Oral Answers to Questions

George Hollingbery Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Wright]

The hon. Lady will not be surprised to learn that I do not agree with her. This is an important and urgent reform. She must recognise that every single year 600,000 offences are committed by people who have previously committed an offence. Until we start to address reoffending effectively, that number will not come down and we will not avoid the creation of tens of thousands of new victims every year. That is why this is urgent. As far as I understand the position of the hon. Lady’s party, she agrees that reoffending rates are too high, that something must be done about that and that there is a problem with the group with sentences under 12 months, yet we hear nothing from her about what she would do about that if it was not what we propose to do. If she has an alternative, let us hear it.

[George Hollingbery (Meon Valley) (Con)]

7. What assessment he has made of the effect on barristers of his proposed changes to legal aid.

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Chris Grayling)]

Our analysis, based on applying our proposals to the cases handled by the Legal Aid Agency last year, suggests that overall the majority of criminal advocates would either be better off or see their income unchanged as a result of the fee proposals, while civil barristers affected, who generally receive higher fees than other civil advocates, could see their income reduced.

[George Hollingbery]

Could the proposals not have been centred around a fixed-fee per case, salami-slicing budget cuts across the board or restructuring? Will not this arrangement protect the incomes of lower paid barristers?

[Chris Grayling]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That was part of our objective. Some people argued that we should go for one case, one fee, but that would in my view do deep long-term—if not total—damage to the Bar. We chose not to go down that route. We have put together a package of proposals that, on the basis of the case mix carried out last year by junior barristers, should leave a substantial proportion of them either with an unchanged income or a slightly increased income.

Legal Aid Reform

George Hollingbery Excerpts

Thursday 27th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[George Hollingbery (Meon Valley) (Con)]

As there are only five minutes available to me, I hope hon. Members will understand that my arguments are unlikely to be in any great detail, and I will not take any interventions. I should point out that I am a complete outsider to the issue, having no legal qualifications at all.

I note the contribution of the hon. Member for Redcar (Ian Swales). His tract on the procession of G4S throughout the legal system was particularly persuasive. It is not something that had occurred to me before, but I think it is a cause for real and serious worry.

At the heart of the Government’s proposals lies the question of what is the best method of delivering savings without threatening the quality of justice dispensed. That is the question that exercises us today. Oral evidence given to the Justice Committee on 11 June made plain very real concerns from the legal profession about the proposals. Quality was high among those concerns for completely understandable reasons, but it must be a little worrying that some of the organisations representing the profession are refusing to engage with the process of designing the quality thresholds with which the contracts will be let. I understand their concerns and I understand that these are fundamentals changes being mooted, but I hope that at some stage those organisations will reconsider their position. It seems to me that it is not incompatible to be implacably opposed to the changes, but still to co-operate with the design. Surely to do so ensures that, should the argument be lost, the system will be as good as it can possibly be.

The Justice Committee’s session also threw up evidence from the profession that there were other areas where it felt that savings could be made, and should be made, first. Principal among these were the court system, and persuasive evidence was given that there are huge costs within the court system driven by other agencies and factors outwith the control of those providing legal representation. I have some sympathy with the argument that says that to reform the cost of representation without dealing with those factors misidentifies at least some of the source of the expense incurred.

Michael Turner, the Chairman of the Criminal Bar, gave in his evidence three compelling examples of how fees can escalate owing to factors wholly outside the control of those representing defendants. Although I can see that the pressing need to make savings and the time scale that might be involved in reforming the court system create difficulty for the Minister, I would like to hear from him about any plans that are in hand to deal with these issues.

The witnesses also made clear their concern that with some 13,000 responses to the public consultation, a response date of early September to an exercise that ended in June seems, shall we say, ambitious. Finally, although those who appeared before the Justice Committee seemed reluctant to explain alternative proposals that might meet the available budgets, I have to assume that such have been made and hope very much that the Minister can confirm that they will receive careful consideration, if indeed they have been received.

[Mr Raab]

Will my hon. Friend give way on that point?

--- Later in debate ---

[George Hollingbery]

Just once.

[Mr Raab]

My hon. Friend is very generous, in his own sober and stoic way.

Among the various alternatives that have been put forward, I have received a number of concrete suggestions about tighter court management of delays caused by the Crown Prosecution Service, and the idea of higher fees in commercial cases. Does my hon. Friend agree that such additional aspects ought to be considered by the Government?

[George Hollingbery]

Indeed. I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. It was exactly such issues that Michael Turner brought up in his evidence and it seems that there are genuine savings to be made there, as well as costs incurred by those representing, which cannot be controlled by them. That is a very important point.

In the interests of timeliness, I shall move purely to the representations that have been made to me by my constituents. I have received 40 letters from constituents on legal aid and there are one or two specific, rather than general, issues that I would like to draw to the Minister’s attention. The first is about representation, which has been brought up in the Chamber today.

I met Robert Ashworth of Saulet Ashworth LLP in Portsmouth and although he did not agree with the Government’s changes, the point he made to me that people should be able to choose their representation seemed to be a good one for the following reasons. He believes there are considerable hidden cost savings in certain types of, shall we say regular, clients in having a trusted solicitor whose recommendations will be accepted without debate. A case in point would be a recommendation, after due thought by the solicitor and the representative, to offer a guilty verdict. If accepted, this can clearly lead to a large saving across many budgets. He believes, and I accept the core of his argument, that such savings might be lost to the system under the new arrangements. I know that he submitted his views to the Government during the consultation. I hope that the Minister will acknowledge that there is an issue to be considered.

The second issue that has been raised with me relates to rural sparsity. One of the concerns that has emerged from the consultation is that rural areas might be disadvantaged as a result of the proposals. In Derbyshire, Cumbria, Wales, parts of Norfolk, and indeed many other parts of the country, it is very likely that the contracts awarded will cluster in or around a small number of larger towns. In my own backyard, the Isle of Wight is a plain example, as my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Mr Turner) has pointed out. That might limit access to justice, given the geographic scale of some of those areas. Once again, I hope that the Minister will offer some indication that that factor has been recognised.

Reform of the legal aid budget is tough. Its sheer scope and size mean that it just is not possible that it can escape savings. The industry itself might come forward with a comprehensive and deliverable package of change that recognises that reducing budgets is unavoidable and timeliness is essential. If it does, I hope and expect that the Minister will give the proposals due consideration. However, although I recognise that the Government’s proposals will lead to considerable change in the industry, they currently appear, at least to an outsider, to be the only game in town. I believe that, if handled correctly, they can be the right way forward, although, crucially, they must protect the quality of outcomes at the same time as saving money.