Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Karen Buck Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sadiq Khan]

I thank the Justice Secretary for his clarification. I hope that the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd is reassured. However, that illustrates the problem with the way in which the Bill has been dealt with. There have been three Green Papers, consultation, Second Reading and a long Committee stage upstairs, yet at the 11th hour the Government have tabled new clauses at the last possible moment which have not been subjected to the proper due processes that have existed in the House for generations, and for good reason. The way in which the Bill has been drafted, managed and taken through the House has been shambolic. The Bill is bad for the most vulnerable in society; it is bad for the victims of crime; it is bad for reforming offenders; and it is bad for the safety of our communities. That is why we oppose it, and will vote against giving it a Third Reading.

If the Bill remains unchanged by the other place, it will lead to the dismantling of legal aid, which has been a critical part of the post-war welfare state. Some 600,000 or 700,000 people in England and Wales, depending on whose figures are used, will no longer be able to secure legal aid. It is being dismantled in a way that falls disproportionately on those most in need, at a time when they need it most. That is why so many people are furious at the proposals.

I am less worried about the Justice Secretary losing friends; I am more worried about those who need justice not getting it. We and others have offered alternative savings in the legal aid budget, but the Government have dismissed the alternatives and have pushed ahead with slashing social welfare law: debt advice, housing advice, welfare benefits advice and employment advice. None of those who provide that advice are milking the gravy train and making huge sums of money.

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend share my touch of cynicism about the impact of the legal aid cuts on social welfare and welfare benefits, given that the people who are represented and receive the support of the legal aid system in order to be represented in the appeals system have a significantly higher chance of winning their appeals? If they do not have that level of representation, there will be fewer appeals, which will have the happy effect for the Government of people not receiving the benefits to which they are entitled.

[Sadiq Khan]

My hon. Friend raises a very good point, which is about inequality of arms. These are some of the most vulnerable people who, with a bit of advice early on, will find that their quality of life is improved; and all the evidence suggests that it saves the taxpayer money as well. Huge parts of the country will be devoid of the resources required to access justice because law centres, citizens advice bureaux and small high street solicitors will close down. We will have, I am afraid, advice deserts around the country.

But it does not stop there. In a further effort to save costs, the definition of “domestic violence” is being changed, which will lead to between 25,000 and 30,000 women who are the victims of domestic violence being denied legal aid. That could mean that vulnerable women and children who are the victims of domestic violence will continue to suffer as a direct consequence of the Bill.

Another substantive objection to the Bill is the Government’s cherry-picking of Sir Rupert Jackson’s proposals on civil litigation. That will create an obstacle to those who rely on no win, no fee cases to challenge some of the powerful in our society. The Government have even ignored the protestations of those involved in high-profile cases, such as the family of Milly Dowler. Only this morning, on the “Today” programme, we heard the calmness with which Christopher Jefferies articulated how he benefited from a conditional fee agreement in pursuing claims against national newspapers—an option that will not be available to further victims of wrongdoing if this Bill is passed, because there will be nobody left to advise them.

The Government’s policy on sentencing is an utter mess. Despite their claims, it does not bring clarity to the system, it is not based on common sense, and it will not increase public confidence. Totally abolishing indeterminate sentences takes away judges’ power to keep in custody the serious and violent offenders who put society most at risk by reoffending. These proposals in no way fill the gap left by the removal of indeterminate sentences. All this has been done in 73 minutes during the course of the past three days. The Justice Secretary’s policies on sentencing have been startlingly inconsistent over the past 12 months. Let us not forget that he began by saying that he had a target to reduce the prison population: first, the figure was 6,500; then it was 3,500; and then it was 3,000—and this week he has published an impact assessment giving the figure of 2,600.

I cannot end without dealing with the Liberal Democrats. They speak sanctimoniously from their Benches and they brief sympathetic newspapers and communities that they will stand up to this Conservative Government, but when it comes to pushing their amendments to a vote, they withdraw them on the basis of meaningless assurances or simply vote with the Conservative Government. They should be ashamed.

We will vote against giving this Bill a Third Reading. It is a shoddy Bill, and I sincerely hope that the other place is able to carry out major surgery on it.

Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Karen Buck Excerpts

Wednesday 29th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sadiq Khan]

I have done that before and I shall do so again in a while—[Interruption.] I am happy to answer that question.

The Justice Secretary’s remand policies demonstrate how budget cutting is taking priority over the best interests of our justice system. Defendants will not be remanded in custody when there is “no real prospect” of a custodial sentence being handed down. The Government’s victims commissioner, Louise Casey, says:

“Victims’ groups during consultation have expressed alarm”

at those proposals. The Magistrates Association and the Sentencing Council have also expressed opposition. The Sentencing Council states that

“in some cases it will not be clear until the conclusion of the trial/the preparation of the pre-sentence report whether the offence in fact merits a custodial sentence.”

The council reminds us that

“The primary reason for remanding a defendant in custody is that he or she will fail to attend court”;

or that there is a “risk of further offending”; and/or that

“there may be a good reason to believe that the defendant will interfere with witnesses”.

Does the Justice Secretary not realise that that change is likely to deter witnesses and victims from coming forward?

Lords Justices Thomas and Goldring both raised the genuine concern that

“the decision whether or not to grant bail is quite separate from the decision as to the eventual sentence”,

yet they have been ignored. In this Chamber last week, when ditching his 50% sentence reduction proposal, the Justice Secretary said that he had

“paid particular regard to the legal opinions that”

he

“was getting from serious members of the judiciary and others”.—[Official Report, 21 June 2011; Vol. 530, c. 169.]

It is disappointing that he has ignored not only Lady Justice Hale, but the concerns of the senior judiciary and others on the remand policy, and that he has not removed it from the Bill.

Indeterminate sentences for public protection are notable by their absence from the Bill—that is another example of the shambles that the Justice Secretary is in. He has talked of the need to reform the system of IPPs, the use of which had mushroomed well beyond the original purpose. IPPs have a role as they were originally envisaged, and I acknowledge the efforts of my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) to reform them.

This Government proposed a new approach to IPPs in their Green Paper, which were subsequently consulted on, as has been said. They favoured raising the minimum tariff to a 10-year determinate sentence before an IPP can be enforced—a length of sentence beyond that handed down for violent and sexual offences including rape and assault. We were opposed to that. However, there is nothing whatever in the Bill about that. The Justice Secretary today confirmed that he will be getting rid of IPPs, but he has also announced an urgent review of them. Has he not pre-empted the outcome of his review? My right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins) raised the interesting point about learning lessons from Northern Ireland, but the Justice Secretary will not do so, because he has already made his mind up, putting cost over the protection of the public.

Labour’s position on IPPs is clear: offenders must be punished and reformed. They must not pose a risk to the public and proper due process must be followed before their release, supported by courses and programmes and an effectively resourced Parole Board, to allow rehabilitation to take place. We will not accept plans that water down the protection given to the public by IPPs. We believe that there is a continuing role for IPPs. They should be reserved for very serious and violent offenders—those who are the biggest risk to the public—as was their original purpose.

The Justice Secretary’s solution appears to be mandatory life sentences for all those deemed to be a serious danger to the public if released. He has no idea if that will lead to the prison population going up or down, and no idea what he will do about those who have served their minimum tariff who are on an IPP. Why is he so unwilling to invest in programmes, courses and the Parole Board to address offender behaviour?

The absence of IPPs from the Bill has created further questions about the Secretary of State’s budget. As a result, the impact assessment is incomplete. Moreover, the Prime Minister last week appeared to announce more mandatory life sentences and longer determinate sentences, and that serious offenders would serve at least two thirds of their sentence. However, those proposals—those new policies—are absent from the Bill. Given that one of the causes of the backlog in IPPs is a shortage of suitable courses and resources for the Parole Board, how does he expect the two-third sentence proposals to avoid running into exactly the same resource issues as IPPs? Utter shambles!

