Future of Legal Aid

Lilian Greenwood Excerpts

Thursday 1st November 2018 Westminster Hall

[Andy Slaughter]

Yes. I will come on to mediation. My hon. Friend highlights two points: first, the lack of early advice and its consequences, and secondly, that the so-called alternatives put in place by the Government have failed, so we are left with effectively no safety net.

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is starting to build up quite a case on the issue. Sally Denton, a senior solicitor at the Nottingham Law Centre, made precisely that point about the importance of early advice:

“Given the massive changes to the benefit system coupled with the evidence that most people presenting as homeless to the local authority are doing so following the end of a private tenancy and the massive crisis in homelessness it is clear that failing to enable people to access early assistance with benefits issues will result in many losing their tenancies and either being homeless…or having to be accommodated by the local authorities”.

Do these savings in one area not just create much bigger costs in another?

[Andy Slaughter]

My hon. Friend identifies the fact that by pulling away parts of the legal aid structure, the whole thing has collapsed in many areas. It is often the case that one problem, which may be housing or debt, is caused by another solvable problem, which is the lack of welfare benefits. Because they are not in receipt of welfare benefits, someone who would otherwise be eligible for legal aid may not qualify under the eligibility rules, and therefore the whole thing spirals down.

As I was saying, I have three specific requests. There are other discrete issues that I wish to mention and I will say a bit more about those in a minute, but I would like some indication from the Minister, when she responds to the debate, that at least these three specific requests are being considered as part of the review.

LASPO was billed as having four objectives,

“to discourage unnecessary and adversarial litigation at public expense; to target legal aid at those who need it most; to make significant savings to the cost of the scheme; and to deliver better overall value for money for the taxpayer.”

The Ministry of Justice predicted that the budget for the legal aid bill would be cut by £350 million. It promised that there would be innovative ways in which advice and legal services would be offered, allowing costs to be cut while still maintaining access to justice.

There was, however, little of substance. Instead, LASPO swept away 60 years of the development of legal aid, taking almost all private family law and most of social welfare law out of scope, introducing onerous restrictions on eligibility, and turning on its head the principle of a right to advice and representation. Now, matters would be eligible for legal aid only if expressly allowed by the schedule to the Act.

Later, criminal legal aid got the LASPO treatment. It did not feature in any detail in the original Bill, but subsequent secondary legislation introduced cuts of a similar scale for crime, opening up the prospect of advice deserts and, as we have already touched on, miscarriages of justice, where defendants do not meet eligibility criteria but cannot afford representation.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lilian Greenwood Excerpts

Tuesday 6th May 2014 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Wright]

I assure my hon. Friend that proper reviews of each of those people are carried out, not just by us but, on a great many occasions, by the Parole Board too, to ensure that people are suited for open prisons. For those offenders who will be released one day, we have a choice to release them either straight from the closed estate or from the open estate. The objective here, which he and I will both agree on, is to ensure that when someone is released from custody the risk to the public is as low as it can possibly be. In each and every case, that is what we seek to do. In the particular case that has been raised already this afternoon, as he knows we will look very carefully at the circumstances of this temporary release.

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

My constituent Dr Heather Peto had her whistleblowing and discrimination case struck out by an employment tribunal judge because, she contends, the respondents’ lawyers deliberately withheld documents adverse to their case. Will the Minister advise me on how my constituent can request a police investigation, given that employment tribunal rules do not permit their judges to refer such matters to the police and the police will investigate only on the basis of just such a referral?

[Damian Green]

As with any other citizen of this country, if the hon. Lady’s constituent has evidence of criminal behaviour, she should take it to the police directly.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lilian Greenwood Excerpts

Tuesday 8th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

I can indeed. I pay tribute to Justice Munby who is working on plans for transparency and how the Court of Protection works. The reforms he will be putting in place will, I think, make a big difference to the way in which the courts work, making them more transparent and more open about the work they do. I look forward to seeing the fruits of his labours.

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

19. The Children’s Society said of the Government’s legal aid proposals that“these changes will prevent some of the most vulnerable children, young people and families from seeking and obtaining justice.”What has the right hon. Gentleman changed to allay those fears?

[Chris Grayling]

We have found the right balance between protecting the interests of the justice and sustaining a legal aid system that provides justice—for example, by protecting civil legal aid in some of the most sensitive child custody cases. I say again, however, that in a world of tight finance, we cannot do everything for everyone.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lilian Greenwood Excerpts

Tuesday 21st May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Wright]

My hon. Friend is right that too many drugs are still coming into prisons, but he will be reassured to know that the rate of positive drug tests is coming down. As he will know, we must also tackle the misuse of prescription medication in jails. We are addressing all those problems to the best of our ability and will continue to do so.

