Legal Aid

Baroness Scotland of Asthal Excerpts

Thursday 11th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scotland of Asthal]

My Lords, I, too, very warmly thank the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, for bringing forward this very important debate. I declare my interest as a practising member of the Bar, a recorder, a deputy High Court judge and chair of the All-Party Group on Domestic Violence.

It is with a very heavy heart indeed that I rise to speak in this debate. During the passage of the LASPO Bill, a number of us in this House on all Benches raised serious concerns about the likely impact of the then proposed changes to legal aid, Lord Newton of Braintree being not least among them. I think of him every time we debate these issues. Our experience over the past 30-odd years had shown clearly the importance of having legal aid available to those who need assistance to resolve often emotional and sensitive issues that flowed from the breakdown of their relationships and marriages, particularly where those relationships had produced children and the breakdown affected them adversely. The fear was that those who had been in receipt of help, advice and support would not be able to obtain the assistance they needed, which would be deleterious to their well-being, to the well-being of the children and to justice as a whole. I remember well the Minister assuring us from the Dispatch Box that our fears in this regard were unfounded and that the quality of help and support that would still be available would be capable of meeting the needs. However, your Lordships will also remember that no impact assessment was produced to substantiate those assurances. Indeed, the indications that we had available pointed in the opposite direction. During this very short intervention, I will not reiterate the concerns I raised during the passage of the LASPO Bill. However, we were also assured that the Minister would keep a careful eye on the impact of these provisions so that we could readdress them if necessary, and that assurance gave us some comfort.

However, I have to tell the Minister that the concerns that we had then have all, tragically, proven to be true. Since the passing of the Bill into an Act, the consequences that we feared seem to have come to the fore. In preparing for this debate, I have had the benefit of reading innumerable submissions from practitioners, individuals and organisations who, with heart-breaking clarity, have set out the real consequences for the people for whom they care of what now, regrettably, appear to be quite pernicious changes in the legal aid provision rules. The speed of the downturn has, however, shocked most of us. Many solicitors have indicated that there has been a downturn in new clients of at least 50%. It has had an immediate impact on legal service provision and it is affecting the staffing levels in many firms so that they are simply no longer able to give the service that is needed.

Perhaps I may quickly give a couple of examples. Williamsons, which has offices in Hull, Driffield and Bridlington, has indicated that there has been a dramatic reduction in the number of its private clients, and even those clients are struggling to find the £50 or £100 that is needed for legal referrals. The number of referrals for mediation is down, and the reduction is commensurate with the volume of clients. The downturn in work has been in the region of 50%. The Legal Help scheme is so draconian that the clients are simply unable to show eligibility on the merits test, and the firm is unable to meet its legal help quota for any of its offices. That story is echoed across the piece.

There are instances of baby-snatching cases. In one, a grandmother had care of her grandchildren under a care order but the children were removed. Despite the fact that she had a low income, capital would be taken into account and, as such, she would have to sell her house to fight the case. There are all manner of private law children’s disputes involving contact and residence, and hundreds of such cases are being turned away en masse. The same applies even to domestic violence cases. When litigants come forward and are told about the threshold, as well as the need to get medical advice and the need to pay for the certificate, they do not come back. Where do they go and where do they get their justice?

The stories are heart-breaking. One solicitor talks of secretaries who have worked for his firm for a long time being in tears over the fact that they are unable to assist some clients in difficult situations. They have spoken to clients whose children have been kept by the other party and they have had to deliver the bad news to those clients. They are having to turn away grandparents, concerned mothers and fathers on low pay, domestic violence victims and others. It is truly shocking. The impact on the courts has been dire as well—they have been flooded with cases.

I end by reminding the Minister that costs flow from many different sources and the costs on the courts are dire indeed. It was really concerning to read what was said by the Court of Appeal in a recent case where none of the parties had been represented. The consequences of delay were clear. The judge in the case said this:

“The consequences by way of delay of other appeals which need to be heard are unquantifiable. The appeal would certainly never have occurred if the litigants had been represented. With more and more self-represented litigants, this problem is not going to go away. We may have to accept that we live in austere times, but as I come to the end of 18 years’ service in this court, I shall not refrain from expressing my conviction that justice will be ill served indeed by this emasculation of legal aid”.

That was said by Lord Justice Ward and I agree with him.