Future of Legal Aid

Debate between Barry Sheerman and Andy Slaughter

Thursday 1st November 2018 Westminster Hall

[Andy Slaughter]

Yes. I will come on to the actual, rather than the predicted, effect of LASPO. Without spoiling the surprise, we will find that the Government have overachieved in cutting budgets and underachieved in every other respect.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

Before my hon. Friend moves on, will he give way on that point?

[Andy Slaughter]

Of course I will give way to the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on miscarriages of justice.

[Mr Sheerman]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is those very vulnerable people who find themselves feeling that they have been victims of miscarriages of justice? The Criminal Cases Review Commission was at our meeting yesterday and it explained that a lack of resources inhibits its ability to process the number of cases it would like to. The cuts in legal aid mean that many people are faced with representing themselves in very complex situations.

[Andy Slaughter]

That is not something we discussed during the passage of LASPO, because the impact on criminal law seemed relatively mild compared with the effect on civil law, but that came afterwards. Now, eligibility restrictions and the reduced availability of legal aid practitioners as a result of cuts mean that people often go into court unrepresented, even in quite serious matters, which of course increases the risk of miscarriages of justice.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andy Slaughter]

My hon. Friend knows his business well. That is self-evidently true, and the judiciary is responding magnificently, but we are asking those people, whether in tribunals, magistrates courts, or the higher courts, effectively to do two jobs. They are asked both to be inquisitors and to represent parties—sometimes one party and sometimes both—as well as perform their ordinary functions. That is simply unsustainable in the long term.

Litigants in person can struggle to understand court procedures and their legal entitlements, and cases involving them take longer to resolve. The Personal Support Unit reports that, in 2010-11, its staff and volunteers helped people without access to a lawyer on about 7,000 occasions. By 2017-18, that number had rocketed to more than 65,000. The removal of most welfare benefits law from the scope of legal aid—which, again, we have touched on—has disproportionately affected disabled people. The number of benefits disputes cases with legal aid has fallen by 99% compared with pre-LASPO levels, from 29,801 cases in 2011-12 to 308 in 2016-17. When individuals are able to challenge benefits decisions, the majority of those decisions are overturned. Since 2013, 63% of appeals against personal independence payment decisions and 60% of appeals against employment and support allowance decisions were decided in the claimant’s favour.

[Mr Sheerman]

My hon. Friend is something of a historian in legal matters. Who was it—it may have been H.R. Greaves in his first lecture at the London School of Economics—who said:

“In England, justice is open to all—like the Ritz Hotel”?

[Andy Slaughter]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, but I think he means that I have been around for too long.

Many Members will have seen the results of LASPO in their surgeries and I am grateful to colleagues for raising this point. Half of the MPs who responded to a survey carried out by the all-party parliamentary group on legal aid said that the volume of constituency casework had increased over the past year. More than half said they had seen a notable increase in the complexity of that work. Many MPs reported that advice agencies in their constituencies had closed, meaning that those MPs were no longer able to refer constituents onwards to get the help they needed. Some MPs even said that citizens advice bureaux were referring constituents to them because the bureaux were unable to cope with the number of people seeking help.

Fearful of falling foul of human rights law, LASPO introduced exceptional case funding. The Government projected that 5,000 to 7,000 such exceptional cases would be funded per year, but only 954 people benefited from that scheme in 2017. In almost every aspect, the consequences of LASPO have been as bad as predicted or worse, and the mitigating measures have not worked.

Unlike my constituents, the Government are not short of advice on what to do. In particular, I commend the 25 recommendations in the Bach Commission report. Those include changes to scope and eligibility; a simplification of the current rules, including for criminal matters; reform of exceptional funding; and better access to existing services, including more face-to-face advice. That report also suggests solutions to other issues of concern. The restrictions on legal aid for judicial review, the lack of representation at inquests for the deceased’s family, and the complicity of the Legal Aid Agency in refusing legal aid in cases that are embarrassing to Government, such as the prisoner book ban, are all subject to recommendations in that report. Those are serious issues, not just of inequality of arms, but of manipulation of resources by Government to avoid proper scrutiny of their actions. I hope the Minister has time to respond on those issues. If not, I suspect we will be debating them again before too long.

