals (Judiciary and Functions of Staff) Bill [Lords]

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Wednesday 12th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Yasmin Qureshi]

No, as we understand it, although it is envisaged that some of these tasks will be procedural, others will be very important to people whose rights are affected. We might think, for example, that requests for adjournments are straightforward, but they are not. As practitioners and former practitioners will know, they can be complicated, because when a judge decides whether to grant one, they take into consideration a host of things, so it is important that the person be appropriately qualified.

We accept that the procedure rule committee will be able to iron out some of the questions about what are judicial and what are administrative functions, but the main thing is that these people will be carrying out judicial functions and deciding some difficult issues, and it is only appropriate that they be qualified and appropriately experienced.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We discussed this in Committee. Interlocutory case management often has a large bearing on what happens in a case; it can alter what happens in a case and it can alter cost decisions. In their own way, such decisions are as important as purely judicial decisions. The Government’s proposal might be a false economy, so I support what she is saying.

[Yasmin Qureshi]

I thank my hon. Friend, a former shadow Justice Minister, for his intervention, and I take his point.

We acknowledge that the relevant procedure rule committee will set out the procedural requirements for who can carry out the procedures, but we also know that these committees are predominantly made up of senior judges, so this will have implications for the independence of judicial decision making.

We also believe that such a shift will not match the expectations held by members of the public on the experience and independence of those making judicial decisions about their rights.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andy Slaughter]

Let me begin by saying that it was indeed a pleasure to serve on the Bill Committee, not least because of its brevity. I think that the Minister alluded to that when she described it as a small Bill. It is a small Bill, but I am afraid it is also a rather inadequate and unsatisfactory Bill. I am not going to repeat the excellent speech made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford East (Imran Hussain), but he was absolutely right to say that there were no adequate safeguards, and that the nature of the delegation of functions has not been specified sufficiently for us to feel certain that we can support it.

As my hon. Friend observed, the most disappointing aspect of the Bill is that it represents just the shards, or the remains, of the legislation on this subject that we were promised. We hear a great deal about the—is it the £1 billion programme of investment in digitisation in the courts? However, the Bill goes nowhere towards addressing this. Nor does it deal with the oft-raised concerns of Members about how that is being funded and about funding through court closures.

Let me give one brief example. You will understand why I picked this example, Madam Deputy Speaker. This week I asked the House of Commons Library for a list of court closures since 2010. It gave me a list of 156 courts and buildings that had been closed since then, but one figure stood out. Hammersmith magistrates court accounts for nearly 20% of the entire saving that the Government have made during that time. Some courts have been sold for £1, but Hammersmith magistrates court was sold for £43 million. Perhaps the Government are rubbing their hands and saying what a valuable contribution that is to the reform agenda.

Let me make these points to the Minister, if the Minister will listen. I will wait until I have her attention.

A couple of years ago, the Minister’s predecessor, the right hon. and learned Member for North East Hertfordshire (Sir Oliver Heald), called me in for a tête-à-tête and showed me a planning brief for what would happen to Hammersmith magistrates court after it was sold. Apparently, it was to become a mixed housing development. The Minister may like to know that it has now been sold to the developers of an 850-bedroom hotel, who are currently awaiting planning consent.

I would like the answers to two questions, not necessarily today but at some point. First, how much did the Minister’s Department spend on drawing up that detailed planning brief and marketing it for a purpose which has now gone completely by the board? Secondly, notwithstanding the large capital receipt, does she believe that it is fair recompense for a site on which, apparently, there is to be an 850-bedroom hotel? In fact, two will be built on one site. This shows the folly of the way in which the Government are conducting their programme of investment and disinvestment. When courts are closed, the detriment to communities is obvious, and in the case of Hammersmith magistrates court the closure did not take place for operational reasons; its purpose was purely to generate a capital receipt.

The Bill will no doubt be passed today, despite our assertive opposition to it, but we will return to more serious matters on a subsequent occasion. We must subject the Bill to further scrutiny, and the Government must present the House with proposals for legislation to deal with the serious questions of how that digitisation and so-called reform programme is or is not working, and what the cost to our community is of the loss of well-established and vital court facilities.

Courts and Tribunals (Judiciary and Functions of Staff) Bill [ Lords ] (First sitting)

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 4th December 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Lucy Frazer]

That is a very important point. We serve the people through justice and the court system. The people who come to the courts to get justice are the people my Department is serving. In all our reform programme, we have a user-centred focus and consistently engage with users to improve our services. All the forms we have recently produced were produced with insight from users, which is why we have an extremely high satisfaction rate for the reforms we are making.

The hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley makes an important and valid point, and I can tell her how users will benefit from this. She will have been in the House when questions were put to me about delays in the court system and about the time it is taking for certain hearings to come before the courts. We want to ensure that there are as few delays as possible and that justice is not only fair but speedily dispensed. These changes will allow functions to be operated by the appropriate people, and will enable us to get more swift, easy and quick justice for those who use our courts.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

I am sure the Minister is sincere in her intention. My experience is that there is increasing delay. Part of that is caused by inexperience, perhaps because of the use of lay magistrates as opposed to district judges, who do not take command of the issue and do not timetable matters correctly. I am concerned about any decline in the level of experience. This is perhaps a question not of legal qualification but of experience in being able to manage and seize control of cases. I would rather see the greater control and scrutiny that the amendments would introduce.

[Lucy Frazer]

I am sorry if the hon. Gentleman has not experienced the appropriate level of judicial engagement or appropriate judgments in courts. I recently went to the family court in London, and I have been to courts across the country, and I have spoken to magistrates who operate in the family courts. The expertise and dedication I see is commendable. We can stand still, do nothing and just let our courts operate in the way they are operating, or we can sit back and reflect on how we can improve our court system. We are trying to do the latter through the Bill. We are trying to improve people’s experience of the courts, recognising that funds and resources are not unlimited and that we need to use them as well as we can. On listing, my Department is looking at a listing programme to ensure that lists operate as effectively as possible.

It is simply not necessary for all authorised staff exercising judicial functions to possess legal qualifications. The qualifications and experience staff need will depend on the nature of the work they carry out. Legal qualifications of the level that would be required by amendment 5 not only are far too high for the routine and straightforward case preparation tasks that we anticipate many authorised staff may carry out, but may not be the most relevant qualifications for staff in different jurisdictions. For example, it is more helpful for a registrar in the tax tribunal to be a tax professional by background than to be a legal professional. Where powers currently exist, rule committees already determine the qualifications staff need to exercise particular functions, and that works well. Such committees can focus qualification and experience requirements on what is most relevant to the work that those staff carry out.

Amendments 3, 4 and 5 would all set the bar for qualification prohibitively high and rule out a large proportion of Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service staff from giving legal advice or exercising judicial functions, even though they may have been doing either or both for a number of years.

Future of Legal Aid

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Thursday 1st November 2018 Westminster Hall

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the future of legal aid.

It is a pleasure indeed to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Henry. I am delighted that we have three hours to debate the important and complex subject of the future of legal aid. Let me begin by thanking the Backbench Business Committee for allowing the time, the many hon. Members in attendance and the cross-party group, More United, which has championed this issue and pressed successfully for this debate.

We are in Justice Week, the aim of which is to show the significance of justice and the rule of law to every citizen in our society and to register the importance of an effective justice system beyond the usual audience of professions and practitioners. That aim is reflected in the many representations and briefings we have received in preparation for this debate. They have come not only, as one might expect, from the Law Society, the Law Centres Federation, LawWorks and the Equality and Human Rights Commission, but from Mencap, Mind, Oxfam, Amnesty International, Youth Access and the Refugee Council. The message is that legal aid is important to everyone, but particularly to the poorest and most vulnerable.

I extend my thanks to those organisations not only for their help for today, but for the work that they do every day to support the justice system and those who need to navigate it. Indeed, I extend thanks to all the legal aid lawyers outside the House, not least my own local law centre in Hammersmith and Fulham, which is ably led by Sue James, last year’s legal aid lawyer of the year. I extend thanks also to those in the House who do the same, not least the Chair of the Select Committee on Justice, the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), and the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on legal aid, my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck).

My final thanks are as follows. It would not be right to let a debate on this subject pass without acknowledging the work of Carol Storer, the director of the Legal Aid Practitioners Group for the past decade, who is leaving this month. There will be other opportunities to mark her outstanding contribution as an advocate and organiser for the whole legal aid community, but I know that hon. Members on both sides of the Chamber will have benefited from her skill and knowledge and been on the receiving end of her charm and persuasion.

I am sure that the Minister will have good news for Carol and all those I have mentioned when she responds both today and in the post-implementation review of part 1 of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012—hereinafter LASPO. It was good to hear the Minister confirm this week at the APPG that the review will be published before the end of the year. I know by that she does not mean, “By way of written ministerial statement on the last sitting day.” Obviously, that will not be the case, because it is going to be good news and the Government will want to boast about it.

This is a complex and many-faceted subject, and I will not be able to cover all areas and concerns, so let me start with my requests to the Minister, because I do not want them to get lost. We have just heard from the Chair of the Select Committee on Health and Social Care, the hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston), that cuts to prisons are causing serious deterioration in the health and welfare of prisoners. We should not be surprised. The Ministry of Justice budget will be cut by almost half in little more than a decade of continuing austerity. It is the biggest cut to any Department, and it is a relatively small Department, with only three major areas of spend. Inevitably, all three areas—not only prisons and probation and the courts service, but legal aid—are going through debilitating change. My first request to the Minister is that she tackle the funding issue head on. No one is saying that all the cuts since 2010 will be reversed, or that the clock will be turned back, but if the Government wish to honour their stated objectives for LASPO, and in particular,

“To target legal aid at those who need it most”,

they must put something extra in the pot.

