Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Baroness Mallalieu Excerpts

Monday 16th January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Mallalieu]

My Lords, I wonder what on earth could, in fact, be a valid reason for objecting to the spirit of the amendments in this group, in particular the one proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Faulks. If, as I fear, some parts of the Bill remain unchanged by amendment and legal aid is withdrawn from some areas, it is almost certain that it will be shown in due course that legal of aid was essential for the smooth running of our benefits systems, our legal system and our society. I suspect that there will be a public sense of unfairness when the extent of the proposed cuts is more widely known. I suspect that at that stage there may need to be, as others have already said, some rapid amendment to the existing system.

Who knows whether our economy may once again prosper? Further money may be available to spend, not just on more lavish opening ceremonies for the Olympics, royal yachts or high-speed railways but on the needs of people who are poor and disadvantaged. It is surely not beyond the bounds of possibility, as history has often shown, that a new field of law will develop rapidly and that legal aid will need to be extended to a different category that has not been anticipated to require it. Flexibility, as others have said, so that further primary legislation, which is costly and time consuming and inevitably involves considerable delay, can be avoided, ought surely to be embraced by the Minister with enthusiasm. I look forward to seeing it in a moment.

[Lord Thomas of Gresford]

My Lords, the problem for many lawyers is that we so often look into the past. Common lawyers in particular try to piece together what has happened before. Consequently, we tend always to look for evidence to support our interpretation of events. I certainly share that problem, but I have also had some experience of running an independent local radio company. During that time I realised the great difference between businesspeople and lawyers. Businesspeople have to take decisions about the future, and they can do that only on limited information.

In this instance, the Government have had to take a decision; it has been forced upon them. To adopt a phrase first used by the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, 50 years ago, “The Visigoths were at the gates”. It was therefore necessary to decide how best we can cut the deficit and how, in this instance, legal aid should share that burden. This is an issue which I think I raised with Ministers before the Bill came here—I certainly referred to it in my Second Reading speech—and I have had further discussions since. When taking decisions about the future, one has to have flexibility when the future happens. One has to be able to adopt what was decided at one moment in accordance with experience.

This is an instance of that. Some of the prognostications that we have heard from the lawyers around this place—and there have been a lot of “mays” and “what is likely to happen” and so on from lawyers—might happen in the future, in which case the provision of legal aid will have to change. The changes might be positive and legal aid granted more widely. It is therefore essential that the Lord Chancellor has the power to add back into the scope of legal aid matters that prove not to be profitable in the way that the Bill envisages. There are not the alternatives that the Minister speaks of for dealing with various legal issues and the very important question of access to justice. That is why I am speaking to Amendment 25 in my name. This is a very positive way in which the Minister can demonstrate that the Government will be flexible in this area, will listen to the concerns that are voiced in the Chamber and will adapt the Bill accordingly.

--- Later in debate ---

The problem in terms of patient safety and avoidable errors has to be addressed when looking at changing a system like this. The cost savings have already been somewhat debunked as the costs are being transferred from one ministry to another. I would urge the Minister to listen to the NHS Litigation Authority in England and the Shared Services Partnership in Wales, which want clinical negligence kept in scope for legal aid. The plea to take it out has not come from anywhere within the NHS, and I hope that he will reflect carefully on the unintended consequences that have been addressed in this debate.

[Baroness Mallalieu]

My Lords, a number of noble Lords have spoken who have experience both of the legal and the medical sides of such cases. I am not one of them—it is outside the scope of my field of practice—but I am conscious that this debate on clinical negligence has produced some very powerful arguments, and more very powerful arguments are likely to be produced in the debates on Schedule 1 which are to follow it.

Noble Lords clearly will be arguing what I imagine will be described as special pleading for a number of deserving areas. After clinical negligence I know we are moving on, among other arguments, to those in relation to children, the disabled, disabled children, victims of domestic violence, victims of human trafficking, those who are in need of a guiding hand through the labyrinth of our welfare system, and those whose cases involve complex issues of law which often—indeed almost always—require expertise to present them fairly. Those are just some of the areas to follow. So my sympathy for the Minister, in listening to this particular debate, is great. However, it seems that the amendment in the name of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, is the very least that could be conceded. I am not by any means sure that it goes far enough, for the reasons which I will come to in a moment, and which the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, set out very clearly.