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

T7. There are some excellent local voluntary sector organisations that have valuable experience of working with offenders. How will Ministers ensure that small organisations with expertise are not shut out from rehabilitation work, while a handful of large private sector companies with little experience but deep pockets stitch it up?

[Jeremy Wright]

The answer to the hon. Lady’s question has two parts. First, when we assess the bids for rehabilitation work, the bidders must demonstrate that they will support smaller organisations to carry out the work with them. Secondly, there must be contract management to ensure that as the contracts proceed, the smaller organisations are looked after and have a sustainable future. We will do both those things.

Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Lilian Greenwood Excerpts

Tuesday 17th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)]

It is 43 years since I started work as a coal miner, and during the many years for which I was a union rep I saw some horrendous accidents: men who had their legs cut off by broken ropes or broken chains; a man buried alive under thousands of tonnes of coal; a man impaled on the roof of a coal mine by a machine; and a man whose pelvis was broken by another machine. I represented people with stress-related illnesses. I represented thousands of people in my 35 years as a trade union representative and I sat on social security tribunals, went to social security tribunals and sat on industrial tribunals, but nothing could convince me that anything is more pernicious than the situation for people who are suffering from mesothelioma.

Mesothelioma is an exceptional case, because of what the disease does. When I first became aware of mesothelioma, I asked a solicitor, Ian McFall from Thompsons Solicitors in Newcastle, to explain to me exactly what it was. He said that one fibre could go into someone’s lung and lie dormant for many years, but when it becomes active there is no alternative—that person suffers horribly and then they die. There is no cure, no remission and no element of survival; they die, and that makes it a special case. Everybody who gets mesothelioma will die an agonising death.

The real real reason why mesothelioma is an exceptional case is that the problem was known about for more than a century. Asbestos was identified as a poisonous substance in 1892 and has been banned for use in this country for almost half a century, yet employers knowingly exposed their workers to it day in, day out. They knew the dangers and ignored them for decades. They were eventually held accountable, but ever since the first successful case against the employers and their insurers on asbestos-related diseases, the employers and the insurers have kept coming back to the courts and to this place.

The hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) asked why we in this place were involved in this issue, but we constantly have to rewrite the law because people are using the law and this place to get away from their responsibilities. The decision on pleural plaques a few years ago was welcomed by KPMG because, as it said, that was a £1.4 billion handout to the insurance industry in this country. Those were the people who were clapping their hands on that day, not those who have asbestos-related diseases.

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that that is why the constituents whom we have been speaking to feel so angry? They cannot understand why the Government are on the side of negligent employers and their insurance companies instead of on the side of mesothelioma victims.

[Mr Anderson]

What can I say? Someone said earlier that no empathy is being shown, but I think that empathy is being shown—to the insurance companies. We can take our guidance from that.

The Minister talked about the compensation culture, but it is very easy to stop that culture: tell employers to stop killing people at work and to stop poisoning people at work. Then people would not be able to claim compensation. That is exactly what needs to be done. We are talking about employers who have contempt for workers and their families. They let workmen go home in dirty work clothes that their wives then washed, and became infected with mesothelioma through doing so. What happened was known by employers. We are talking about employers who were using young kids in Namibia to fill plastic sacks with raw asbestos. They put young kids of seven, eight or nine in the sacks to tamp the asbestos down. That is the type of people we are dealing with—people with no regard for human life. Some successful cases were brought by a trade union in South Africa and they got £38 million in compensation. That £38 million was welcome but it did not save the lives of any of those kids.

We have had 42,000 people die in the past 40 years in this country and 60,000 more will die in the next 50. That is more than 1,000 people a year and more than were being killed in the coal mines in this country in the disastrous years of the 1930s. That is why this is a special issue. We should be looking to people such as Chris Knighton in the north-east of England who has led a campaign on behalf of her husband who died 15 years ago—a man who was fit enough to ride from Newcastle to Berwick on a bike on a Sunday morning and think nothing about it. He fell down one day in the local club and when he went to see the doctor, the doctor told him, “You’ve got mesothelioma.” He asked, “What does that mean?” The doctor said, “It means you’re going to be dead in nine months’ time.” Those are the people we are standing up for today. We are not standing up for big business or insurers—we are standing up for ordinary people who have been exploited for years. If we do not support the amendments to this legislation we will be letting those people down. I say to the Liberal Democrats in particular, “If you ever want to claw back from where you are now, support these amendments tonight. You will never be forgiven if you don’t.”