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend will remember when we sat on the Bill Committee and warned of the intended and potentially unintended consequences of the cuts and changes being made. Does he agree that the nightmare for people desperately in need of legal aid for everything from housing to medical negligence cases has been worse than expected, and that justice has certainly been denied to them?

[Andy Slaughter]

Yes. I will come on to the actual, rather than the predicted, effect of LASPO. Without spoiling the surprise, we will find that the Government have overachieved in cutting budgets and underachieved in every other respect.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

Before my hon. Friend moves on, will he give way on that point?

[Andy Slaughter]

Of course I will give way to the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on miscarriages of justice.

[Mr Sheerman]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is those very vulnerable people who find themselves feeling that they have been victims of miscarriages of justice? The Criminal Cases Review Commission was at our meeting yesterday and it explained that a lack of resources inhibits its ability to process the number of cases it would like to. The cuts in legal aid mean that many people are faced with representing themselves in very complex situations.

[Andy Slaughter]

That is not something we discussed during the passage of LASPO, because the impact on criminal law seemed relatively mild compared with the effect on civil law, but that came afterwards. Now, eligibility restrictions and the reduced availability of legal aid practitioners as a result of cuts mean that people often go into court unrepresented, even in quite serious matters, which of course increases the risk of miscarriages of justice.

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the impact of the Government’s policies has not fallen evenly on all members of the population and that women have been particularly affected? Often, they will represent themselves and be repeatedly brought back to court by a perpetrator, perhaps their ex-partner, and have to face the trauma all over again. That has been a particularly damaging result of the changes introduced by the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling).

[Andy Slaughter]

My hon. Friend is exactly right. Rightly, more attention has been focused on domestic violence than on perhaps any other single issue. Although changes have been made, they are nugatory as far as the Government are concerned. In many cases, women are still being victimised because of the changes that LASPO introduced, against the assurances given at the time.

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. I am concerned about the impact on sick and disabled people. In some cases, up to 90% of social security claimants on the employment and support allowance, the personal independence payment or the disability living allowance have been denied access to support as a result of the cuts, but 70% of people who go on to challenge the decision, in person or with a welfare advocate, will be successful in their claim. Is that not a real injustice?

[Andy Slaughter]

The figures speak for themselves. My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I am responding to a series of powerful interventions. Across the board, matter starts have gone down from more than 900,000 at their peak in 2010, to about 140,000 in the past year. That is a dramatic fall, but in some areas, such as welfare benefits, the decline has been even sharper.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. Does he agree that the absence of legal aid funding has driven legal aid solicitors and not-for-profit providers out of the market, which has left the door open to cowboy providers? They purport to be able to offer advice on immigration cases, for example, but that advice is poor quality, unreliable and, frankly, inaccurate, as I see repeatedly in my constituency.

[Andy Slaughter]

My hon. Friend raises that issue from a position of knowledge, as she used to serve on the magistrates bench. There is a deskilling of the professions because of the decline in the number of practitioners who can secure funds. Although informal and non-legal advice, such as that from McKenzie friends, can play its part, too often it is stepping in where proper professional legal advice is needed and, as my hon. Friend has said, it is too often being done by people who are, effectively, rogues.

It becomes wearing to hear Minister after Minister repeat the mantra that legal aid is an important part of our legal system and that all individuals must have access to justice, without ensuring that the resources are there to allow that to happen. That is a disconnect. Although I welcome the remit and engagement of the LASPO review, the feedback from those who have met the Department suggests that little action will follow the warm words we have heard. More specifically, this week’s Budget confirmed that the Department will continue to make hundreds of millions of pounds of cuts over the next five years, some of which will inevitably come from the legal aid budget. The Minister must realise that that is unsustainable and incompatible with her stated support for legal aid.

Let me try to make it easy for the Minister to say yes. In garnering public support for this debate, More United specified three asks to put to the Government to deal with some of the worst consequences of LASPO, which were: access to early advice, access to welfare advice and simpler criteria for obtaining legal aid.

Those will not be unfamiliar requests to the Minister, but they encapsulate solutions to three major and predicted calamities of LASPO. First, cutting early advice means problems fail to get sorted while they are small and manageable, with worse consequences to the individual and the state down the line. Secondly, taking welfare advice out of scope leaves those people who need help most struggling. Thirdly, restrictive and complex eligibility criteria have become an effective way of stopping even those of very limited means getting access to what legal aid is still available.

