Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jim Cunningham and Lucy Frazer

Tuesday 23rd April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Frazer]

There is already funding available, as I have mentioned. In 2017-18, we also spent £3.6 million on the housing possession court duty scheme—in other words, on-the-day advice. The Government want to ensure that people are helped early on, but also that we provide advice in the best way possible. That is why instead of just ploughing taxpayers’ money back into traditional legal aid, we want to evaluate many different forms of provision of early legal support and see which is the best, and then we will take a decision on what support we want to give.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

The Minister may well say that, but thousands of families up and down the country rely on citizens advice bureaux and law centres for help with a wide variety of problems. Even refugees rely on those centres. What is she going to do about properly funding those organisations? They cannot wait around for some Government review that might take place in the future. Will she deal with the matter urgently?

[Lucy Frazer]

The hon. Gentleman mentioned immigration, and people can already get legal aid for asylum cases. We are committed to ensuring that people know when legal aid is available to them. We are going to advertise when it is possible and undertake a programme to ensure that people know when legal aid can be claimed. In other areas where it is currently out of scope, we want to ensure that we provide it in the best way possible. In relation to housing advice, I should also mention that people can always get advice on the telephone gateway.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jim Cunningham and Lucy Frazer

Tuesday 12th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Frazer]

My hon. Friend is not only a constituency MP in Faversham and Kent but the Conservative party vice-chair for women. She makes a really important point about the number of women who have suffered from this crime in the UK, pointing out that 137,000 women living in the UK right now are suffering the consequences of FGM. Some of those women had the crime inflicted on them here, while others had it inflicted on them in other countries, so our response needs to be two-pronged. First, we need to ensure that we support other countries, which the Department for International Development is doing—it recently made the largest single donation of £50 million to help countries overseas. Secondly, we need to tackle it in this country. We are taking a cross-governmental view, with many Departments taking action, from the Department for Education to the Home Office to the Department of Health and Social Care, and of course my Department is enacting legislation.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

In general terms, when it comes to domestic abuse and so forth, cases take far too long. What is the Minister doing about that?

[Lucy Frazer]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point about the importance of all cases that come to court. Obviously, for those who have been the victim of horrific sexual crimes, including domestic violence, we are committed to ensuring that those crimes come to court and are dealt with swiftly. There are a number of ways to do that, including by using judicial resource. We recently saw a significant increase in the number of hours allocated to judicial sittings in the family court. Listing is a judicial matter, but in some courts those trials are fixed for particular days, whereas other cases float and and may come on that day or be adjourned to a later date.