The Minister will have a difficult time at the end of the debates on these particular additions—as parts of the House will seek to make them—to Schedule 1. He could just stop his ears and refuse to concede on anything, and if he does I suspect that he will leave civil legal aid in tatters, and leave the civil justice system almost wholly to the well-off—to those who can afford to pay. He could pick one or two of the special cases—perhaps clinical negligence, which is very strong, or some of the others, about which we are about to hear. He could pick cases to concede on the basis of who shouts the loudest. He could pick cases that have the strongest or most numerous advocates in debate, those that are likely to attract a bad press for the Government, those that are likely to command public sympathy or—perhaps even more likely—those whose advocates manage to twist his arm most severely between Committee and Report stages in this House.

I respectfully suggest that the Minister should look first at just how much will in reality—particularly in the light of the King’s College research—be saved by each one of these proposals. As the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, said, in some cases it seems that the gain simply is not worth the candle and that legal aid is ultimately the cheapest option and should remain, albeit with the careful scrutiny suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Sudbury, for areas where money could clearly be saved.

Once the Minister has done that and has looked at each of the special areas to see whether the financial argument stands up, surely he must look at those remaining areas to see whether alternative access to justice could be maintained by other means—by mediation; by some form of alternative dispute resolution; or, in clinical negligence cases, by CFAs. We have heard from people closely involved in that area who say that those means will not be available in relation to clinical negligence.

Having done that examination, I am sure that the Minister will find areas where, in his own mind, he has a very real doubt about whether a satisfactory alternative exists and whether he is, by persevering with the Bill in its present form, going to leave people to make their own arrangements without financial help, expert guidance or advocacy and where the result is that the consequences of no legal aid will leave citizens who need the help of our civil justice system with no realistic means of access to law.

I am quite sure that neither he nor the Lord Chancellor would wish to do any of that. When he comes to examine fairly each of the arguments on this aspect and the ones to follow, I hope that he will be open minded in his approach to what is to be done. As I understand it, fairness is the principle that our Prime Minister has said all the cuts which the Government propose are to accord. I cannot believe that that means that civil justice should henceforth be the prerogative of those with means. Unless the Minister, whose judgment I respect and admire, is personally satisfied in each case that an adequate alternative provision is available to such people, I hope that he will take the matter back to his department, take out a red pen where necessary and put his foot down.

[Lord Newton of Braintree]

My Lords, I rise in the hope of commanding your Lordships’ attention for two reasons. First, my name is on one of the amendments in this group in the name of my noble friend Lady Eaton. Secondly, since I was unable to be here last week, I want the Front Bench to know that I am back. I have listened with care to the speeches that have been made, and obviously I express my support in particular for the arguments on children’s clinical negligence which were raised by my noble friend Lady Eaton. I also want to say to my noble friends that when they come across an amendment with the names Newton and Tebbit on it, they are in trouble. I am sorry that my noble friend is evidently not able to be here today. We are friends but no one who knows us both will think that we always come from the same perspective. Here, we are united.

I need not repeat the points that have been made in debate, not least the very important points made by a number of my noble friends, including my noble friends Lord Faulks and Lord Carlile and—not to minimise any other speeches—the very constructive remarks just made by the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu. I share the view that this is one of those areas where it is highly likely not only that the game is not worth the candle but that the costs to other departments will be greater than any savings to the Ministry of Justice. That simply cannot be a sensible way to approach the problem of the deficit as a whole.

Without rehearsing all these arguments again, I hope that I am right in detecting in the air today a move away from what my noble friend Lord Carlile memorably described at an earlier stage as “irritated intransigence” from the other end of the building, and that we will get a constructive approach. We have certainly heard a lot of constructive speeches; I think that they deserve—if I may say so to my noble friends on the Front Bench—a constructive response. Leaving aside the Newton-Tebbit point, if I were them and looked at the totality of the names on the amendments in this group, I would decide, if I may coin a phrase, that concession was the better part of valour.