[Teresa Pearce (Erith and Thamesmead) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is being extremely generous in giving way. During the passage of the Bill, the Government said that they believed that withdrawing legal aid for family matters would increase mediation, but research shows a 56% decrease in mediation. The Law Society says that early advice from a solicitor was a significant source of referrals to mediation in family matters. I agree with that, and I wonder if my hon. Friend does too.

[Andy Slaughter]

Yes. I will come on to mediation. My hon. Friend highlights two points: first, the lack of early advice and its consequences, and secondly, that the so-called alternatives put in place by the Government have failed, so we are left with effectively no safety net.

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is starting to build up quite a case on the issue. Sally Denton, a senior solicitor at the Nottingham Law Centre, made precisely that point about the importance of early advice:

“Given the massive changes to the benefit system coupled with the evidence that most people presenting as homeless to the local authority are doing so following the end of a private tenancy and the massive crisis in homelessness it is clear that failing to enable people to access early assistance with benefits issues will result in many losing their tenancies and either being homeless…or having to be accommodated by the local authorities”.

Do these savings in one area not just create much bigger costs in another?

[Andy Slaughter]

My hon. Friend identifies the fact that by pulling away parts of the legal aid structure, the whole thing has collapsed in many areas. It is often the case that one problem, which may be housing or debt, is caused by another solvable problem, which is the lack of welfare benefits. Because they are not in receipt of welfare benefits, someone who would otherwise be eligible for legal aid may not qualify under the eligibility rules, and therefore the whole thing spirals down.

As I was saying, I have three specific requests. There are other discrete issues that I wish to mention and I will say a bit more about those in a minute, but I would like some indication from the Minister, when she responds to the debate, that at least these three specific requests are being considered as part of the review.

LASPO was billed as having four objectives,

“to discourage unnecessary and adversarial litigation at public expense; to target legal aid at those who need it most; to make significant savings to the cost of the scheme; and to deliver better overall value for money for the taxpayer.”

The Ministry of Justice predicted that the budget for the legal aid bill would be cut by £350 million. It promised that there would be innovative ways in which advice and legal services would be offered, allowing costs to be cut while still maintaining access to justice.

There was, however, little of substance. Instead, LASPO swept away 60 years of the development of legal aid, taking almost all private family law and most of social welfare law out of scope, introducing onerous restrictions on eligibility, and turning on its head the principle of a right to advice and representation. Now, matters would be eligible for legal aid only if expressly allowed by the schedule to the Act.

Later, criminal legal aid got the LASPO treatment. It did not feature in any detail in the original Bill, but subsequent secondary legislation introduced cuts of a similar scale for crime, opening up the prospect of advice deserts and, as we have already touched on, miscarriages of justice, where defendants do not meet eligibility criteria but cannot afford representation.

[Catherine West]

On the narrow point of advice deserts, does my hon. Friend agree that some London boroughs are appreciative of the Bar’s pro bono unit and the free representation it offers, and indeed, in my borough’s case, of the St James’s Church Legal Advice Centre in Muswell Hill, where the excellent Peter Thompson, who is not 21 anymore but still gives legal free aid, works? However, access to justice is a genuine issue in other parts of the country, where retired solicitors are simply unable to provide that kind of support.

[Andy Slaughter]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. First, however good pro bono services are, they cannot replace legal aid and it would be wrong to say that they could. Secondly, I will give an example of a letter I received in preparation for this debate, which my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Ian C. Lucas)—who is in attendance and is himself a distinguished solicitor—may want to comment on. It says that in north Wales only two firms are contracted to do mental health work, in an area with eight hospitals with mental health services, and only one firm is doing community care—that is, social and health care law. That situation is far from untypical.

[Ian C. Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)]

rose—

[Ian C. Lucas]

I am grateful for the prompt from my hon. Friend; I was being a little cautious, compared with my colleagues. The dearth of advice in Wrexham, which is the largest town in north Wales, has a real impact. Even worse, until my last-minute intervention the Conservative-Independent coalition that runs the council was going to close our local citizens advice bureau. There is virtually no advice available. My constituency office has had to take on an extra caseworker to provide advice in the biggest town in north Wales.

[Andy Slaughter]

My hon. Friend reminds me to touch on the effect on Members of Parliament, which I am sure we are all interested in.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. Most advice centres are experiencing staff reductions and are underfunded. That much is clear with regard to issues such as housing and immigration. Does he agree that that is a disgrace, to say the least?

[Andy Slaughter]

I absolutely agree. Pre-LASPO, my own law centre employed eight solicitors across a range of, mainly, social welfare law, but now it can afford to employ only two solicitors. It is only through the generosity of the local Labour council—against the backdrop of its own budget cuts—and that of charitable trusts that it is able to top up that number with further practitioners. Even the previous position, however, was insufficient for the need, as I well know, and the current position is almost unsustainable.