Many Members wish to speak, so I will conclude by reiterating our main asks for today. The first is to restore access to early advice. Lack of early advice means that simple problems are left to escalate. Larger problems cost more money to fix. Lack of early housing law advice on disrepair issues can lead to health, social and financial problems, the tab for which will ultimately be picked up by the NHS and local authorities. Prevention is better than cure. A recent report commissioned for the Law Society found that restoring early legal help would save the taxpayer money.

Secondly, we ask that the Government restore access to welfare advice. Welfare benefits law is labyrinthine, and that system is particularly difficult to navigate for people who are disabled. Recent social security reforms have led to a steep rise in inaccurate decisions and benefit sanctions. Thousands of disabled people have been left to challenge unlawful decisions without legal assistance. How many more unfair decisions would be overturned if people who had been treated unlawfully by the Department for Work and Pensions could access welfare advice?

Thirdly, we ask that the Government simplify the criteria for those who need legal aid. The Government should consider a significantly simpler and more generous scheme. The means test should be based on a simple assessment of gross household income following an adjustment for family size. In 1980, civil legal aid was available to 80% of the country. Today, that figure is thought to be under 20%. Ordinary working people who are just about managing are now considered too rich to be eligible for legal aid. Pensioners are among those worst affected by the outdated means test—even modest savings disqualify them from legal aid. The effect is that a vulnerable pensioner unlawfully denied basic care may well have to pay for a lawyer out of their own pocket. Legal aid does not only fund a lawyer, but provides protection from paying the other side’s costs.

I have been sent a huge number of individual case studies. For reasons of time, I am not going to be able to go through all of them—I would be happy to supply them to the Minister, but I am sure she is aware of the problems that arise. I have seen some heartbreaking cases involving mental capacity. Often, elderly people are removed from their own homes, sometimes forcibly, and are unlawfully detained by local authorities. They wish to go back to their homes and to criticise the conditions in which they are being kept, but because they have equity in their property which, frankly, they have no chance of raising money on, they are unable to challenge the decision. That is a fundamental breach of people’s human rights.

Cases such as those should make the Minister think again. I therefore ask her to put her well-thumbed, prepared text aside, because it does not—I know, having heard it earlier this week—address the specific point that I and others highlight in this debate. As a distinguished lawyer, I know she wants to ensure access to justice for all. She knows that even the best justice system is worth having only if it is open to anyone to use it. The requests I have made would go some way to restoring that access. I hope we get a positive response today and when the review reports next month.

Autism

Debate between Barry Sheerman and Andy Slaughter

Thursday 29th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Sheerman]

Absolutely. All my experience suggests that most work now needs to be put into early family support, in every way. People feel so isolated and bereft of support, and bereft of knowledge. Thanks to the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham and others, there is a lot of information out there, but how do people get it when they have never even really understood what autism means?

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

I increasingly get families with autistic children in my surgeries complaining about bad housing conditions in the private rented sector, with overcrowding, really appalling conditions, infestations, noise and so on, but there is also a problem with temporary accommodation and families being moved on. This creates particular stress for autistic children. Does my hon. Friend agree that those making housing assessments should take more account of autism?

[Mr Sheerman]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Interestingly, as has been said, this goes right across the whole spectrum. Of course, having access to healthcare is important. Access to education is important, especially when there is a very supportive environment for a child on the autism spectrum at primary school and then going to “big school” is a very big challenge for them. We need to get this right, and support families to support the child at that time.

Recently, many Members were part of the campaign for Lauri Love, a severely autistic, wonderful young man who was in danger of being extradited to the United States. Anyone who met Lauri Love and understood his condition was sympathetic. At the moment, it looks as though we have been successful in supporting Lauri, so that is a great victory.

