Julie Elliott
Main Page: Julie Elliott (Labour - Sunderland Central)Department Debates - View all Julie Elliott's debates with the Ministry of Justice
Criminal Legal Aid Reforms
Julie Elliott Excerpts(11 years, 2 months ago)
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Philip Davies (in the Chair)
Order. The hon. Ladies will have to divide the next eight minutes between them, as they see fit.
Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, as ever, Mr Davies. Having cut down my speech, I seem to have more minutes that I thought.
The debate over legal aid cuts is about more than just lawyers’ fees; it is about access to justice and to our legal system, without which equality before the law cannot function. Any cuts to legal aid must be targeted and thoroughly thought through, otherwise they will be fraught with risks to our legal system.
I understand that savings need to be found across the criminal justice system, and that legal aid should be reserved for those who need it most—those whose inability to pay legal fees threatens their access to justice. I feel strongly that steps should be taken to address the problems of very high cost cases, although I recognise that there are very few of them. I support efforts to root out inefficiency in the court system, as well as in prosecutions and the wider criminal justice system. I cannot, however, support cuts that might lead to an increased number of miscarriages of justice, which I fear the model will promote; it will also promote quantity over quality.
I question the first plank of the Government’s plan, which is to replace the current model and reduce the number of providers from 1,400 local providers to 400 larger ones. The Secretary of State has claimed that that will be a more efficient model of criminal legal aid procurement, but I do not follow that logic. For example, if someone has a solicitor from Berwick at the other end of my region, that will add at least an hour and a half to the time for them to get legal advice. The ideology that bigger means more efficient and that local means wasteful is part of a trend with this Government, but it is misguided.
Small and medium-sized legal aid firms will be obliterated by the changes; yet it is those very local firms that have the strong links with local courts, the police and the Crown Prosecution Service that larger companies simply do not have. Indeed, they often have relationships with repeat offenders, and sometimes a bit of common sense can be used in a situation, rather than letting it escalate into a massive legal case. With no pilot, no monitoring and no quality control, the lowest cost provider will win out, regardless of quality. Tendering time scales are so tight that many existing providers will not have sufficient time to restructure themselves into larger consortia.
On top of the previous 10% cuts to legal aid lawyers, the further proposals would cap bids at 17.5% below the current fee. The same fee will be paid regardless of the nature of the plea, as was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner). The cuts will price firms out of the legal aid market, and may even increase pressure on people to plead guilty, so heightening the chances of miscarriages of justice. The reforms, particularly price-competitive tendering, threaten universal access to justice, and I therefore urge the Government to reconsider and amend the proposals.