Legal Aid Reform

Debate between Ian Swales and Greg Mulholland

Thursday 27th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Ian Swales]

The hon. Gentleman has made his point fluently. I am not a lawyer and am unable to comment on those details, but I am sure that Ministers heard his point.

Looking at the effect on justice first, the evidence from the USA, where the MOJ’s planned approach is already in place, will give the public little comfort. Even people who are charged with the most serious crimes, including murder, are given low-cost lawyers and scant attention. Among the most serious duties a Government can have are to prevent people from dying in hospital and to prevent them from being wrongfully imprisoned. Why do we believe so strongly in choice in the first case while seeking to eliminate it in the second? Only through choice can standards be maintained and competitive pressures take effect. Yesterday, the Chancellor said:

“Our philosophy is simple: trust people to make their own decisions and they will usually make better decisions.”—[Official Report, 26 June 2013; Vol. 565, c. 306.]

I urge the Minister to follow that approach.

I also urge the Minister to look carefully at the financial incentives in the proposed contracts. As we on the Public Accounts Committee know, there is touching faith in most Departments that their private sector partners will “do the right thing”. They will—but it will be the right thing to maximise their profits. It beggars belief that firms might get the same fee for a quick guilty plea as they get for a trial lasting days or even weeks. I know that the Secretary of State is a great believer in payment by results, but is he really looking for justice through short trials with few witnesses, or for innocent, vulnerable people to be locked up through a quick guilty plea? That is what his system will encourage.

[Greg Mulholland (Leeds North West) (LD)]

Does my hon. Friend acknowledge the serious concern that there will be an incentive for legal representatives to encourage clients to plead guilty, because the fee will be the same? That is deeply worrying.

[Ian Swales]

I agree with my hon. Friend. I repeat: private companies will seek to maximise their profits. I advise anyone who doubts that to check the financial incentives in the GP out-of-hours contracts and then look at what has happened to the number of people attending hospital accident and emergency centres.

I will now deal with contracting. This time last week, I was in Westminster Hall discussing the court translation services debacle—a true horror story. The response from the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant), showed breathtaking complacency about the overall effect on and cost to the courts system. She even seemed to be content with a present failure rate that is five times greater than the one contracted for. In addition, as has been noted, early results coming in on the new civil legal aid arrangements show more court cases, not fewer, and many cases doubling in length owing to inadequate representation. Again, I ask whether the Ministry is counting the full costs.

The most lucrative business in this country now seems to be winning Government bidding rounds, then—ideally—selling the contract for a quick profit, as we saw with the court translation service, or taking fat fees and getting other people to do the work, as we see in the Work programme.

Pensions Bill

Debate between Ian Swales and Greg Mulholland

Monday 17th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Greg Mulholland (Leeds North West) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Dame Anne Begg), Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee. I had the pleasure to serve alongside her throughout the last Parliament when we were both members of the Committee. Together with our Committee colleagues, we wrestled with many issues, including pensions. I am delighted she is now in the elevated position of Committee Chair and is continuing to demonstrate to the House the importance of the Select Committee system. It brings expertise to bear on subjects, both through the members who take a particular interest in a set of issues and the staff who support Select Committees so well and provide them, and therefore the House, with real expertise and analysis. I hope that that continues throughout the passage of this Bill.

I am delighted to welcome the Second Reading of this hugely important Bill. It is hugely important for both now and the future, and also for the country as a whole, not just our older citizens. The state clearly has an obligation to our older citizens; that is something that, despite our political differences, each and every Member of this House strongly believes. I concur with the hon. Lady’s comments about the continuation of a state pension for all in this country, and I am delighted that, across the political spectrum, we continue to believe in that.

That is not only an obligation, however; it is also financially sensible. It makes financial sense to have a simple state pension that gives people not only a fair basic level of income in retirement provided by the state, but certainty as to what the state will provide in their retirement. That entails certainty about what they need to do in respect of their income throughout their working life, which will, of course, fluctuate, in order to add to the amount and get to the levels of pension income they would want. The simple reality is that the current system is not sustainable financially, is far from universal and in many ways is simply unfair.

I am delighted that Members on both sides of the House with an interest in pensions issues have welcomed the principles of this Bill, and that many have welcomed the practical details, too. I must say, however, that I am proud that my party, the Liberal Democrats, have championed this for a long time. The pensions Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Thornbury and Yate (Steve Webb), has led us to this day and the publication of this Bill, and he knows, as I do, that the Liberal Democrat party as a whole passed our policy of a citizen’s pension back at our federal conference in 2006, and that that has become the blueprint for the single-tier pension presented in this Bill.

Such a pension was also at the heart of our manifesto in 2010 as one of the key things we would want to introduce if we were in government, as we now are. Our manifesto said we were committed to

“immediately restore the link between the basic state pension and earnings”,

as well as moving towards the kind of pension we have today.