Legal aid is another important issue. Our legal aid system was established as a fundamental pillar of the post-war welfare state. Clement Attlee’s Government rightly recognised that equality in the face of the law should not be undermined by a lack of finance. Therefore, it is bitterly disappointing that the Bill has made only minimal changes to the cuts proposed in the Green Paper. On the day when the Green Paper was published, I accepted that the Opposition, too, would have made cuts to the legal aid budget. However, I asked the Justice Secretary to look again at the areas he was targeting. He has not done so.

As a result, the weight of opposition to the proposals remains huge. He is damned by the numerous campaigning groups representing some of the most vulnerable people in society, the 31 charities that wrote last week to The Times in protest, the Law Society, the Bar Council and other members of the judiciary, and yet he has ignored their concerns—[Interruption.] I will let hon. Members know right now the Opposition’s view of legal aid. We oppose the cuts to social welfare legal aid—the kind of early-stage advice provided by law centres and citizens advice bureaux on debt, housing, welfare benefits and education issues—because of the disproportionate way that they will affect the most needy in our society. The result, as campaigning group Justice has said, will be the “economic cleansing” of our civil courts. Some estimates suggest that more than 700,000 people will have their access to justice taken away.

That is compounded by the disproportionate impact that the proposals will have on women, in particular because of the definition of domestic violence. Once again, this Government are hitting women the hardest.

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that one problem the Government have so far failed to address is ensuring the sustainability of the law firms, centres and practices across the country? It is not just a question of individuals losing their service; those centres and that provision will be undermined, and in many cases, face collapse.

[Sadiq Khan]

My hon. Friend is right to remind the House that if we are not careful, the country will become an advice desert for the poor and the vulnerable as a result of that policy.

The previous Labour Government always strove to protect social welfare legal aid. Our March 2010 proposals, which have been strangely ignored by this Government, would have generated savings sufficient to protect social welfare legal aid. The Justice Secretary’s changes will have a huge impact on the viability of many law centres, CABs and high street practices up and down the country that do an enormous amount to provide access to justice for some of our most deprived citizens. Do hon. Members know what the irony of that is? It is that this is the time when they need that advice most. A whole swathe of society is losing the ability to exercise its legal rights, with women particularly affected. The Lord Chief Justice has warned that the proposals will damage access to justice, and Citizens Advice has warned that the cuts will leave hundreds of thousands with nowhere to turn for help and has demonstrated the savings to the taxpayer down the line from early intervention: £1 of legal expenditure on housing advice will save the state £2.34, and on benefits advice the saving is £8.80. So there is a moral as well as an economic case for not cutting in this way. As the Justice Secretary knows, the Lord Chief Justice warned that legal aid cuts risked a surge in litigants in person, with all the associated increase in stress and costs.

Legal Aid Reform

Karen Buck Excerpts

Thursday 3rd February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue) on introducing this debate. She spoke with enormous clarity and mapped out the ways in which the cuts in legal aid will have an impact on our constituents. I also congratulate the hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) who made many points with which I agree, including a warning to beware labelling all lawyers as fat cats. Legal aid lawyers work extremely hard for relatively modest remuneration, and we should remember that.

I do not wish to repeat the key points that these cuts represent a false economy; that there are real dangers in taking whole areas out of the scope of legal aid because so many cases are complex, and cases such as debt and housing run into each other and cannot be separated out; or that there are limits to the value of phone advice. These are very important points, but I will not dwell on them further.

I want to make three further points. First, if there was ever a time to be scaling back on legal aid, particularly in civil and social welfare law, this is not it. We are seeing massive upheavals in public service delivery: in education, to which I will return; in housing, through the proposals in the Localism Bill, which will introduce short-term tenancies; in welfare, with £18 billion being taken out of the welfare budget through the cuts in housing benefit; in disability benefits; and, as mentioned, in rising unemployment and the broader economic context.

[Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)]

Does the hon. Lady not accept that the current cost of legal aid is unsustainable? We are spending £38 per head of population on legal aid, whereas in Australia it is £9, and in France £3. These reforms are therefore essential to get our economy back on track.

[Ms Buck]

There are so many points with which to respond to that intervention. We cannot compare systems between countries. It is not helpful because the legal systems and the delivery of legal aid support are so different. The Labour Front-Bench team are willing to discuss the legal aid budget, particularly in some aspects of criminal legal aid. There are areas in which savings can be made, but I am particularly concerned about civil and social welfare law.