[Alex Cunningham]

Mencap mentions very specifically in its briefing the distress faced by people with disabilities who cannot get the support they need, and who drop out of the social security and care system because there is no one to speak for them. Even if they qualify for assistance, they cannot find the specialist lawyers they need. Mencap says that that is happening across the country. Does he agree that the Minister needs to look at increasing provision, and also needs to assess whether the necessary specialist lawyers are available in the system to help people?

[Andy Slaughter]

That is particularly important to my hon. Friend and he makes a very good point. We have been briefed by both Mencap and Mind on today’s debate. It will not surprise anyone that Mind said that people with mental health problems are twice as likely as members of the general population to experience legal problems and four times as likely to experience complex legal problems—in other words, problems that extend across a number of different disciplines. As was predicted, those are the people who are worst affected.

Even as the Bill was being published, alarm bells were being rung, and not only by Opposition Members. I had the pleasure of leading for the Opposition in Committee on LASPO. We heard not only from experts and users of the system but from the Government officials. The impact assessments that accompanied the Bill predicted that people with protected characteristics would be disproportionately affected by the cuts.

The official MOJ line was:

“The wide-ranging availability of legal aid can lead people to assume legal action is their only option, even where early practical advice could be of more help to them and avoid them needing a lawyer at all.”

Gillian Guy, the chief executive of Citizens Advice, said the money available was not enough and that we were losing precisely the swift and practical advice offered by CABs and advice and law centres. She added that Citizens Advice research suggested that every £1 spent on early advice saved around £9 later, partly by avoiding unnecessary and expensive tribunal hearings.

Richard Hawkes, the chief executive of Scope, said:

“To cut legal aid at a time of unprecedented changes to welfare support would mean disabled people who fall foul of poor decision-making, red tape or administrative error being pushed even further into poverty as they struggle to manoeuvre the complicated legal system without the expert support they need…This could result in a ticking timebomb of poorly prepared and lengthy tribunals and appeals, choking the courts and not saving money, but actually costing the government far more in the long term.”

The Government were warned. Did the predictions of doom come to pass? We know that they did. In fact, LASPO has cut far more deeply than had been billed. The stated aim was to reduce the legal aid budget by £350 million, but last year spending was £950 million less than in 2010, at £1.6 billion, as against £2.55 billion in 2010-11, with similar percentage falls in both civil and criminal legal aid.

While waiting for the Government review of LASPO—it was promised for between three and five years post-enactment, but we are now nearer six years post-enactment—we have not been short of expert opinion on its effects. Reports by the Justice Committee, the National Audit Office, the Public Accounts Committee, the Joint Committee on Human Rights, the Bar Council, the Law Society, the Bach Commission and the Low Commission have been consistent in highlighting the serious failings of LASPO. In 2017, the Bach Commission found that

“the justice system is in crisis. Most immediately, people are being denied access to justice because the scope of legal aid has been dramatically reduced and eligibility requirements made excessively stringent. But problems extend very widely through the justice system, from insufficient public legal education and a shrinking information and advice sector to unwieldy and creaking bureaucratic systems and uncertainty about the future viability of the practice of legal aid practitioners.”

In 2015, the Justice Committee published its verdict:

“Our overall conclusion was that, while it had made significant savings in the cost of the scheme, the Ministry had harmed access to justice for some litigants and had not achieved the other three out of four of its stated objectives for the reforms. Since the reforms came into effect there has been an underspend in the civil legal aid budget because the Ministry has not ensured that many people who are eligible for legal aid are able to access it. A lack of public information about the extent and availability of legal aid post-reforms, including about the Civil Legal Advice telephone gateway for debt advice, contributed to this and we recommend the Ministry take prompt steps to redress this.”

Advice officers around the UK began looking for alternative sources of funding so that they could continue working with clients who would soon find themselves ineligible for legal aid. However, with local authority budgets cut, few sources of funding were available. Many agencies closed and private firms found that it was no longer economic to undertake legal aid work. As we have heard, whole areas of help have been removed from scope, leaving millions unable to get advice or representation. There has been an almost complete collapse in early legal advice. That means that cases now escalate and are resolved only after becoming much more complex, traumatic and expensive, if they are resolved at all.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Teresa Pearce) said, the Government argued that removing legal aid for most private family law matters would increase the uptake of mediation so families could resolve their problems outside court. They predicted an increase of 9,000 mediation assessments and 10,000 mediation cases for the year 2013-14. Instead, there was a decrease of 17,246 mediation assessments in the year after the reforms, and the number of mediation cases fell by 5,177 in the same period. One reason for that was the withdrawal of firms from those areas of law, leaving no one to signpost litigants to mediation.