Oral Answers to Questions

Lilian Greenwood Excerpts

Tuesday 31st January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. This question is about Kettering, from which Carshalton and Wallington and Manchester are a long way away.

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

2. What steps he plans to take to support law centres.

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

The Ministry of Justice does not provide direct support for law centres. However, law centres are able to bid for contracts issued by the Legal Services Commission to provide legal services in specified areas of law and will continue to be able to do so in the future.

My Department is also working closely with the Cabinet Office to support the cross-Government review into the funding of the not-for-profit sector announced on 21 November last year.

[Lilian Greenwood]

I thank the Minister for that reply, but what would he say to my local law centre in Nottingham, which, as a result of his legal aid changes, says it will no longer be able to offer specialist advice to people experiencing problems at work, with debts or with benefits? When our local citizens advice bureau is already hugely overstretched, does that not mean that hundreds of people—particularly vulnerable people—will be unable to get the advice they need and will be denied access to justice?

[Mr Djanogly]

Specifically, legal aid will be provided for a lot of debt advice after our changes. We are reducing our spend on legal aid, and law centres will be affected by that, but the Government recognise and highly value the important role of not-for-profit organisations such as law centres. That is why we launched a £107 million transition fund last year and the £20 million advice services fund this year. It is why the Cabinet Office has also announced a review of not-for-profit advice centres, which is a welcome and important development.

Interpretation Services (Ministry of Justice)

Lilian Greenwood Excerpts

Monday 10th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Leech]

I thank my hon. Friend for that contribution. That is a common issue that has been raised with me by interpreters around the country, in England and in Wales.

When one adds in the additional disincentives of no pension, holiday pay or sick pay, as well as no job security and no increase in interpreters’ rate of pay since 2007, it is unthinkable to assume that these proposed rates of pay and costs are suitable. It also seems perverse that the new framework agreement encourages the use of an interpreter’s car rather than public transport. Currently, standard-class fares are reimbursed in full, while the car mileage rate is 25p a mile. A higher rate of 45p a mile, which is more in line with the true cost of running a car per mile, along with parking costs, is payable only if the interpreter can show that there was no public transport option. However, under the new arrangements all calculations will be based on the use of a personal car and public transport costs will not be covered—not much of an incentive for interpreters to reduce their carbon emissions and travel on public transport.

One of the stated aims of the framework agreement is increasing the number of suitably qualified and vetted interpreters to meet the demand. There are currently around 2,300 interpreters registered with the national register of public service interpreters. Applied Language Solutions claims that 1,000 linguists have signed up to its Linguist Lounge recruitment website. That means a cut of around 1,300 qualified interpreters available to the courts system, assuming that all 1,000 are NRPSI-qualified. If they are not, the cut in qualified interpreters will be even greater. The failure of ALS to reach agreement with at least 1,300 qualified interpreters shows the level of opposition to the proposals, in spite of evidence to suggest that ALS has sought to pressurise interpreters into signing up, with thinly veiled threats that the registration is closing soon. Does the Minister think that that is appropriate behaviour for a company purporting to implement the legal interpreting and translation register, which surely must be consistently open to applicants as a public resource?

Does the Minister also think that closing the list when more than half the NRPSI-qualified interpreters have refused to sign up will increase the availability of suitably qualified and vetted interpreters? Of course it will not. We should look at the evidence from where outsourcing has already taken place and at its impact on the quality and availability of interpreters. The Ministry of Justice claimed on 6 July that “collaborative authorities” had

“concerns that NRPSI registration does not necessarily guarantee quality. The evidence for this is anecdotal, but has been consistent enough to warrant action.”

I would prefer to rely on hard evidence, and there is significant evidence that the outsourcing of interpreting services by police forces has resulted in the use of unqualified interpreters.

When Cheshire constabulary outsourced to ALS, only 34% of the interpreters provided by ALS were on the NRPSI. In Lincolnshire, outsourcing led to a reduction of registered interpreters from 68% to less than 30%. Where outsourcing has taken place there has been a significant reduction in the number of registered interpreters being used—clear evidence that the quality and availability of interpreters is reduced.

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree with my constituent Svetlana Clark who is a member of the Chartered Institute of Linguists and a public service interpreter on the national register, that the potential cost to the judiciary of adjournments, mistrials, appeals and failed prosecutions as a result of inadequate interpreting cannot be overestimated and does not serve the interests of justice?