My second point, which was made strongly during an earlier Westminster Hall debate, concerns the impact of these cuts—given the speed and depth at which they are being made—on the legal aid firms, law centres, citizens advice bureaux and other advice agencies. In many cases, they draw on legal aid for part of their funding. The removal of legal aid funding is like a game of Jenga: we start pulling out the sticks and the whole edifice is in danger of collapse. I think we will see a massive, unplanned spate of service closures across the country, and we will not be able to control where they happen. There will be advice deserts, and many of our constituents will struggle as a consequence.

I will provide an example of what I am talking about. This reform is being delivered at the same time as cuts in local authority spending. The London grant scheme is being repatriated to the boroughs without ring-fencing, which means that advice services in London are at the whim of local boroughs that are themselves under pressure. Therefore, the grant funding that should complement the Legal Services Commission funding is unlikely to be there. That will clearly impact severely on citizens advice bureaux and law centres. As has been said, politicians will regret taking this decision. I am already seeing—I am sure that other hon. Members are seeing it too—people coming to me for what should be a legal advice and representation service that in many cases we are not qualified, and certainly not resourced, to provide. I predict with absolute certainty that our surgeries will be flooded with more and more desperate and angry people who cannot get the proper representation they should.

Finally, I want to touch on the disproportionate impact on women, children, people with disabilities and people from black and minority communities. We know from the scope of the areas affected that these cuts will fall most heavily on them. We have heard about family law and asylum-seeking communities, particularly asylum-seeking children, who will be left at risk because of these cuts. However, I want to make a particular case for education and special educational needs. In my borough there is a particular problem of children without school places—350 were without a place before Christmas. Those children and their families need advice and representation, and the parents seeking to take action against their local authority for denying them a statement of special educational needs are a particularly vulnerable group. We know from the number of tribunals that succeed that 82% of parents’ appeals that reach tribunal are upheld. The removal of assistance from those parents, many of whom simply do not have the skills or resources to make their own case, will mean that their children will not get the education to which they are entitled.

I urge the Minister to rethink many aspects of the proposals, in particular the narrowness of the scope that is being applied to legal aid cases and the arbitrary way in which the services are being withdrawn.

Legal Aid and Civil Cost Reform

Karen Buck Excerpts

Monday 15th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

Yes, we certainly intend to confine legal aid in immigration cases to those where detention or liberty is an issue, or in respect of asylum to where there may be a duty to provide asylum to someone who has been facing persecution. Other than that, we will make considerable reductions in legal aid in immigration cases involving purely personal reasons, which can include someone who has come here on a student visa and wants to transfer to a different course. Many such cases will still be brought of course, but there is no reason why the British taxpayer should pay for legal aid. I hesitate to give an estimate off the cuff of how much we will save under that heading, and I should emphasise that all the estimates we are giving of how much we will save are, indeed, estimates, because successive Governments have found it very difficult to predict how much legal aid will actually cost. Much depends on demand in particular areas, which is often unpredictable and outside the control of the Government.

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

Legal aid plays a vital function in creating a level playing field between the powerful and the powerless, and, even at a lower level, it must continue to do that. There are none so powerless as children. Will the Secretary of State clarify how he believes that children’s interests should be protected, particularly in respect of special educational needs in what is an increasingly decentralised school system?

[Mr Clarke]

Serious issues arise for parents in educational cases, and, obviously, the interests of the children should be paramount, as they are in most other cases. The difficulty is that the problem to be resolved usually relies more on educational expertise than on the law, and too often we are financing people who argue about the process that has been followed to resolve problems, instead of finding the best way of resolving the merits of how best to teach the child, where the child should be taught, or what support the child should have. We believe it is simply not right for the taxpayer to help inject an element of what is really legalism into problems that should in the end be resolved taking into account the best interests of the child from an educational point of view. Some of these cases can be turned into enormous legal battles, which seem to me to be very far removed from the object of ensuring that a child is best educated in school.