The removal of legal aid from most areas of family law has had a disproportionate effect on women. In a survey carried out by Rights of Women and Women’s Aid, 53% of respondents took no action in relation to their case because they could not apply for legal aid. It is becoming so difficult for victims of domestic violence to obtain legal aid that last year, the Government were forced urgently to review the criteria for legal aid in such cases. Time limits preventing victims of domestic violence from obtaining legal aid for court hearings were scrapped and rules were relaxed to accept evidence from victim support organisations. Despite that, there are still concerns that too many women are falling through the cracks and not getting the help they need.

A dramatic increase of litigants in person following LASPO has created a severe strain on the court system which, to quote the retiring Director of Public Prosecutions this week, is already “creaking” under the effects of significant cuts and court closures.

[Ian C. Lucas]

My hon. Friend touches on an important and under-appreciated point. The court system is struggling to cope with litigants in person and the judiciary, whose role it is to judge cases, is having to take on the advice aspect of the justice system. It is difficult to combine that advisory role with providing impartial judicial functions.

[Andy Slaughter]

My hon. Friend knows his business well. That is self-evidently true, and the judiciary is responding magnificently, but we are asking those people, whether in tribunals, magistrates courts, or the higher courts, effectively to do two jobs. They are asked both to be inquisitors and to represent parties—sometimes one party and sometimes both—as well as perform their ordinary functions. That is simply unsustainable in the long term.

Litigants in person can struggle to understand court procedures and their legal entitlements, and cases involving them take longer to resolve. The Personal Support Unit reports that, in 2010-11, its staff and volunteers helped people without access to a lawyer on about 7,000 occasions. By 2017-18, that number had rocketed to more than 65,000. The removal of most welfare benefits law from the scope of legal aid—which, again, we have touched on—has disproportionately affected disabled people. The number of benefits disputes cases with legal aid has fallen by 99% compared with pre-LASPO levels, from 29,801 cases in 2011-12 to 308 in 2016-17. When individuals are able to challenge benefits decisions, the majority of those decisions are overturned. Since 2013, 63% of appeals against personal independence payment decisions and 60% of appeals against employment and support allowance decisions were decided in the claimant’s favour.

[Mr Sheerman]

My hon. Friend is something of a historian in legal matters. Who was it—it may have been H.R. Greaves in his first lecture at the London School of Economics—who said:

“In England, justice is open to all—like the Ritz Hotel”?

[Andy Slaughter]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, but I think he means that I have been around for too long.

Many Members will have seen the results of LASPO in their surgeries and I am grateful to colleagues for raising this point. Half of the MPs who responded to a survey carried out by the all-party parliamentary group on legal aid said that the volume of constituency casework had increased over the past year. More than half said they had seen a notable increase in the complexity of that work. Many MPs reported that advice agencies in their constituencies had closed, meaning that those MPs were no longer able to refer constituents onwards to get the help they needed. Some MPs even said that citizens advice bureaux were referring constituents to them because the bureaux were unable to cope with the number of people seeking help.

Fearful of falling foul of human rights law, LASPO introduced exceptional case funding. The Government projected that 5,000 to 7,000 such exceptional cases would be funded per year, but only 954 people benefited from that scheme in 2017. In almost every aspect, the consequences of LASPO have been as bad as predicted or worse, and the mitigating measures have not worked.

Unlike my constituents, the Government are not short of advice on what to do. In particular, I commend the 25 recommendations in the Bach Commission report. Those include changes to scope and eligibility; a simplification of the current rules, including for criminal matters; reform of exceptional funding; and better access to existing services, including more face-to-face advice. That report also suggests solutions to other issues of concern. The restrictions on legal aid for judicial review, the lack of representation at inquests for the deceased’s family, and the complicity of the Legal Aid Agency in refusing legal aid in cases that are embarrassing to Government, such as the prisoner book ban, are all subject to recommendations in that report. Those are serious issues, not just of inequality of arms, but of manipulation of resources by Government to avoid proper scrutiny of their actions. I hope the Minister has time to respond on those issues. If not, I suspect we will be debating them again before too long.

Many Members wish to speak, so I will conclude by reiterating our main asks for today. The first is to restore access to early advice. Lack of early advice means that simple problems are left to escalate. Larger problems cost more money to fix. Lack of early housing law advice on disrepair issues can lead to health, social and financial problems, the tab for which will ultimately be picked up by the NHS and local authorities. Prevention is better than cure. A recent report commissioned for the Law Society found that restoring early legal help would save the taxpayer money.

Secondly, we ask that the Government restore access to welfare advice. Welfare benefits law is labyrinthine, and that system is particularly difficult to navigate for people who are disabled. Recent social security reforms have led to a steep rise in inaccurate decisions and benefit sanctions. Thousands of disabled people have been left to challenge unlawful decisions without legal assistance. How many more unfair decisions would be overturned if people who had been treated unlawfully by the Department for Work and Pensions could access welfare advice?