Social Action, Responsibility and Heroism Bill

Debate between Barry Sheerman and Andy Slaughter

Monday 20th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

I beg to move amendment 1, page 1, line 4, at end insert—

“( ) Nothing in this Act confers on any person immunity from civil liability, nor does it change the relevant standard of care in negligence or breach of statutory duty”.

With all due respect to you, Mr Speaker, and to the House, I do not think the House will dignify the Bill with much by way of a debate. It has been comprehensively trashed even by its supporters. I think that of 24 witnesses originally asked by the Government to give evidence in Committee, only five turned up. Most of those, even if they supported the principle of the Bill, said how poorly it was drafted. Even the Forum of Insurance Lawyers, which represents the interests of defendants and insurers in whose interests the Bill is drafted, did not have a kind word to say about it. It was buried on Second Reading by the shadow Lord Chancellor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) and, not least, by the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Sir Edward Garnier). It was dug up and reburied in Committee, and there are only so many times that its corpse can be paraded around Parliament. Indeed, the only thing the hon. and learned Member for Harborough was wrong about was to say that when the Bill becomes an Act it

“will be the subject of derision and confusion”.—[Official Report, 21 July 2014; Vol. 584, c. 1204.]

It is already the subject of derision and confusion.

Amendment 1, and the other amendments we have tabled, reiterates some of what was put forward in Committee. I make no apology for that. We are simply trying to get an answer from the Minister on the points on which he was either vague or contradictory, and, in the last chance before the Bill leaves this House, to see what exact purpose lies behind it.

Amendment 1 states:

“Nothing in this Act confers on any person immunity from civil liability, nor does it change the relevant standard of care in negligence or breach of statutory duty.”

It might seem surprising to need a clarification of that order, but that is exactly what is necessary because the Government have not been clear from day one on whether the Bill seeks to change the law or not. In the pre-publicity, if one can put it that way, the Lord Chancellor said:

“It does not rewrite the law in detail or take away discretion from the courts, but it sends a signal to our judges and a signal to those thinking about trying it on”.—[Official Report, 21 July 2014; Vol. 584, c. 1187.]

Whether the proper purpose of legislation is to send a signal to those thinking about trying it on, I leave it to other Members to comment on.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

I know that my hon. Friend is a very good forensic lawyer. I have the same dilemma as he does: it is hard to be in favour of the Bill, but it is hard to be against it. Where does it come from and what was its purpose? Using his forensic skills, can he tell us who was behind its inclusion in the Queen’s Speech?

[Mr Slaughter]

As I would expect, my hon. Friend asks a very good question. It comes from the media grid in the Ministry of Justice. There was a vacant slot in The Mail on Sunday and something had to be pushed forward for the weekend. I see the Minister was in charge of spin this weekend. He has obviously been promoted to Lord Chancellor. Not only can the Lord Chancellor not be bothered to come to the House any more, but he cannot even be bothered to do The Mail on Sunday. How extraordinary! However, I admired the Minister’s performance over the weekend, particularly dealing with questions about whether he had been the subject of abuse himself. I was glad he was surprised by the question. Someone as emollient as him would never be the subject of abuse by his constituents or anybody else’s.

My hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) makes the crucial point. What is the purpose of the Bill, other than as a piece of spin? If we say, “The Bill promotes volunteering and encourages people to intervene where they can be of assistance”, who would not be against sin in that way? But of course that is not the whole purpose, and when we come to the second set of amendments, I will explain that there is an insidious part of the Bill, in clause 3.

Returning to amendment 1, will the Minister clarify—he has tried several times already in Committee—whether the Bill changes the law? This is a key point. After some consideration and umming and ahhing, he said that clause 3, unlike clauses 2 and 4, would change the law. He said:

“We consider that clause 3 represents a change in that it ensures that the court takes into account a defendant’s general approach towards protecting the safety and interests of others when carrying out an activity. It is the general issue that is relevant there.”––[Official Report, Social Action, Responsibility and Heroism Public Bill Committee, 9 September 2014; c. 75.]

I cannot see how that is any different from what is in clauses 2 and 4, which he concedes do not change the law.