Housing and Access to Legal Aid

Gloria De Piero Excerpts

Wednesday 16th May 2018 Westminster Hall

[Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Main. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury) on securing this important debate. I confess that I feel a heavy sense of déjà vu standing opposite the Minister once again: it is another week and yet another debate on the devastating impact of the Government’s cuts to legal aid. This time the issue is housing.

Most of us expect the right to a decent home that does not suck in two thirds of our income each month, that does not give us health problems and that does not endanger our safety. For too many people across the country, however, that expectation is simply not a reality anymore. We have a housing crisis in this country. Home ownership among young adults has collapsed. The Institute for Fiscal Studies reports that the chance of someone owning their own home has halved over the past 20 years. The number of council houses is at a record low. The Government have overseen the lowest rate of house building since the 1920s, which pushes more and more people to spend years in the private sector, but they have not made it safer or more secure to be a tenant; they have made it much harder.

Because of the cuts in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, it is now more difficult to challenge a rogue landlord, to obtain compensation for damages to health and property because of poor living conditions, or to access basic advice that could prevent someone from losing their home down the line. New figures that we have uncovered show that 4,815 fewer people a year are being granted civil legal aid for representation on housing matters, including faulty repairs and poor maintenance of a property by landlords, as well as more serious issues such as possession of a home or where a tenant’s health or welfare is at serious risk. That is a drop of one third over the past five years—close to 5,000 more people a year are being denied the right to challenge poor living conditions and unfair treatment. Does the Minister recognise that there is a crisis in access to legal aid for housing issues?

The Government have set the bar so high for legal aid that housing lawyers warn that it is

“very difficult for a tenant to obtain funding in order to bring a claim against their landlord.”

Legal aid is available in disrepair cases only where it can be proven that there is

“a serious risk of harm to the health or safety of the individual or a relevant member of the individual’s family”.

That bar means that a persistent cough that is likely being caused by mould or damp, or risk of accidental injury because of shoddy work, is often not enough to qualify for legal aid. If someone develops serious health problems as a result of poor living conditions that landlords refuse to sort out, the Government have taken away the legal aid to obtain compensation.

Ministers might argue that for the most serious cases, legal aid may still be available through the exceptional case funding scheme, but only 13 cases have been approved for exceptional funding since the legal aid changes were introduced—out of 211 applications. The truth is that people are simply being denied access to justice and have nowhere else to turn. It is the same old story of a two-tiered system; justice in this country is available only to those who have the money to pay for it.

That is not just the case for taking a claim to court. Many housing issues can and should be resolved at an earlier stage by people getting the right advice about their rights, but the Government’s cuts to housing legal aid included the removal of early legal advice. The effect is that tenants must now wait for a minor damp problem to have a serious effect on their family’s health before they can challenge a bad landlord and force repairs to be made. Rather than resolving a dispute with a landlord early with good legal advice, tenants face the point of being made homeless before they have access to legal aid. Since the introduction of LASPO, the number of cases of legal advice for housing has more than halved. It is not just housing cases; overall, the total number of legal advice cases has fallen by three quarters, which means that more than 400,000 fewer people are getting housing advice. That is not just bad for tenants; it is short-sighted policy making that will ultimately cost the country more.

The vice-president of the Law Society, Christina Blacklaws, has said:

“The current situation is unsustainable. If early advice was available to those who need it, issues could be resolved before they worsen and become more costly for the individual – and the public purse.”

The charity Citizens Advice estimates that every £1 of legal aid spent on housing advice has the potential to save £2.34 to the public purse. Lack of support to resolve a case early means potentially far more costly court proceedings down the line.

It is not just by helping to avoid court that early advice benefits the public purse. Social problems such as homelessness and debt, and health problems that come with not sorting out housing issues early, are a ticking time bomb for the Government. At the end of last year the Law Society published research that found that a quarter of those who received early advice resolved their problems within three to four months, compared with an average of nine months for those who did not receive early advice. Those costs must be factored into any assessment of the savings realised from cuts to legal aid. Will the Government, as part of their review of legal aid, publish their own cost-benefit analysis of the wider impact of reducing early legal advice?

Labour Members agree with the President of the Supreme Court, Lady Justice Hale, who described the Government’s legal aid reforms as “a false economy”. That is why we have announced that a Labour Government will restore early legal advice in housing cases to prevent small problems escalating into big ones. The impact of the Government’s cuts is not only being felt in cases where legal aid has been removed. Even in cases where individuals should still be entitled to legal aid, such as risk of homelessness, tenants are finding that support is not available because lawyers in their area have had to close up shop.

Hon. Members have already referred to the legal advice deserts, so I will not repeat those findings, but I will say that figures uncovered by the Bach commission on legal aid confirmed that, finding that the number of civil legal aid providers specialising in housing has declined by a third, from 681 to 449. What urgent action are the Government taking to reverse those trends to ensure that no area is left without a single legal advice provider?

The Government’s changes have made it simply not possible to operate for such a narrow category of cases, and the impact has been devastating. We are living through a time of high repossessions of homes and homelessness has risen by 78% since 2011. Yet at the same time there has been a steep decline in the number of challenges brought against eviction, according to figures from the Legal Action Group. Charities such as Shelter have warned that thousands of people a year are being made homeless because they cannot find lawyers to help them prevent eviction. The Government’s changes to legal aid have brought nothing but misery and pain since they were introduced. We have waited six years for the Government’s review into legal aid, but victims cannot wait any longer. I urge the Minister to heed the advice of the Law Society and legal professionals across the country and reinstate early advice for housing matters and take action now to prevent any more families being forced into destitution because of the lack of legal aid.