Legal aid

David Lammy Excerpts

Tuesday 14th December 2010 Westminster Hall

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

I am delighted to have secured this important debate so soon after the publication of the legal aid Green Paper. It is a mark of how significant such issues are that there is a good attendance in the Gallery and that a number of Members of Parliament are present hoping to make a contribution.

Members of Parliament have a particular interest in legal aid, particularly in the broader context of advice services, because we are part of the family of advisers. That was brought home to me during my first week as an MP when, at my very first surgery, a gentleman asked me for assistance in having his wife deported. I was not able to refer that case to a partner legal aid firm.

Over the course of 13 years, I have made extensive use of, and am enormously grateful to, private firms, law centres and other advice centres in my constituency and elsewhere, and I will pay tribute to them by name. Paddington law centre is an excellent local facility that has assisted thousands of people in the community. The London borough of Westminster is often used as a byword for prosperity and the great institutions of central London, but in fact it includes a number of the most deprived wards in the country. Westminster citizens advice bureau is another superb organisation and I had the pleasure of attending its annual meeting a couple of weeks ago. Other organisations include the North Kensington law centre, the migrants resource centre, the Mary Ward centre—that is not in my constituency, but it is an important local organisation—Just for Kids Law, to which I will refer in a moment, and many private practices, as well as the Central London law centre and the Brent private tenants rights group, which is just over the border and provides an important service to tenants.

Those professionals in the sector provide, for the most part, a service to many of the most vulnerable and distressed people in society, and they do so for what is a challenging level of remuneration in a professional context. We hear—sometimes rightly—about the eye-watering sums of money paid in legal aid in some criminal cases. I understand that such cases cause public concern, but as in so many areas of public policy, we are being driven by policy making by anecdote. We need to address extreme examples and issues, but, overwhelmingly, legal aid practitioners are not well remunerated and they do an excellent job at astoundingly good value to the public purse.

[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend says that those professionals are not well remunerated. Does she agree that they are not even as well remunerated as many of the senior police officers and teachers in our constituencies? Their average income is between £28,000 and £40,000 in London.

[Ms Buck]

My right hon. Friend makes a good point. It is true that legal aid practitioners who take on institutions in the public sector, and sometimes the private sector, are significantly less well paid than those professionals who make the public policy decisions that they challenge.

It is important to put on the record the fact that the previous Labour Government took decisions that bore down on legal aid expenditure. Not everyone will have agreed with those decisions—they may have challenged them—but there was a healthy debate. It must also be accepted that had Labour been re-elected, there would have been cuts in the legal aid budget. It is not the case, however, that the unfolding policy of the Labour party would have placed the pressure, which we now see emerging, on civil, family and social welfare law. Those are the areas of concern that I want to address.

It is critical to protect criminal legal aid. If it is not available at the right level and provided by quality professionals, justice will be denied. It is very important to protect a proper criminal legal aid budget. I pay tribute to Lord Bach, the former Minister with responsibility for legal aid, who looked at ways in which to bear down on exceptional costs in the criminal legal aid budget without sacrificing the principles of access to justice. I think there was consensus on that.

My concerns are about the manner in which the legal aid Green Paper attacks—and it is an attack—the legal aid budget. It bears down particularly severely on civil cases, including family and social welfare, and takes a number of areas out of the scope of aid entirely. Such areas include children and family cases in which domestic violence is not a stated factor, education, immigration where a person is not detained, clinical negligence, welfare benefits, employment, debt and some areas of housing. As a consequence, more than 500,000 people each year are less likely to receive help. Not only will that have an effect on those people unable to access legal aid services, but it will destabilise and possibly destroy such services in many areas and make it extremely hard for public services to be held to account when they are at fault.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) for initiating this incredibly important debate, which cuts to the heart of the kind of society that we want to live in. It is important for the House to record that we do not want to go back to the time when this work was being done by volunteers. We talk about access to justice, but at its heart is social justice and the kind of society that we seek. I believe that we should live in a society where the most vulnerable have access to justice.

I speak as a former Minister with responsibility for legal aid. If we go back to the earlier part of the last decade, before the 30 consultations that we heard of, I was considering fixed fees and new ways of contracting, but that is a long, long way from the Green Paper.

I remind the House of what the Prime Minister said in the run-up to the election about family policies. He said that he wanted to make Britain the most family-friendly country in Europe. Only a few days ago, he said:

“The seeds of so many problems, as well as success stories, are sown in the early years. Family is where people learn to be good citizens, to take responsibility, to live in harmony with others. Families are the building blocks of a strong, cohesive society.”

He cannot make such pronouncements and then run a coach and horses through family life in constituencies throughout the country.

The services that family practitioners provide for vulnerable families facing breakdown and for people having to decide who should have contact and how it is to be arranged, are essential in modern society. If we take that advice away, except in cases of domestic violence, we will see chaos. We will see people presenting at court as litigants in person. When those cases come to the county court, people will not be receiving advice from the court clerks or the judges; they will simply get a form to fill in. They will be on their own. What will happen? Families, but mostly women, will not get that advice. I ask the Minister to think hard about whether that is the sort of family that we want, and whether that is consistent with an undertaking to put families at the centre of British life.

[Margot James]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Lammy]

I will not give way, as there is so little time.

It cannot be right that people will get a practitioner only if they already have an injunction. Are we really saying that a woman should pitch up to court on her own if she is concerned about her children having contact with her husband, who may be violent? Is it right that she should have to make her way on her own, in such vulnerable contexts, without access to legal advice? Are we really saying that when families are in dispute—perhaps one parent wants to take a child abroad—the parent fighting that decision should have to find access to justice on their own and without sufficient funds?

Are we saying—I ask as the Member of Parliament in whose constituency the baby P case occurred—to the many thousands of families affected by care proceedings that ultimately end in adoption, which changes the legal nature of the child’s relationship with its parents, that they cannot have legal aid to fight it or challenge it in court if they are concerned about losing their children? That cannot be right. That is not the kind of society that we want.

The policy is not consistent with the big society. Yesterday we saw the announcement of cuts of up to 40% in local government budgets. That will decimate much of the voluntary sector that the Ministry of Justice says people should rely upon. How can that be part of the big society? What will happen with welfare benefit cuts, given that many of the groups that support the most vulnerable—those with mental health problems, immigrants and those who have been without work for a considerable time—will find support withdrawn at this time of profound change? How can that be right?

In relation to immigration, the Churches consistently remind the state about its responsibility. We have pared back so much on legal advice about immigration and asylum matters that lawyers specialising in this area now help the system; they help constituents provide information to the bureaucracy—to the court system—that is easy to understand, which makes justice quicker. This Green Paper will drive those people underground; it will drive them into ghettos where they cannot be seen or found, as they will not have the right documents. That is the sort of thing that we see in other parts of continental Europe. We do not want that in this country.

The Green Paper is particularly worrying. It is possible to pass it off as unimportant, but we cannot call ourselves a civilised country unless we provide adequate legal aid. The previous Government stabilised legal aid. In that context, I contend that enough is enough. Now is the time to stand up and say what civilised really means. It is certainly not the time to walk alongside hypocrisy by suggesting that we can support families, that we can have a big society, that we can be fair in a civilised democracy and then run a coach and horses through the only access to justice that vulnerable people need.