Baby Loss: Coroners

Julie Elliott Excerpts

Tuesday 19th March 2024 Westminster Hall

[Julie Elliott (in the Chair)]

I will call Tim Loughton to move the motion and then call the Minister to respond. As is the convention for 30-minute debates, there will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered baby loss and the role of coroners.

I am afraid you have a double dose of me this afternoon, Ms Elliott. That is obviously far too much for the people in the Public Gallery, who have made a surge for the exits.

This short debate will be focused on my Civil Partnerships, Marriages and Deaths (Registration etc) Act 2019, which has been going for quite a while now and remains unfulfilled in one part; that is the purpose of the debate. My Act started in the private Members’ Bill ballot in autumn 2017. It had its Second Reading on 2 February 2018. It passed all its parliamentary stages in February 2019 and passed into law in May 2019, almost five years ago. There were four parts to this historically quite ambitious and complicated private Member’s Bill.

The first part was that the names and details of mothers should appear on marriage certificates, now an electronic record. That came into being in May 2021, since when I have received many grateful thanks from mothers or the husbands of late mothers whose names could be now recorded on marriage records.

The second part was the extension of civil partnerships to opposite-sex couples, which came in on 31 December 2019 and became regulation on the last day of Parliament before the election in 2019. Since then, more than 25,000 happy couples have availed themselves of that facility.

The third part was for the Secretary of State to produce a report on the registration of pregnancy loss. A pregnancy loss committee was set up, and I sat on it. Within the last couple of weeks, baby loss certificates have become a thing and again have gone down very well.

Child Trust Funds

Julie Elliott Excerpts

Tuesday 19th March 2024 Westminster Hall

On resuming—

[Julie Elliott (in the Chair)]

The debate may now continue until 6.15 pm. I call Danny Kruger to resume his speech.

[Danny Kruger]

Thank you very much, Ms Elliott—I shall resume, rather than start again. I was saying that the child trust fund has its roots in a very good British tradition: the principle of asset-based welfare. In the 1990s, there was a tussle about the approach to public services. On the one hand, there was what we have come to call new public management, which was about centralised and bureaucratic quasi-market systems based on individual entitlements and comprehensive services. On the other, there was asset-based welfare, which was about putting capital into families and supporting communities to develop their own collective responses to social challenges.

In the new Labour years, the new public management model won out, with the great and noble exception of the child trust fund, which is such a brilliant innovation. It is such an important principle that people should be trusted to manage wealth and to sustain their families directly. I regret that, in 2010, when the coalition Government came in, the child trust fund was abandoned —I was going to have a pop at the Liberal Democrats, who I am sure were responsible for scrapping it, but let us just blame George Osborne, because we can all unite on that. Junior ISAs were established instead, and that is also a very good principle.

I want to echo the points that were eloquently made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Horsham and by the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton about the real injustice that families now endure. Back in the days when the child trust fund was created, not enough consideration was given to children without mental capacity to access and manage their own finances upon becoming adults. Something very wrong was done without anybody intending it and without it being properly thought through. I will not repeat the points made by my right hon. Friend, but we have a huge obligation to right that injustice.

It is worth pointing out that we have not just tens of thousands of young people locked out of money that is rightfully theirs and without the money or incentive to pursue a Court of Protection case to unlock it. There is also a significant disincentive to open a junior ISA for parents with a disabled child who are thinking about the long-term future and whether it will be possible to access that money. So we are inhibiting the principle of saving altogether.

The right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton and my right hon. Friend the Member for Horsham made very good suggestions about a one-off order solution—I absolutely echo the case made there—and also about the DWP appointee scheme. The fact that we do that for benefits—as we have heard, those often account for much greater sums than the child trust fund—means that we should extend it. I also agree with the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton about relieving the pressure on the Court of Protection.

