Legal Aid Reform

John McDonnell Excerpts

Thursday 3rd February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)]

I echo the comments of the hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) in her very proper analysis of the issue. This is not about lawyers; it is about access to justice. I am glad to see the Minister agreeing with those sentiments in the sense that the Government are not indulging in character assassination as regards practitioners in law.

There have been some excellent speeches. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue) for getting this debate the time that it deserves. I was happy to support her in her bid. I wish there were more time, as five minutes can hardly do the subject justice. It was a pleasure for me to take part in the Westminster Hall debate sponsored by the hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck), who took part earlier. I do not propose to reiterate the points that I made in that debate.

I put on record my thanks to the Department for having answered some of the questions that I have been tabling about the breakdown of the costs of civil legal aid for the last year for which figures were available—2008-2009. The figure of £24.7 million in legal help for welfare benefit cases, as alluded to by my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry), is startling, and we should pay close attention to it. There is no doubt, as other Members have said, that there are serious deficiencies in the decision-making processes as regards benefit entitlements. I am utterly convinced that that large amount of money could have been saved if that system were more sound. I urge the Minister to work as closely as he can with the Department for Work and Pensions to ensure that it starts to take a share of the burden of the cost of representation.

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Buckland]

I am sorry, but I cannot take interventions on this occasion because I want to ensure that other speakers have their say. As I said, so much to talk about, so little time.

Let me pray in aid Wiltshire law centre in my constituency, which carries out debt, welfare and housing work. To put it bluntly, it is set to lose the vast majority of its income if these proposals are implemented. May I put in a plea to the Minister to work as hard as he can with all agencies of Government to ensure that places like Wiltshire law centre get some form of block funding to ensure that its valuable work continues? It is as fundamental as that. I am worried that if we lose that service, my constituents will have to travel a very long distance to get legal aid, because most private firms in Swindon now do not offer the services offered by the law centre.

I have spoken in the past about special educational needs and education law. I reiterate my plea to the Minister to ensure that when the education Green Paper is published in March the forms of alternative dispute resolution, whether it be mediation or other forms of ADR, are properly explored and set out so that the need for legal representation in those cases becomes a thing of the past.

I have drilled down as far as I can to find out why this country spends more per head on legal aid than other country. The National Audit Office paper on the procurement of legal aid observed that during its control period in the latter part of last decade, England and Wales prosecuted more than a million more people than any comparator country. We have to look at why we spend a lot on legal aid. I do not think that it is a problem. I think it shows that we take prosecution seriously. The only real comparison we can make is with other common law countries, and they do not prosecute as many cases as England and Wales. Comparisons with France are utterly irrelevant. The French spend five times more on the judicial system than us because of their inquisitorial process. We must focus on comparisons with other common law countries. The simple fact is that we litigate more in England and Wales. As I said, I make no apology for the fact that this country brings more prosecutions than any other country. That issue should be dealt with in other debates. It is a causal issue, rather than being about the symptoms that legal aid has to deal with.

On domestic violence, my plea to the Minister is that we work hard on getting the definition right. I suggest that it is not right in the Green Paper. We should be considering courses of conduct rather than individual incidents. I would be happy to work with him on that matter.