I am glad other Members have paid tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Thornbury and Yate, and I join in those congratulations. He has shown his dedication, remarkable intelligence and expertise throughout the introduction of this reform, and I hope he will continue to lead on it. It is notable that he is already by some margin the longest-serving pensions Minister we have ever had in this country, and I hope he manages to add to that record with at least another period of the best part of two years as we take this important reform through.

Why are the Government doing this? Indeed, why are Members on both sides of the House aware that we have to make changes, as the Committee Chair, the hon. Member for Aberdeen South, made clear? I shall tackle the controversial issue first: we have not grasped the simple reality that for some time there have had to be changes to the retirement age. That has been ducked, which is understandable, as it is never going to be easy or popular, but it can be ducked no longer. The state pension age has been 60 for women and 65 for men since the 1940s. There has also been a strange and institutionalised form of unfairness between the sexes, and it is right to tackle that, particularly as we have known for some time that men have a slightly lower average life expectancy than women.

The reality is that our population is rising most quickly in the oldest age groups. The pensioner population is projected to increase from 12.2 million in 2010 to 15.3 million in 2035 and 18.3 million by 2060. Cohort life expectancy at age 65 is projected to increase from 21.0 in 2010 to 24.0 in 2035 for men, and from 23.7 in 2010 to 26.6 in 2035 for women. The Government estimate that even now almost 11 million people in the current work force face inadequate retirement incomes. The number of people currently saving in an occupational pension scheme has fallen from a peak of just over 12 million active members in 1967 to 8.2 million in 2011.

On unfairness, under the current pension system, the self-employed cannot get any more than £107.45 in basic state pension, despite the means-tested threshold being set at £142.70. More significantly perhaps, as this applies to everyone, at present some people—130,000 people in fact—get as little as £7 a week or less in basic state pension, while the same number of people get £230 or more a week. It is complex, it is not fair and it is not sustainable.

Let us look at the key groups and the need for reform. The first and most obvious change, and in many ways the most welcome, is what the reform will do for women. The single-tier pension will give a better pension to women, and it will clarify for them—as it clarifies for all pensioners—what they will receive from the state. The terrible reality is that under the current complex state pension system, on average women receive £40 less per week than men. The single-tier pension is, at its heart, devised to address that inequality, and also to count fully time spent out of work caring for children, which applies predominantly to women.

Secondly, I have mentioned the self-employed; across the political spectrum, we pride ourselves on recognising the importance of our self-employed and applauding the contribution they make to our country. They drive the local economy, contribute to the national economy and pay tax, yet they are so disgracefully discriminated against in the current pensions system. I warmly welcome the fact that that is being rightly recognised.

One healthy thing about the broad consensus on the need for reform and on the principles of that reform is that we can—I hope—have more thorough, positive and helpful scrutiny of the Bill. I echo the Select Committee Chair’s comments about the need for support from across the House to enact changes of this nature. At the same time, we should rightly ask the difficult questions and challenge every clause. The hon. Lady and her Committee have started that process, doing so at the pre-legislative stage, and it needs to happen throughout the passage of the Bill, with expertise and dedication coming from all who serve on that Committee.

Constituents have come to me to discuss the issue affecting women born between 1952 and 1953, which has been mentioned by hon. Members. I have spoken to the Minister about it, and I know that he and colleagues have examined it. I urge for much better communication on the issue so that we can ensure the Bill is as fair as possible. Perhaps the most telling thing that the Chair of the Select Committee said is that this matter will continue to be complicated; it will be all the way from now until we get to the stage at which citizens of this country know, from now, “I will have this pension when I retire.” All the other people in between will, by definition, have to go through the transitory arrangements.

I warmly welcome the work that the Minister, his colleagues and the civil servants have done to tackle the enormous complexities of dealing with the different systems and the transitional arrangements to make sure that what we have is fair, so that people who have contributed in different ways and have certain reasonable expectations of income will not be penalised. This will get simple in the end, when we reach the stage at which every citizen in this country knows precisely what the state will provide for them in old age, so they know exactly what they have to do. They need to be signposted to the correct advice on how they build up other forms of pension. I warmly welcome the work on auto-enrolment.

[Ian Swales]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful and persuasive speech. Does he recognise the point I made earlier about communication? Does he also recognise that certain cohorts need to be given clear information very quickly, as there are women born in 1952 who will be pensioners by the end of this year?

[Greg Mulholland]

My hon. Friend was right to raise that point, which was echoed by the Chair of the Select Committee. I am slightly worried that the letter she received sounds not to have been as clear as we would hope—that might be a euphemism. Given that all this good work has been done by civil servants and Ministers, we need to ensure that the communication to citizens of this country is better than it sometimes can be; things can be let down at that stage. There must be proper communication with all the different cohorts of people in their different situations, and that needs to take place as soon and as clearly as possible.

In conclusion, this is a historic day. I warmly welcome the principles of and measures in the Bill, and the way in which it has been handled. I look forward to contributing throughout the passage of this historic Bill, which will give people in this country the certainty, simplicity and fairness that all in this House would demand of a state pension system.