Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Kate Green Excerpts

Tuesday 24th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Djanogly]

My right hon. Friend finds the right moment to ask about something not subject to the amendment. It is an important point, however. My right hon. and learned Friend has written to him about onward appeals in immigration cases. The Department will conduct a review of the impacts of withdrawing legal aid in such cases once we have sufficient data and after implementation of the reforms. I envisage allowing about a year for the reforms to take effect before starting such a review.

Lords amendment 2 was passed in the other place yesterday by the extremely narrow margin of three votes. Unusually for this topic, no one spoke other than the mover and my right hon. Friend Lord McNally. That indicates how far we have moved. I remind the House of the main points. First, and crucially, legal aid to obtain the full range of injunctions and orders to protect against domestic violence will remain exactly as at present. There is no evidential gateway for legal aid for these remedies, and those who need legal aid to protect themselves can get it, regardless of their means.

Secondly, although we have removed most of private family law from the scope of legal aid in favour of funding mediation and less adversarial proceedings, we have made an extremely important exception for victims of domestic violence. That is so that they can take or defend proceedings about child contact or maintenance, or about the division of property, without being intimidated by their abuser during the proceedings.

We have made significant changes to the detail of this exception in response to concerns expressed in both Houses. We have accepted in full the Association of Chief Police Officers’ definition of domestic violence. We have also significantly widened the list of evidence that we will accept as demonstrating domestic violence for the purposes of the exception. That list will now include undertakings, police cautions, evidence of admission to a refuge, evidence from social services and evidence from GPs and other medical professionals. That is in addition to the range of evidence that had already been confirmed, including the fact of an injunction or order to protect against domestic violence having been made, a criminal conviction or ongoing criminal proceedings for domestic violence, a referral to a multi-agency risk assessment conference and a finding of fact by the courts that there has been domestic violence. We have also doubled the previously announced time limit for evidence for this exception from 12 months to two years.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

We all noted the Lord Chancellor’s commitment in the Chamber last week to extending the time limit to two years. Will the Minister clarify whether that will also apply in cases of child abuse, which seem to be encompassed by the definition of domestic violence that now applies in the Bill? Clarification would be welcome on that, as there are clearly instances in which proceedings might be brought in relation to child abuse after more than 12 months, including in care proceedings, in which it would be entirely appropriate to grant legal aid.

[Mr Djanogly]

Yes, I am pleased to be able to confirm to the hon. Lady that that is the case.

We think that we have struck the right balance, although some will disagree. However, such disagreement misses the fact that there are two important safeguards to our system, which will provide genuine victims with a route into legal aid even if they do not have the headline forms of evidence. First, when a court has to consider whether domestic violence is a factor in a private family case, it may consider any relevant evidence, including police call-outs or evidence from domestic violence support services, or other types of evidence that have not even been suggested by the Opposition. This is also relevant in regard to the time limits. When a case involves older incidents of domestic violence and a court considers that the matter is still relevant and makes a finding of fact, legal aid funding could still be triggered. There is also the more generic safeguard of the exceptional funding regime.

We continue to believe that the evidential requirements should not be in the Bill. The level of detail required means that those requirements will be much better left to regulations, subject to the affirmative resolution procedure, rather than to primary legislation. Given how far we have moved on this topic, and the safeguards that I have outlined today, I invite the House to disagree with Lords amendments 2B and 196B.