The principle of child trust funds is such a good and important one in terms of the welfare model that we should have. The injustice that we have at the moment—the complexity of the system and the fact that there are so many dormant accounts—does not apply just to the families who know about the money that belongs to their disabled children and who want to access it; many millions of young people do not know that they have the right to this money—that it is, in fact, rightfully theirs. I understand that about 6 million young people have accounts, worth around £2,000 each, that they are unaware of, and it is estimated that around 1 million of those young people will come from deprived circumstances. What an enormous injustice it is that all that money is sitting there in Government accounts that they are not able to access! This has been described as malign neglect; it will not be deliberate—nobody is actively trying to prevent young people from accessing money that is rightfully theirs—but, nevertheless, for reasons we have heard about, disabled children and young people more widely are not being given access to money that is rightfully theirs.

I echo the point made by campaigners, including Gavin Oldham from the Share Foundation, about having a default withdrawal policy whereby the system knows the bank details of young people who are registered with HMRC. I understand that about 60% of young people with child trust fund accounts that they have not yet accessed could simply be given the money. That should happen; there would need to be communications and an information campaign around that, but it is the right thing to do, not least because it would stop the outrage of companies charging a 25% fee for the benefit of informing young people of the fact that they have this money. That, I think, is the future model.

As a country, we should be proud of the principle of child trust funds. A lot of people are increasingly thinking that we need to develop approaches around asset-based welfare. I noticed that David Willetts, a former colleague of ours, is proposing something similar—a capital sum granted to young people at coming of age—and Gavin Oldham has suggested that inheritance tax receipts should be used to invest in child trust funds for the future. I think that this is an old idea whose time has come, and I hope we can fix the immediate problems we have and then think more broadly about how to extend this model more widely.

Joint Enterprise

Julie Elliott Excerpts

Thursday 25th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)]

I, too, welcome you back to this place, Mr Deputy Speaker, following the tragic circumstances that befell your family.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell) for the thorough way she set out the issues. I also thank the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) for raising the issues he did and for mentioning my predecessor, Chris Mullin, who has an astounding and excellent track record on this issue.

This is a very important debate, but it is difficult for politicians to deal with. Let me say first that my sympathies are always with the victims of crime. People who are convicted of murder must be subject to the full weight of the law, as must people who are safely convicted of joint enterprise, but the Supreme Court’s change to the law in 2016 is not being implemented correctly. The Supreme Court said that the law had taken “a wrong turn” in 1984, which is clearly correct. However, as has been outlined, cases from before Jogee can go back to the Court of Appeal only if the person convicted can prove that their conviction was a substantial injustice.

An injustice is carrying on for many who are still in prison today and cannot be granted an appeal because their cases are “out of time” and would therefore have to pass the substantial injustice test. I wish to focus my remarks on that.

Those who were convicted more than 28 days before the change announced by the Supreme Court have to prove a substantial injustice, which means proving that the change in the law would have categorically made a difference. As has been outlined, that is an enormous bar to have to clear. Those people who were convicted in the 28 days before the change have to show only that their conviction is unsafe—a much lesser test of proof—in that the change in the law might reasonably have made a difference. All that means that, in a hypothetical situation, two people convicted of the same crime with identical evidence would be treated differently in the eyes of the law. That is simply wrong and needs to change.

It is no surprise that of the 800 men, women and children—a lot of them were children when they were convicted—who are supported by JENGbA, not one has successfully appealed their conviction since the Supreme Court’s decision on Jogee. I put on record my support for JENGbA, which has worked extremely hard not only by raising the issues with joint enterprise, but by supporting the families involved.

In most cases, this country can be proud of the British justice system, but when mistakes, misinterpretations or miscarriages of justice occur, they must be put right quickly. The British justice system is judged on that as much as on how the law is implemented. It is clear that the justice system is failing those people who are still in prison—often after many years—who were convicted more than 28 days before the Supreme Court ruling.

The direction of the law needs to be aligned and all cases should be judged against the lesser test of proof, which is that the conviction is unsafe. That would mean people convicted fairly, equally and reasonably against the new test that the Supreme Court set in putting right the “wrong turn” rightly staying in prison to serve their full sentence. However, those who would not have been found guilty under the new rules would get their freedom, and whatever follows.