Thirdly, we ask that the Government simplify the criteria for those who need legal aid. The Government should consider a significantly simpler and more generous scheme. The means test should be based on a simple assessment of gross household income following an adjustment for family size. In 1980, civil legal aid was available to 80% of the country. Today, that figure is thought to be under 20%. Ordinary working people who are just about managing are now considered too rich to be eligible for legal aid. Pensioners are among those worst affected by the outdated means test—even modest savings disqualify them from legal aid. The effect is that a vulnerable pensioner unlawfully denied basic care may well have to pay for a lawyer out of their own pocket. Legal aid does not only fund a lawyer, but provides protection from paying the other side’s costs.

I have been sent a huge number of individual case studies. For reasons of time, I am not going to be able to go through all of them—I would be happy to supply them to the Minister, but I am sure she is aware of the problems that arise. I have seen some heartbreaking cases involving mental capacity. Often, elderly people are removed from their own homes, sometimes forcibly, and are unlawfully detained by local authorities. They wish to go back to their homes and to criticise the conditions in which they are being kept, but because they have equity in their property which, frankly, they have no chance of raising money on, they are unable to challenge the decision. That is a fundamental breach of people’s human rights.

Cases such as those should make the Minister think again. I therefore ask her to put her well-thumbed, prepared text aside, because it does not—I know, having heard it earlier this week—address the specific point that I and others highlight in this debate. As a distinguished lawyer, I know she wants to ensure access to justice for all. She knows that even the best justice system is worth having only if it is open to anyone to use it. The requests I have made would go some way to restoring that access. I hope we get a positive response today and when the review reports next month.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lucy Frazer]

The point that it is useful to nip problems in the bud and address them at the outset, so that they do not escalate, has been made and heard. Changes were made to LASPO to ensure that legal aid was available where people were at their most vulnerable. On clinical negligence, we should make clear that legal aid is available for compensation claims in respect of neurological trauma caused to children early in life due to negligence by medical professionals. As the hon. Member for Hammersmith recognised, by putting such things in the scope of legal aid, we are protecting the most vulnerable.

The hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) mentioned social security claims. We are introducing significant technological changes—things such as digitisation and better communication with judges using technology—to make the tribunal system much more accessible.

Many Members, including the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Teresa Pearce), mentioned family law. LASPO rightly removed most private family matters from the scope of legal aid, but legal aid remains available for mediation in certain family disputes where parties meet the eligibility criteria. Since November 2014, legal aid has covered the costs of the mediation information and assessment meeting and the first mediation session for both parties, even if just one is eligible for legal aid.

The hon. Member for Hammersmith mentioned exceptional case funding. Let me update the figures he gave. The number of people making applications and the number of applications granted have both increased. Some 746 applications for ECF were received in the first quarter of 2018, of which 59%—390—were granted. That is the highest proportion and number of grants since the scheme began.

The hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for Ashfield (Gloria De Piero) both mentioned domestic violence. Legal aid is available to those seeking protection from an abuser in domestic abuse cases, and it was granted in more than 13,000 cases last year.

The hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts) raised important points about Wales. She has asked parliamentary questions on a number of matters, and I am happy to meet her to discuss the issues she has raised.

I was interested to hear the points by the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Bambos Charalambous) about children. I was pleased to meet him earlier this week to discuss some of those issues.

It is important to set out where legal aid is available, but we recognise the impact of the changes made by the coalition Government in 2012, which many Members rightly highlighted. As all hon. Members know, my Department is looking at the impacts of LASPO. The hon. Member for Hammersmith said he is looking for positive news, but as a former shadow Justice Minister, he knows as well as I do that it would be wrong to pre-empt the outcome of the review. We will respond at the end of the year.

I am happy to set out the process, which I outlined at the APPG on legal aid earlier this week. The evidence-gathering process has been comprehensive. My officials met more than 80 individuals and organisations from across the justice system to gather evidence, and they held two rounds of consultative group meetings with organisations, representatives and academics from across the justice system. At a third round of meetings, we will examine opportunities to consider further legal support. Officials will meet the Family Justice Council to discuss its concerns and recommendations in further detail, and are due to have a second meeting with the Civil Justice Council to explore its recommendations further.

I have held a number of instructive roundtables with those who have used our justice system, both with and without legal aid. I have met a number of Members of the House of Lords—last week I sat down with Lord Bach and other members of his commission on access to justice, and I have met Lord Low. Last week, I met the Equality and Human Rights Commission. I have also met many parliamentarians, and individuals from the advice and third sector who work with the most vulnerable in our society.

Alongside those meetings, much material has been submitted throughout the review, and we are considering that. It is clear that there are many issues to consider, from the stage at which advice is sought to types of provider and methods of provision. Many experts highlighted the value that technology can bring to individuals to navigate their rights in the court process.

