Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Helen Goodman Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

Those who can remember Second Reading will know that the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon and I kept stressing that we accept the need to maintain the funding for many voluntary agencies, particularly citizens advice bureaux, which give not only legal advice, but general advice to people suffering from problems of debt, housing and so on, which we all know are bound to get worse in these rather difficult times. A total of £20 million has been allocated to these bodies this year and we are looking ahead at how to continue that support.

I should point out that our legal aid changes will not take effect for a couple of years, so none of those bodies has lost any legal aid funding at the moment. What we are doing is finding money to make up for reductions in grant to those bodies that are largely from local authorities. The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (Mr Hurd) is about to announce how we will distribute the £20 million. I know that he is in touch with my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye (Amber Rudd) and expects to be able to make the announcement imminently so that we can get on with that.

I have left the debates on legal aid to the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon because, as everyone has seen, he is a walking expert on the subject. There seemed to be no point in my taking part in debates on amendments and having to turn to him if a particularly difficult question was asked. However, I have been present throughout the debates and listening to how Labour Members have tackled the matter. They seem to have lost all touch with common sense. When in government they were reducing expenditure on legal aid, or trying to and failing. In their manifesto they committed to reducing spending on legal aid, stating:

“we will find greater savings in legal aid.”

As recently as January this year the leader of the Labour party said, in relation to reductions in legal aid:

“Labour has shown it is ready to make difficult cuts that we believe are necessary for the long term health of our economy.”

As far as we can work out, the various amendments tabled by the Labour party in the course of our debates on the Bill would add £245 million to the legal aid bill, compared with the Government’s proposals.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

Evidently, some of the amendments we tabled were not reported to the Secretary of State, because we also tabled amendments intended to speed up the collection of fines, on which the Ministry does not have a good record.

[Mr Clarke]

We are tackling the collection of fines vigorously, but I am afraid that the idea that the Labour party’s amendments on the collection of fines would make any significant contribution to the monstrous hypothetical bill it was running up is ludicrous.