Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Ellie Reeves and Lucy Frazer(4 years ago)
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Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lucy Frazer)
The female offenders strategy launched two years ago recognises a different approach to female offenders, and we are making good progress. We initially invested £5.1 million in funding to 30 women’s services across England and Wales, and we are currently in the process of allocating a further £2.5 million for this year to improve women’s centres’ financial viability.
Ellie Reeves [V]
There are over 2,200 more women in prison compared with 25 years ago, and 82% have been sentenced for non-violent offences. A second lockdown will hit them hard, so can the Minister confirm what steps are being taken to give women in prison virtual access to their children? How many pregnant women are currently in custody? How many women have been released as part of the early release scheme?
Lucy Frazer
We are very conscious of the impact of lockdown on our female estate, and we will be looking very carefully, as we look at the new framework for the new provisions on Thursday, at how we can in particular protect women in the female estate, recognising the significant mental health issues they face. We are very conscious of the need to ensure family contact, and all our female estate have access to virtual calls. The hon. Member is aware, I hope, of our recent mother and baby unit review in relation to operations to look after pregnant women and women with young children on the estate. That is currently in a consultation phase. We have set out a number of measures, including personalised access and plans to help those across our female estate who are pregnant or who have dependants.
Courts IT System
Debate between Ellie Reeves and Lucy Frazer(5 years, 9 months ago)
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Lucy Frazer
As always, my hon. Friend the Chairman of the Justice Committee makes important points. I am pleased to clarify that the common platform is not affected—it is being trialled—and that in fact the reform programme in its totality is not affected by these issues. Our divorce and probate application systems are not affected. As I said, the point of reform is to ensure that these systems work in future—my hon. Friend referred to the need to ensure that our systems work—and we will be carrying out a rigorous evaluation of our court reform programme.
Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)
Prisons being issued urgent notifications, private probation services needing bailouts, trials collapsing because of disclosure failures, MOJ staff on strike over the failure to pay them the London living wage—and now the court system is in disarray. When will the Minister finally understand that the 40% real-terms cut to the MOJ budget since 2010 has consequences, and that austerity has left the justice system at breaking point?
Lucy Frazer
As I identified at the start, this issue was caused by an infrastructure failure in our supplier’s data centre. It is not the result of cuts. My Department received some funding in relation to the building of a prison in the recent Budget, and it received investment into the courts service and into its estates. We are investing £1 billion in our courts service.
Housing and Access to Legal Aid
Debate between Ellie Reeves and Lucy Frazer(6 years, 5 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Lucy Frazer)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Main. I am grateful for the opportunity to respond to a debate on such an important issue. I congratulate the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury) on securing it. She is highly committed to this issue as she was a shadow Housing Minister. I offer my congratulations to her on completing the London marathon at the end of April, raising money for two causes, including the housing charity Shelter, which does excellent work.
The hon. Lady and the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) mentioned the importance of the work that third parties do to support people in society, such as the work of the Law Centres Network and the CAB. There are many pro bono organisations put forward by the legal profession and, as the hon. Member for Strangford pointed out, church groups. I, too, would like to add my support for the work that they do.
I want to emphasise the importance of the legal aid system. The Ministry of Justice spends £1.6 billion a year on legal aid, one fifth of the Ministry’s overall budget, which is not an insubstantial sum. It is right that we spend a significant amount of money on legal aid, but there are not unlimited resources available to the Government, so it is right that we spend the money on the people who need it most: those who are the most vulnerable, those who face the most significant issues in their lives and those who have no alternative to legal support. Those principles are fair. It is right to recognise that this debate takes place in that context.
The hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth suggested there is not enough legal aid support for legal advice. I will identify and correct some apprehensions about legal aid and housing. As many hon. Members have identified, legal aid for housing assistance is available. Legal aid, including early legal help, is available to help those who face homelessness to access accommodation and assistance. It is available to defend individuals who are being evicted from their home or having it repossessed; to ensure that homes are safe for habitation; and to obtain injunctions preventing harassment from landlords and others.
Legal aid is available for judicial review if a local authority subsequently fails to take action or those affected wish to challenge the conduct of the local authority. For example, if the rehousing proposed is not suitable, legal aid would be available to bring a challenge. It is available if there has been a significant breach of convention rights or abuse by someone in a position of power. Legal aid is also available to bring a damages claim. As I have mentioned, the Government have protected legal aid for those facing the most challenging situations in their lives, whether that is the threat of homelessness or dangerous conditions that pose a risk to the life, health or safety of their families.
Ellie Reeves
I note what the Minister says about situations where legal aid is available, but does she not accept that, since the LASPO reforms, housing cases have fallen by 50%? That is a huge increase in the number of people not getting access to justice in housing cases. Does she agree that the review of LASPO should reverse that?
Lucy Frazer
As the hon. Lady has identified, there is a review into the changes that were made. The Act aimed to cut legal aid, so availability was reduced in many areas. However, the fundamental principle behind the changes in the Act were to ensure that those who most needed help and could not get it from any other sources retained the ability to get legal aid. As I have mentioned, that is being reviewed.
I have identified the areas where we provide legal aid in housing, but we need to look at how it is provided. As the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth identified, it is important that we have early legal help. Last year, we spent nearly £100 million on early legal advice across all categories, including housing. Advice for housing is available through face-to-face meetings or through telephone advice. The telephone service offers services beyond that which can be provided at local centres face to face. For example, the telephone service can offer interpretation in more than 170 languages, including British sign language via webcam, which operates over the weekend. Last year, there were more than 20,000 instances of advice provided by that system. It allows individuals to access advice quickly and easily.