That is why this debate is so important. Such an outcome would be right and proper and would restore British justice to being seen once again as fair, equal and reasonable. As long as people are judged against such a ridiculously high bar, British justice will be failing the people in prison who were judged under a wrong law.

Women and the Economy

Julie Elliott Excerpts

Wednesday 9th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)]

Why is this debate necessary? Why, in 2015, is it relevant to be discussing women and the economy, rather than simply the economy? What is it about the interaction between women, the economy and the labour market that is worthy of exploration? This debate is necessary because of the gender pay gap, which has been widely talked about; because of the proportion of women who are in low-paid and part-time work, and the proportion who are underemployed; because of workplace discrimination; because more women are reliant on childcare; and because of the greater number of women who work in the public sector.

Issues across the economy and the labour market affect women in different ways to men, and that is why this debate is so important. If it takes 70 years to equalise the gender pay gap, as is estimated on the current rate of progress, my four-year-old granddaughters will be pensioners by the time this issue is resolved. Our aim is to resolve these issues so that debates like this no longer appear on the Order Paper.

Given that we know there are issues that affect women more than men, we must move on to the yawning gap between what must be done and what the Government are doing. The gender pay gap, which fell by one third under the last Labour Government, stubbornly remains under this Government. Last year, the UK fell out of the top 20 in the global gender gap index for the first time, with the higher gender pay gap cited as the significant reason.

We know that, for a variety of reasons, women are more affected than men by changes in taxation and changes to social security spending, yet despite that knowledge, 81% of the £82 billion of tax increases and benefit cuts since 2010 have fallen on women. We also know that women are three times more likely to be in part-time work and therefore more exposed to changes in social security. I welcome the Government’s partial U-turn on tax credits, but women will still face cuts to universal credit. Knowing that women are disproportionately affected by changes to tax credits, and knowing that 80% of the savings would have come from women, the Government still pushed ahead.

We know that women make up around two thirds of the public sector workforce, and that cuts to the public sector and pay freezes disproportionately hit women, yet there seems to have been no acknowledgement of this by the Government, and no coherent plan to support women to find new jobs in the private sector. It should be a prerequisite for any change to tax and spending to have an assessment of the impact it will have on women. It is simply not good enough for this Government to make these changes and not even consider, let alone have a strategy to combat, the disproportionate effects they have on women in the workforce.

I am proud of Labour’s record on equality, from the Equal Pay Act 1970 to the Equality Act 2010, with many great strides in between. There is no silver bullet to combat discrimination against women in the workforce, but we know that there are specific things we could do now. We need to fully implement the pay transparency rules in the 2010 Equality Act, which required employers of more than 250 people to publish details of the average pay of men and women. This Government have made that voluntary. That small change would have a big impact, and we would be joining world leaders in pay equality such as Sweden, Denmark and Finland, which all score above the UK in the global gender equality index.

We need to get more young women into the science, technology, engineering and maths—STEM—sectors, either through university education or apprenticeships. Currently, just 15% of university places for computer science and engineering degrees are filled by women, and 88% of the STEM workforce is male. Yet, according to the attainment of A* to C grades at GCSE, girls continue to outperform boys in all but three of the 16 STEM subjects. This is a cultural problem, not an academic one.

The CBI suggests that 93% of young people are not getting the careers information they need, and what advice they do get tends to be pigeonholed. We need compulsory face-to-face careers advice from the age of 11, in partnership with business, to encourage young women to consider those crucial STEM subjects and science and engineering careers. It should come as no surprise that greater gender equality in the economy is good not just for women but for the economy itself. The Royal Bank of Scotland has calculated that boosting female entrepreneurship could deliver approximately £60 billion extra to the UK economy. If the gender pay gap were abolished tomorrow, women would earn more and spend more, and the Treasury would receive more in taxation. There is a long way to go on a lot of these issues, but until this subject is consigned to the history books and no longer debated in Parliament, we need to act. The Government need to act now.

