Legal Aid and Civil Costs Reform

Baroness Browning Excerpts

Monday 15th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord McNally]

I think that I had better duck for cover in this case. I hear the point that the noble Lord makes. If we already have specific plans in this area, I shall write to him; if not, I shall make sure that that point is fed into the discussions that will be part of the review, which will go on for the next three months.

On investigating leaks, at the very beginning of my career I recall the Labour Party, under Harold Wilson, setting up a leaks inquiry and the first meeting of that inquiry being leaked to the Guardian. I was not dismissing the issue; I deplore it and, as I said at the beginning, I wish that we could get back to the rather old-fashioned idea that statements are made to Parliament and then the newspapers report them.

[Baroness Browning]

My Lords, can my noble friend clarify the response that he gave the noble Lord, Lord Bach, just a few moments ago, when I believe I heard him say that welfare cases are to remain the same? The House will be aware that, with all-party support in both Houses during the previous Parliament, the Autism Act is now on the statute book. One thing that triggered the need for that Act was the fact that many adults and adolescents with autism find themselves in dispute with their local authority over not being able to access appropriate packages of support. That applies not just to those with autism but to people with a great many lifelong disabilities. One of the difficulties in challenging a local social services department is that often the key person who knows most about you is the social worker, who is an employee of the very department with which you have to negotiate. These disputes often become legal cases, although those in social services departments to whom I have spoken about this openly put up their hands and say that, once a legal challenge is made, they very often settle out of court before the case reaches that stage. However, I should be very concerned if vulnerable adults—and they are vulnerable—across the disability spectrum were denied the support of the courts.

[Lord McNally]

My noble friend’s question points to many of the problems that we face. If legal aid is automatically given in many of the areas that we are removing from scope, it becomes almost a first stop. We are actively trying to promote a different, cheaper and quicker mechanism for settling disputes. A dispute between someone suffering from autism and the local social services department almost automatically ends up as a battle between lawyers in court. We have got something wrong somewhere. We have taken tough decisions; we have taken people out of scope; and we shall look at different ways of getting advice. We propose that legal aid be retained for community care cases and for judicial review in community care cases. As I said before, we are not hiding the fact that this is a removal of legal aid from areas and cases that have previously been covered. We seek to encourage the alternative resolution of disputes, partly because, as the noble Lord, Lord Bach, said, successive Governments have found that the creep of legal aid makes it very difficult to keep overall control of it.