We now use technology in every part of our lives, and justice should not be immune from that advancement. That is why, through the courts reform programme, the Government are investing £1 billion in updating our justice system for the 21st century. That programme is helping people to access court better, at the same time as changing outdated back-office systems. People can now apply for divorce online, we are trialling online applications for probate, and people can be updated about their social security claim through their mobile phone. Our reforms help vulnerable witnesses to give pre-recorded evidence so they do not need to see their attacker in court, and they enable those who find it difficult to travel due to disability or age to take part in proceedings by video link. That investment will transform how people experience the justice system with digital services, making justice more accessible and straightforward as well as using taxpayers’ money wisely.

[Andy Slaughter]

I sense that the Minister is drawing her remarks to a close, but I wonder whether she will address a few more of my points. First, online and telephone services are valuable, but some people need face-to-face services. Will she look at that? Secondly, I know there is a separate review going on in relation to the representation of deceased people’s relatives at inquests. Does she know what stage that has reached? Will it report, or will it form part of the same review?

Finally, will the Minister look at the independence of the Legal Aid Agency? There are serious concerns that, in specific cases or more generally, there has been interference in the agency’s decisions because it is not sufficiently at arm’s length from the Government. We may need to deal with that as a discrete issue, but anything she can say to reassure us on that would be helpful.

[Lucy Frazer]

I am happy to answer those points. We did not need to commit to looking at inquests, because LASPO made no changes to the inquests system, but the Government recognise that it is an important part of access to justice and we are looking at it. However, that is not the same review; it is running alongside the legal aid review.

Will the hon. Gentleman remind me of his first point? On his third point, the Legal Aid Agency is independent.

[Andy Slaughter]

On inquests, I simply wanted to know, if the review is separate, when it is likely to report. My first point was about face-to-face advice.

[Lucy Frazer]

Ah, yes. Of course it is important to consider all methods of provision. We have the telephone gateway, and many advice centres are looking at digital methods of offering advice. We do of course fund face-to-face advice at the moment in the provision of legal aid, and it forms an important part of giving advice.

As I mentioned, we are in the process of carrying out a legal aid review. All today’s contributions, along with the previous debate in this Chamber secured by the hon. Member for Westminster North, yesterday’s meeting with the APPG and the contributions and submissions in the other meetings we have held, are an important part of that process. I thank all hon. Members who spoke for their contributions, which we will take on board.

[Andy Slaughter]

It is good to see you in the Chair, Mr Bailey, for the second part of the debate. I hope you have enjoyed it as much as I have. I will not abuse the position of having time left to speak for more than the two minutes normal for the response. I am grateful for that time.

I am grateful to everybody who has spoken and for the responses we had from the Front Benchers. There is so much consensus in the room that one might wonder what all the fuss is about. I know most of the speeches came from the Opposition, but there was an authoritative contribution from the Chair of the Justice Committee, the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), several interventions from the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) and the contribution from the Minister. We have heard unanimity on the importance of legal aid, as well as an appreciation of how it needs to work and why it is not working at the moment.

Perhaps that is not surprising. As Members of Parliament we are perhaps in a unique position to see the usefulness and the essential nature of legal aid, from the top and the bottom. We see it in our surgeries, where people bring us increasingly legal problems and we think about how we can resolve them. People have not been well served by the system but are now doubly not being well served in having their grievance addressed. Many colleagues gave examples about areas such as housing and welfare benefits.

A lot of points were made about the contribution of legal aid to the rule of law, whether in ensuring that those accused of criminal offences and threatened with the loss of their liberty have proper representation to avoid miscarriages of justice, or about the broader principle—not simply an individual’s cause being addressed—of policing good behaviour and ensuring that the institutions that we all rely upon give a proper service and do not let down the people they know. Those institutions could be anything from the Department for Work and Pensions to the NHS. Those are essential functions.

The problem is that many of us do not have confidence that the real damage that LASPO has done so far will be addressed. I understand why the Minister cannot say more today, but I hope that she found it useful to hear the comments that have been made. She knows what we are looking for. However the money has to be found and however persuasive she has to be with her colleagues in the Department and in the Treasury, she knows that the savings achieved so far are way in excess of what was intended or predicted, but she also knows that the collapse in service has been far greater than was provided for. That in itself should give the opportunity to make good some of the worst deficiencies that have occurred since then.

I am grateful to everybody who has spoken today. I am also grateful to those from Hammersmith and Fulham Law Centre who have attended the debate. I know that they will be taking the message back to many of their fellow practitioners that we are listening, we are engaged and hopefully we are informed, but it is the Government’s response that we are waiting on before, as the Minister said, the end of the year.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the future of legal aid.