Criminal Legal Aid Reforms

Julie Elliott Excerpts

Wednesday 4th September 2013 Westminster Hall

[Kate Green]

rose—

[Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)]

rose—

[Philip Davies (in the Chair)]

Order. The hon. Ladies will have to divide the next eight minutes between them, as they see fit.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

Probation Service

Julie Elliott Excerpts

Wednesday 13th March 2013 Westminster Hall

[Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)]

I shall be brief, Mr Crausby. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds East (Mr Mudie) for securing the debate, which is important because our probation service faces an imminent threat from a Government intent on cutting budgets at any cost to the service.

I will set out three core reasons why I am so concerned about the reforms: the cancellation of pilot schemes; the effects of payment by results; and the removal of probation trusts. To start, I concede that I am somewhat perplexed by the Government proposals. Our probation service is staffed by a dedicated army of workers, who do an important job keeping our community safe. It is vital and unglamorous work, away from the spotlight of public and media attention. Indeed, as has been mentioned, in 2011 the probation service deservedly won the British Quality Foundation’s gold medal for excellence in recognition of its outstanding and continued commitment to sustained excellence over several years. That is not to be taken lightly. The probation service is a proven success story and I simply do not understand why the Justice Secretary is intent on its dismemberment.

The previous Government recognised the importance of a secure and properly funded probation service. Funding rose by 70% in real terms, the number of offenders supervised by the probation service rose by 53%, and there was a rise in staffing of more than 7,000. During the Labour Government’s time in office, we proved our commitment to the probation service and its important work. The present Government are proposing to undo the hard-earned gains made under the Labour Government. Cuts to staffing and office closures will be the only way to achieve the deep cuts, and that will mean fewer probation orders made and the risk of an increased prison population.

I welcome the spread of best practice and the introduction of innovative ideas, such as bringing in outside expertise, but experience shows that a headlong rush to privatisation risks breaking up the system unnecessarily. Whatever the Justice Secretary might believe for reasons of expediency, a pilot is not some half-baked measure, nor a dirty word. It is how proper, well thought out, empirically driven policy is developed. Without it, we have what the Justice Secretary calls “believing”, and what everyone else calls “a step into the unknown”. Impervious to criticism from the Treasury, the National Audit Office and the probation service, he is taking a risk with a system that deals with vulnerable and sometimes dangerous offenders, and in doing so is taking a risk with safety.

Similarly, payment by results carries risks that the Government seem to be ignoring. It is primarily dependent on accurate data, which are not always easy to produce. Furthermore, the data, when available and correct, are often crude. If the Government believe that offenders least likely to reoffend and those most likely to reoffend are equals, private companies will simply focus on those who pose the lowest risk to people, and ignore the most prolific offenders, to turn a profit.

The system of payment by results is likely to lead to fewer, larger corporations in the hunt for those contracts. Many smaller organisations, such as charities and local groups—the very people with the experience and networks to work with offenders most effectively—will be unable to risk non-payment and will have to withdraw. That would be a disaster, yet it is already being played out under the guise of the Government’s Work programme, which for many people has been a contradiction in terms. One reason for the Work programme’s failure is that smaller organisations have been squeezed out by larger firms, citing lack of viability.

Finally, I am worried about removal of probation trusts. Northumbria probation trust is my regional trust and covers my constituency. It was given the highest performance rating for 2011-12 by the National Offender Management Service, and was declared to be exceptional. The success of my local trust should be celebrated and copied; instead, it is being dismantled. The irony, which is lost on few, is that a Government who proselytise localism are replacing local trusts with Whitehall centralisation. These reforms represent yet another false economy from this Government, and I urge the Minister and the Secretary of State to think again.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julie Elliott Excerpts

Tuesday 8th November 2011 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

[Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)]

1. What assessment his Department has made of the potential effects on other Government Departments of his planned reductions to legal aid for social welfare law.

[Graeme Morrice (Livingston) (Lab)]

4. What assessment his Department has made of the potential effects on other Government Departments of his planned reductions to legal aid for social welfare law.