Legal aid is also available for representation at hearings. People can access representations from individuals already engaged in their case and giving them legal help. In addition, the housing possession court duty scheme is a vital service that offers on-the-day advice and advocacy at court to anyone facing possession proceedings. Individuals in danger of eviction or having their home repossessed can get free legal advice and representation on the day of their hearing, regardless of their financial circumstances.
The hon. Members for Ashfield (Gloria De Piero), for Barnsley East (Stephanie Peacock) and for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts) talked about gaps in advice, which they called advice deserts. We in the Ministry of Justice are committed to ensuring that everyone has sufficient advice to help, wherever they live. I should make it clear that the Legal Aid Agency regularly monitors market capability to ensure that there is adequate provision around the country, and moves quickly to ensure that face-to-face advice is available to prevent gaps appearing. Of the 134 housing and debt procurement areas for legal aid across England and Wales, all but one currently have provision. The Legal Aid Agency has recently secured provision for the remaining one and services will commence there shortly.
On the procurement of legal aid services, the Legal Aid Agency has recently re-tendered for new civil contracts to start in autumn 2018. The procurement includes contracts for both face-to-face advice and telephone advice for housing matters. I am pleased to say that the Legal Aid Agency received tenders from more than 1,700 organisations wishing to deliver face-to-face civil legal aid work. Those organisations submitted over 4,300 individual bids. Successful applicants for face-to-face contracts were notified in January. The new contract encourages providers to be flexible as to where and how advice can be delivered, including making better use of technology. A good level of response was received, with an overall increase in the number of providers wishing to do the work. In areas where an access gap is identified, the Legal Aid Agency will take steps to secure provision. In addition, to reflect the nature of today’s society, we have developed a user-friendly digital tool that makes it clear to people when legal aid is available to them. If someone is unsure which organisations offer legal aid in a given area, they can use the “find a legal aid adviser” tool on gov.uk to find the 10 nearest organisations to them that have a contract to offer advice and assistance through legal aid in that category of law.
A number of hon. Members raised issues that went wider than legal aid for housing. The hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth spoke about welfare claims. We work closely with the Department for Work and Pensions to ensure that it gets decisions right first time and they do not end up in a tribunal. We are making changes using technology to improve the social security tribunals. The hon. Member for Strangford rightly identified the consequences of family breakdown. At the Ministry of Justice we are looking at ways to avoid the impact on families of conflict resulting from breakdown.
The hon. Member for Ashfield made some broad points about the Government’s record on housing and I should like to clarify the position. The Government have done a significant amount to improve the housing stock and to help first-time buyers and people who want to leave home. We have built 1 million homes since 2010. House building is at its highest level since the crash. We have abolished stamp duty for 80% of first-time buyers and brought in landmark legislation—the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017—to improve the life of people who have no home and sleep rough on the streets. Fewer than 3,000 local authority homes were built under Labour from 1997 to 2010. Since 2010, nearly 11,000 homes have been built.
Many hon. Members mentioned the LASPO review. The reforms in question were made under LASPO, and I have said that they were founded on the principle of ensuring that legal aid will continue to be available for the highest-priority cases. It is important that legal aid should be focused on those least able to pay for representation. The changes were subject to a significant amount of scrutiny in during the passage of the legislation through the House of Commons. They were debated extensively and amended before they were approved by Parliament.
As the Scottish National party spokesman, hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald), pointed out, we are in the process of a broader review of legal aid. Matters covered by the review will include housing advice changes and early legal advice. Given that there is an outstanding review, the debate is a valuable opportunity to listen to the many thoughtful points made by hon. Members. We are currently engaging with a wide range of stakeholders across the legal sector, individually and in consultative groups. The first round of consultative group meetings took place last month, and they were well received. We are keen to hear from as many interested parties as possible, to establish the impact of the changes.
As well as looking back over the record of LASPO and some previous decisions, it is crucial that we look forward to ensure that access to justice, to which legal aid makes a hugely valuable contribution, will be maintained and will meet the needs of a modern society. We are investing £1 billion to transform courts and tribunals and build on our world-renowned justice system, so that it will be more sensitive to victims, more modern—so that it works more efficiently and swiftly—and more accessible. As part of that we shall digitise our services to make them easier for the public to use. It is essential that we continue our work to ensure that legal aid is made available to the most vulnerable, as part of that wider approach to making the justice system fit for the 21st century.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Ellie Reeves and Lucy Frazer(6 years, 9 months ago)
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Lucy Frazer
Maintaining access to justice is extremely important, which is why the Legal Aid Agency regularly reviews the capacity of the legal aid market to cope with demand and takes action when regional shortfalls develop. Those in need of urgent advice in Cornwall and elsewhere can always use the civil legal aid specialist telephone service. In autumn 2017, the Legal Aid Agency began national tendering for new civil contracts to start in autumn 2018.
Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)
I have received hundreds of emails from people in my constituency who face eviction, live in overcrowded conditions or rent properties that are in dire need of repair. Does the Minister agree that early legal advice in housing matters needs to be restored urgently, and that it is unacceptable that large parts of the country have no housing legal aid providers at all?
Lucy Frazer
As the hon. Lady will know, the previous Lord Chancellor committed to a review of legal aid later this year, and I also commit to reviewing the situation later this year. Legal aid for housing is always available and can be accessed through the telephone gateway.