Legal Aid Reform

Julie Hilling Excerpts

Thursday 3rd February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

I join in the congratulations to my neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue) on securing this debate on an issue that will adversely affect so many of our constituents.

Before Christmas, a woman came into my surgery in desperation. She was trying to extricate herself from a violent relationship. As is normal with such relationships, although she is now safe, her ex-partner continues to manipulate her and to exert his power by agreeing to things and then going back on his word. Even though she earns only about £20,000, she had been turned down for legal aid and was in a terrible situation. She was paying for a solicitor, but it had reached a point where she could not ask them to do anything else because she could not afford to pay them. As an ordinary person, she was terrified of running up debt, so she made sure that she paid all her bills immediately, even though that meant that she frequently did not have enough money to be able to eat. Of course, celebrating Christmas was out of the question. If the Government go ahead with their plan to reduce civil legal aid, my surgery will be full of people like that.

Bolton citizens advice bureau sent me a snapshot of an ordinary day at its drop-in service. On 11 January, its social welfare law drop-in service was open for six hours. Sixty-three new clients walked in off the street. That does not include the 31 people who went in for return appointments. If the proposals to reform legal aid had been implemented and if the Citizens Advice financial inclusion fund had been withdrawn, it would have been able to deal with only five or six of those people.

The stories of many of those people are heartbreaking and many of their cases involved an element of benefits, with claims being refused, delayed or wrongly calculated. Many of them did not have enough money to feed themselves or their children, such as the lone parent with three children who was receiving only £47.50 a week, or the lone father who had received no benefit for his 18-month-old and was told he would have to wait another four weeks for any money. A number of them were in imminent risk of losing their homes because of failed businesses. Some had employment issues and others had immigration issues. Whatever the issue, the common thread was that they went to Citizens Advice because they had nowhere else to go. They could not afford to buy legal support, unlike the people who were pursuing them. Their cases involved debt, wages that had not been paid and the refusal to pay benefits.

Surely, it is a mark of a civilised society that all people have access to legal justice. Surely, in 2011 we should not be returning to olden days when the poor simply had to accept what the rich and powerful did to them. Of course, the equality impact assessment states that females and black or minority ethnic people will be more adversely affected, and it cannot rule out a disproportionate effect on the disabled. The Government do not appear to be taking action to redress that.

My hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield talked about the financial cost of removing legal aid, but what about the other costs? What will happen to the lone father who is getting no benefit? Will his child go into care? What will happen to the person who loses their house? Will they go into emergency accommodation and have to be rehoused by the state? What about the long-term trauma of children caught up in the problems? Will they then fail in school and in their future life? The Government’s proposal is wrong, morally, ethically and financially.

Citizens advice bureaux and community law centres are the Government’s big society in action—a combination of volunteers and professionals working in partnership to provide a service for their communities. It is often the only service for those who are the most disadvantaged. Like every other voluntary group, however, the service costs. Even if projects are run entirely by volunteers, they still need funding for training and resources, premises and running costs.

I will not argue that legal aid needs no reform, but the proposed reform is supported by no one. Even the most commercial firm of solicitors says that it will have a detrimental effect on the most vulnerable in society. I say to the Government, please do not send us back to the days when justice was just for the rich and the privileged. I plead with them to rethink their proposals.