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)]

The impact assessment published alongside the Government’s response to consultation lays out the best estimates of the costs and benefits of the legal aid reforms. Ultimately, costs to other Departments will be driven by behavioural responses to the changes, and these are very difficult to predict with any real accuracy.

[Julie Elliott]

I thank the Secretary of State for that answer. Is it his Government’s view that it is acceptable for a whole swathe of the population to have no access to justice in the area of social welfare law?

Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Julie Elliott Excerpts

Wednesday 29th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)]

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to take part in this important debate, Mr Deputy Speaker. I agree with many of the comments made by the hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant). The Government should listen to her experience and knowledge.

For 60 years, legal aid has provided secure and guaranteed access to justice for those who cannot otherwise afford legal representation, often protecting the most vulnerable in our society. With their reforms, the Government are undermining the principles of justice. The right to access it will become the privilege of the few who can afford it. The more I understand about the Government’s approach to justice policy, the more I realise that there is nothing just about it. Despite receiving thousands of representations from a wide range of organisations expert in delivering legal aid effectively and productively that say this is not the right approach, the Government are not willing to listen.

We know that seeking legal representation is an expensive undertaking. I understand that, but the Government are trying, inexcusably, to put a price on justice, which is embedded in the British democratic system. That undermines us as a free and fair society where all have an equal right to justice. Everyone has the right to be treated fairly under the British legal system. Who someone is, how much they earn and where they live should not be taken into account. The expense of access to our legal system makes legal aid so important. Justice is a right, not a privilege. Everyone deserves their day in court.

The Government have said that they want to ensure through the reforms that legal aid is targeted at those who most need it. They must have made a mistake. Surely that cannot be correct when they are cutting legal aid for the aspects of law that are often the last protection for the most vulnerable in our society: housing, debt, welfare and employment advice. Legal aid has stood up for people and given them the voice that they deserve. I am not sure where the Government expect an alternative to step in to deal with representation and advice in the aspects of law that will be removed from the scope of legal aid provision. Perhaps it is another job for the big society.

When people have to represent themselves in court because they cannot afford the legal fees, something is not right. As with so much of their legislation, the Government have left the most vulnerable wanting. It is a travesty that 500,000 people will be denied their right to legal representation and a chance for justice. The Secretary of State has said:

“It cannot be right that the taxpayer is footing the bill for unnecessary court cases that would never have even reached the courtroom door, were it not for the fact that somebody else was paying.”—[Official Report, 15 November 2010; Vol. 518, c. 659.]

I seriously object to that trivialisation of our justice system. The right hon. and learned Gentleman’s reference to “unnecessary court cases” shows where the Government have gone wrong. Debt, social welfare, housing and education law are not unnecessary. They are serious and complex areas of law that deserve their chance in court.

Legal aid provision has improved and strengthened our laws on protections and compensation and given justice to victims of negligence. Legal aid has been critical in many precedent-setting cases, such as the Hillsborough disaster, the thalidomide cases and the Clapham rail crash. Advances in case law as a direct result of legal aid provision have improved protections for everyone. British law is in a better place because of the chance to access legal aid. Although I can sympathise to some extent with the Government’s desire to promote other forms of legal settlement outside a courtroom, such as through mediation, that should be an alternative, not the only option. In my experience, it does not always work.

[Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government do not seem to have taken on board the fact that sometimes solving disputes out of court is possible only when the credible sanction of going to court at some stage is available? By taking that away, they undermine the system of mediation in which they put so much faith, and that will lead to miscarriages of justice.

[Julie Elliott]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. The stick-and-carrot approach, whereby there is something to make people see sense, agree and discuss things sensibly, often makes the difference between mediation working and not working.

Despite the Government’s laissez-faire approach to access to our legal system and their willingness again to leave the most vulnerable members of our society out in the cold, one of my biggest problems with the reforms to legal aid provision is their economic short-sightedness. The cuts will ultimately lead to higher costs for society. The cost-benefit analysis of the reforms has shown that they are not cost-effective, but short-sighted and counter-productive. The costs to society will have to met elsewhere, by other Departments, including the Department of Health, the Home Office and the Department for Communities and Local Government. It is disappointing that, despite calls for it, no cross-Government departmental review is taking place to assess the inevitable extra costs.

