Legal aid

Debate between Karen Buck and Margot James

Tuesday 14th December 2010 Westminster Hall

[Ms Buck]

I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising that point; it will be one of the issues that I address. There is an argument in addition to the argument about how much we fund legal aid by. There is consensus that the budget cannot expand indefinitely, but there are still issues about the speed at which and the manner in which legal aid funding is withdrawn and the impact that that could have on providers.

I think that value for money was also at the heart of the hon. Gentleman’s remarks. Is it not the case that expenditure on legal aid and advice services does provide value for money, because it ensures that public services and others operate effectively and well, that errors are corrected and that public law is constantly challenged? It also helps people to redress wrongs and ensures that the take-up of benefits and other services is done properly.

The National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux, among other organisations, convincingly argues that there is a very poor business case for what the Government propose. Taking so much social welfare out of the scope of legal aid will undermine value for money. It is argued that between £2 and £10 is saved for every pound invested in the legal aid budget. An analysis based on data from the civil and social justice survey and on Legal Services Commission outcomes data estimates a saving of £2 for every £1 spent in relation to housing, £3 for every £1 spent on debt advice, £8.80 for every £1 spent on benefits advice and £7 for every £1 spent in relation to employment. That is besides the benefit to the individual; 80% of social welfare legal aid cases record positive outcomes for the clients.

It is impossible in a limited time—I want other hon. Members to have an opportunity to contribute to the debate—to pay proper attention to every area of civil law affected by the proposals, so I shall make just a few remarks on the areas that cause me greatest concern.

In relation to family law, no one disputes the value of mediation or the fact that in cases that go to court, the court action can have an extremely damaging impact on the families. However, relying on mediation is not always an option. It is not always the case that both partners are prepared to go to mediation. Also, it implies that there is a willingness to compromise and that the compromise should be somewhere around the middle of the argument about child welfare, maintenance or whatever. That ignores the fact that in many instances, one partner or the other has behaved excessively badly or is making unrealistic demands; indeed, it encourages them to make such demands.

Good and powerful cases have been raised by the Legal Aid Practitioners Group, and I shall read the details of two into the record as examples. One case study states:

“I am advising a client who is seeking contact with his children. The children’s mother has remarried and has a new child with her husband. She seeks to marginalize our client from the children’s lives, has denied contact, refuses to engage in mediation and has moved to a secret address. The case requires a preliminary application to ascertain the children’s whereabouts and once identified an application for contact. Clearly mediation is impossible and without early advice the client will have absolutely no idea how to re-establish contact with his children. His options would be to try to find them through any means available to him which would not be helpful or to give up which would deny the children the right to have a relationship with their father. With early advice, the application for disclosure would be made by solicitors and once the children’s whereabouts were identified a tactical attempt to negotiate and encourage mediation…would take place. This particular client has some learning difficulties and to navigate the court system as a litigant in person would almost certainly be impossible and any attempts made would be hugely time consuming.”

The other case study states:

“I am advising a client. He has 4 children and has shared residence for all those and is very active in their lives. We have helped him in the past with residence issues with the benefit of legal aid…He is now facing an application by one of the Mothers to take his 14 year old daughter to New Zealand where the Mother has a 2 year work contract. If this is allowed, from seeing his daughter half the week he will be lucky to see her in the holidays and will not be able to afford air fares…In future this client will have to deal with this on his own. This will lead to him probably giving up on fighting the application.”

Even in cases in which domestic violence is not an issue, without legal aid there are real dangers that individuals, particularly those who have difficulty in being sufficiently articulate or confident to navigate the courts system, will lose access to their children.

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

The hon. Lady is making a very powerful case, but given that she has said that civil, family and social law are bearing the brunt of the proposed cuts, I wonder whether she will comment—or the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter), will comment later—on where her party would have made the cuts had it been re-elected. As she mentioned, cuts would have been made had Labour been re-elected. The cuts proposed are less than 20%. If criminal law is to be protected, where does she or the shadow Minister suggest that the Government make the cuts? The speed and manner of the cuts seem to be the main criticism. We would like to see more detail.

[Ms Buck]

As I said, the previous Labour Government had already made cuts to the legal aid budget, which were highly controversial. Many hon. Members who are in this Chamber made fierce representations on that point. I have already said that there were areas, particularly very high-cost criminal cases, in which the Government intended to go further. Ministers were also examining ways in which the civil and social welfare budget could be protected within the global legal aid budget, because it was understood that in many cases, savings in that area would lead to a false economy. Therefore I will not be drawn into an argument about equivalence of cuts and into coming out with every figure, because I dispute the basis of what the hon. Lady has said.

One of my greatest concerns is about the proposed cuts in relation to education. The Government’s intention is to take education out of the scope of legal aid. Given the often unfulfilled statutory duty on local authorities to ensure that young people receive an education, that is bound to hit the most vulnerable the hardest.

I am indebted to Just for Kids Law, a specialist organisation in my constituency, for the information that it has provided and for its assistance with a number of cases that I have referred to it. Last year, Just for Kids Law took 34 cases, with two thirds having a satisfactory outcome. These are cases of children without a school place and cases in which there are serious disputes in relation to children who have or who require statements of special educational needs. Given that the latest figures for my borough show that we have 364 children without a school place at this point in the school year, the need for representation for parents is extremely clear.

I shall give a couple of examples of cases, from Just for Kids Law’s caseload, which would receive no representation in future.

“E…is a highly gifted boy who is on the autistic spectrum. His father was offered a job in New Zealand so the family emigrated and E…started Year 7 there. Regrettably there was no special educational needs provision for him and he was so severely bullied that, by August, his parents had withdrawn him from school and made arrangements for the family to return to the UK. They had kept in regular contact with their local authority, however, when they returned in January 2009, there was no place available...After six weeks at home with his mother he was provided with a Personal Tutor for two hours per week. His behaviour was rapidly deteriorating and he started self harming. He told JfK Law he…wanted to go to school like everyone else and didn’t want to end up”—

in a dead-end job. Just For Kids Law made representations to the local authority and, when that was unsuccessful, issued urgent judicial review proceedings. After two mediation meetings with the local authority lawyers, he was eventually offered a place at a specialist autistic centre that integrates into a mainstream school. Without representation at every stage, it is likely that that child would have ended up with no school place and no provision, with catastrophic consequences for him.

The second example states:

“R…was permanently excluded from school in 2006. He has special educational needs and had been receiving specialised support”

for his behavioural problems, which had been successfully managed in reception and year 1, but in year 2 his behaviour worsened. Instead of referring him for an assessment for a statement of special educational needs or asking for the local authority’s advice the school permanently excluded him. His mother felt that was because her relationship with the head teacher had broken down. Just For Kids Law advised the mother at the governing body appeal, which she lost.

“JfK Law then appealed to the Independent Appeals Panel…and made representations that it was not lawful to exclude a child because of the breakdown in relationship between a Head Teacher and the mother, the school should have dealt with the problem by way of a “managed move” to another school that could meet his needs….The IAP agreed with JfK Law’s representations”

and overturned the permanent exclusion, which is no longer on the child’s record. That is a case about a very vulnerable family.

We have referred to housing and homelessness. The Government intend to retain provision in cases of people at risk of imminent homelessness, but, perversely, they are taking debt and other areas of financial advice out of scope. Those issues are almost always the preliminary problems that lead to homelessness.