Civil Legal Aid

Baroness Turner of Camden Excerpts

Thursday 19th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Turner of Camden]

My Lords, I also am concerned about the proposed cuts in the provision of civil legal aid, to which a number of noble Lords have already referred. In his introduction to the consultation paper, the Justice Secretary claims that the proposals are justified because legal aid has expanded to cases that should not require legal expertise to be resolved. In some cases, the right to civil legal aid will be retained—for judicial review, homelessness and domestic violence, among others. On the down side, the largest casualty will be private family cases where there is no element of domestic violence or false marriage. Many women who currently get legal aid for ancillary relief will be directed to mandatory mediation, and that is all. Their former partners, if unco-operative, will simply wait out the inconvenience and continue their intransigence. But there is an even worse aspect.

Legal aid will be denied in cases of children who have been victims of medical negligence. It is really awful to think that a child, who could have been disabled perhaps for life as a result of medical negligence, would have no redress. I understand that the Government say that under no-win no-fee arrangements child victims will be able to sue for compensation. However, it seems that those arrangements are under review by the Government. Anyhow, I think that it is an entirely unsatisfactory response.

Those who lose out will be mainly women, their children, and the disabled. Those with disabilities will be disproportionately hit by cuts to areas such as clinical negligence and education, and children such as those fighting cerebral palsy, birth injuries and those requiring additional educational support will be cut out of entitlement.

In the words of a well known lawyer writing in Counsel, the journal of the Bar Council, the consultative paper destroys the coherent national system of legal advice and replaces it with a hideously complicated list of entitlements and restrictions. He concludes that it is outrageous that half a million people on benefit incomes, or just above, will lose entitlement to legal aid because of the excesses of bankers with staggering incomes and, maybe, the incompetence of those managing government finances. I agree. The Government really must think again, particularly about the likely effect upon the most vulnerable—children and the disabled.

A section of the consultative paper deals with employment, and here the Government seem rather confused. The paper refers to “user-friendly procedures” available via the tribunals, where individuals can in effect represent themselves so there is no need at all to provide legal aid in an employment context. The present arrangements are described in glowing terms. However, over at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills an entirely different view is taken. The Business Secretary is now in favour of proposals that make it easier for employers to dismiss workers and more difficult for workers to make claims for unfair dismissal.

To get to a tribunal at all a worker will have to pay a fee, perhaps a large one, and it will not be the nice friendly tribunal envisaged in the Justice Secretary’s paper—oh no. The lay sidespersons currently on tribunals, who are representative of both sides of industry, are to be withdrawn. The unemployed worker must put his case to a judge sitting alone, so a so-called nice friendly set-up is to be transformed into an entirely legal one, with, of course, no assistance provided.

There is only one piece of advice that I could give to an employee: if you are not yet a member of a trade union, join one as soon as you can. Unions are skilled at representing their members, and the Government are introducing an environment in which you will need all the protection you can get.