Yesterday, I asked about the matter at Justice questions, and was told that other Departments’ impact analysis of the proposals was “ongoing”. Surely that should have been sorted out before Second Reading. Citizens Advice estimates that £24 million spent annually on debt advice saves the Government some £188 million elsewhere, and that for every £1 spent on legal aid, the state saves £2.34 on housing advice, £7.13 on employment advice and £8.80 on benefits advice.

[Rehman Chishti]

rose—

[Julie Elliott]

I may not be an economist, but I am a British taxpayer and I can tell the House that the figures simply do not add up.

Even the Justice Committee, in its third report on legal aid, said:

“We are surprised that the Government is proposing to make such changes without assessing their likely impact on spending from the public purse”.

This is another case of the Government not listening to the experts on legal aid. I think we are detecting a theme here.

Let us maybe have one more for luck. I commend the good work of organisations such as the Law Society on looking at alternative cost-saving measures. The Law Society proposed alternative savings worth £384 million—£34 million more than the Government are looking to cut—which would still protect all civil and family legal representation. The Law Society made its representations but was ignored. Then the Justice Committee recommended that the Government assess the merits of their proposals. Again, that recommendation was not listened to.

With these reforms the Conservatives are demonstrating their reckless handling of the British justice system. We already knew that we could not trust the Conservatives to protect the most vulnerable members of our society; we now know that we cannot trust them to uphold the founding principles of British justice either. The Government’s own impact assessment says that these reforms will increase costs, increase criminality and reduce social cohesion. With that testament, I am left wondering: what are the real costs of these reforms to legal aid?

Oral Answers to Questions

Julie Elliott Excerpts

Tuesday 28th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Kenneth Clarke]

I am sure that my hon. Friend’s description of that work is correct, and I readily commend the work that is being done there and in other places. The main feature of the reforms that I am introducing is the concentration on cutting reoffending, which means rehabilitating offenders. I try to avoid giving the impression that nobody is doing that already, but instead of looking to particular spectacular examples, I want to see that running through the whole system. To reduce crime we have to reduce the number of criminals who are going to offend again as soon as they are out of prison, which is an objective of reform that has been missed for many years.

[Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)]

T9. In the light of the Ministry of Justice’s own impact assessment, which says that increased criminality, less social cohesion and increased costs are all likely to result from the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill, which is currently going through Parliament, have the costs to other Government Departments been considered and costed? If so, what are they?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Jonathan Djanogly)]

We have worked closely with other Departments to examine the impact of our proposals, and that is ongoing.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julie Elliott Excerpts

Tuesday 17th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Liz Kendall (Leicester West) (Lab)]

12. When he expects to bring forward legislative proposals for the reform of legal aid.

[Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)]

13. When he expects to bring forward legislative proposals for the reform of legal aid.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Jonathan Djanogly)]

We intend to bring forward legislation when parliamentary time allows.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Djanogly]

Legal aid per se involves poor people, so if we are going to reduce costs it will impact on poor people. It is true that individuals with protected equality characteristics are over-represented within the current client base of civil and family legal aid when compared with the population as a whole, although the extent of that varies by category of law.

[Julie Elliott]

Will the Minister be taking the advice of the Select Committee on Justice, which recommended that the Government should assess the

“merits of the cost-saving proposals put forward by the Law Society”,

namely the alternative savings of £384 million—£34 million more than the Government’s proposals would save—while protecting all civil and family legal representation?

[Mr Djanogly]

Various alternatives have been suggested by the institution that the hon. Lady mentions and by many others during the consultation. The question is whether they would work and whether they would deliver the required savings within the spending review period. The main proposal of the Law Society, which she mentioned, is an alcohol levy—a penny on your pint to pay for lawyers.