Civil Legal Aid

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Thursday 19th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sherlock]

My Lords, I wish to focus on one particular aspect of the Government's plans for legal aid: the proposal to take social welfare law out of scope. Of the cuts to be made, more than £l00 million will be cut from social welfare legal aid and, as a result, most social welfare law and legal advice will no longer be covered. I want to draw attention to the context in which these proposals are being made. The Welfare Reform Bill is currently making its way through another place. Its proposals are, frankly, a revolution in welfare benefits. Even the DWP, which is not given to overstatement, has described the Bill as,

“the biggest change to the welfare system for over 60 years”.

The Bill will abolish most of the income-related benefits we know about—income support, jobseekers’ allowance, employment and support allowance, tax credits, housing benefit and council tax benefit—and replace them with a single benefit called universal credit, many of whose key features are not yet clear, even though the Bill is about to come out of Committee in another place. There will also be other changes. There will be more conditionality for people already in jobs. Noble Lords will be aware of tests already being used to determine whether people are entitled to disability benefits. There is a dramatic change in the shift to local decisions on a range of benefits and provision, and there are proposals on the table which would significantly reduce access to the statutory system of child support. These proposals combined will dramatically change the landscape for poor people over the next few years.

My concern is that when Governments make changes on this scale, mistakes inevitably happen. It takes time for those administering new systems to calibrate the decisions that they make and to understand whether new systems will in fact achieve what they are meant to achieve. Many of the decisions made turn out in practice to be good. Others turn out not to be. Having those tested in court or tribunal often helps government as well as individuals understand what Parliament intended. Benefits law is very complex. The new system may be integrated, but anyone who has read the Welfare Reform Bill will know that that will not make it simple. It will simply make it integrated and complex rather than separate and complex. If someone is to challenge a decision if they have their benefits rejected or stopped or they are sanctioned in some way, they will need advice. The evidence is quite stark about the difference in success between those who are represented and those who are not, which is something that will presumably come as a relief to the many lawyers in your Lordships' House. Given all those changes, does this feel like a good time to stop providing advice and help to benefits claimants in those settings? I think not.

As well as the fact that benefits recipients tend to be poor, legal aid is targeted at poor people. Therefore, these changes clearly target the poorest people in our country. I am also concerned, as the CABs have pointed out, that the shift in the criteria for civil funding is moving towards crisis points, such as imminent homelessness, and away from the kind of legal help and advice which might prevent someone becoming homeless in the first place. That does not seem to be a sensible move.

Ensuring the rule of law, as is often observed, is one of the foremost duties of the state. But a citizen who cannot challenge a wrong decision by the state simply because they have not got the money cannot depend on the rule of law. That does not mean unlimited spending on legal aid; but it does mean that one does not remove from the scope of publicly funded legal support an entire aspect of law which is fundamental to the dignity and survival of some of our poorest citizens.

When the Welfare Reform Bill comes to this House, I hope very much that the considerable expertise around these Benches will be deployed in scrutinising it very carefully. It is substantial legislation and its changes will make a big difference to the lives of millions of people who depend on benefits. It is the kind of thing that this House does very well and I am sure that the Bill will not emerge in the same state as it came in. But what is the point of our spending weeks of parliamentary time scrutinising legislation, if, in practice, those who are affected by it have no means to ensure that Parliament’s intentions are implemented?

I would ask the Minister to consider one thing in particular. If the Government will not move on these reforms in general, will he consider at least making no changes to the provision of legal aid, advice and help to benefit claimants at least until two years after the Welfare Reform Bill has been implemented in full? The very least people expect is that if Parliament makes decisions, they should be able to get justice according to them.