[Mr Leech]

I do agree with the hon. Lady’s constituent. There is lots of evidence to suggest that where unqualified interpreters have been used there have been delays in police and court action, resulting in additional costs. I have been handed pages and pages of examples of unqualified interpreters being sent to police stations and courts by agencies, or interpreters proficient in the wrong language. One example that made it into Private Eye was ALS providing a Czech-speaking interpreter for a Slovak-speaking suspect. ALS’s explanation was that

“it is fair to say that most people from Slovakia essentially speak Czech.”

Is this really the sort of organisation that we want in charge of ensuring that justice is done?

Other questions have been raised about the suitability of ALS to fulfil the role. The Minister has already assured me that the Department’s procurement specialists were satisfied by the company’s stability and probity, but the fact remains that more than 50% of qualified interpreters do not and will not work for it. The company has been found to be in breach of the Data Protection Act 1998 on three occasions since 2007. Can the Minister assure me that potentially highly sensitive data are safe and that is it appropriate for them to be handled in non-UK call centres?

Finally, will the Minister explain why foreign-language-speaking interpreters are being treated differently from British sign language interpreters, who will retain their existing terms and conditions? Surely that contravenes sections 13 and 19 of the Equality Act 2010, by providing less favourable terms to foreign-language interpreters? The Ministry of Justice also intends effectively to re-test foreign-language interpreters, but not British sign language interpreters. Surely it is a contradiction that the Ministry accepts BSL qualifications as valid but rejects foreign-language interpreters, even though they have the same level of accredited qualification.

These proposals have not been properly thought through. The MOJ has failed to look at the evidence from outsourcing, and failed to treat all interpreters equitably. I hope that it is not too late for the Government to take a step back and review this decision. If they cannot do that, I would at the very least strongly urge the Minister closely to monitor the performance of the service, paying close attention to the delays and additional costs that will undoubtedly occur when cases are delayed as a result of a lack of an available interpreter, or when mistakes are made when under-qualified interpreters are used.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lilian Greenwood Excerpts

Tuesday 29th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

I agree that the registry’s state guarantee of title to land and property is essential, and that it must be retained in any arrangements that we make. Previous investigations of the registry have featured all the options that we are considering now, including the possibility of involving private sector partners—indeed, I have the original operational efficiency programme for 2008, which refers to private sector opportunities. We will, however, proceed with great care.

I know that the hon. Lady has a constituency interest because there is an important branch of the registry in Leicester. I, or one of my colleagues, will meet her in due course, once she has given us a little time to consider the findings of the feasibility study.

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

I recently met local representatives of the Public and Commercial Services Union from the Nottingham branch of the Land Registry. Unsurprisingly, they expressed concern about not only their own futures but the future of the service. What discussions is the Secretary of State having with staff trade unions to ensure that their valuable expertise and experience are taken into account in shaping the future of the service?

[Mr Clarke]

We will certainly take account of all staff comments, and we hope to include the staff in our consultations. If there were any question of any change in the registry’s status, we would embark on a full and careful consultation before taking action. We are pursuing the same objectives as the last Government: guaranteeing title, improving efficiency, lowering costs, and taking advantage of the opportunities provided by the Land Registry system to offer further service to the public.

Legal Aid Reform

Lilian Greenwood Excerpts

Thursday 3rd February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Yvonne Fovargue]

Yes, I totally agree. In fact, my local citizens advice bureau has phoned the Benefits Agency 100 times and has had no response apart from saying that everyone is busy.

These issues are not considered of sufficiently high importance, but when a person is ill or has a disability one of their major concerns is having an adequate income to enable a decent quality of life. The early advice available under this funding can save money. Some 80% of social welfare legal aid cases have positive outcomes for clients. In the agency where I worked, 70% of our reassessment appeals were successful, and that negated the need for a costly tribunal.

I would like to debunk the myth that these cases are not complex. My own CAB in Wigan dealt with a case for three years where the Department for Work and Pensions asserted that a couple were living together as man and wife, despite evidence from a neighbouring local authority that Mr M was resident there and receiving benefits, and that he merely visited to look after his disabled daughter, assisting with her care on occasion. Mrs M was summonsed for benefit fraud, convicted, and ordered to repay £27,000. The CAB continued with the case, appealed three times, and went to the Secretary of State. At the final appeal, Mrs M was found to owe £236—a reduction of more than £26,500. Was that a complex case? Would it be suitable for a telephone helpline? I do not think so. That client needed the face-to-face help given by a skilled CAB adviser and was funded by legal aid.

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. Does she agree that the suggestion that legal advice could be provided over the phone fails to understand the level of support that is provided by many legal representatives, particularly when they are dealing with vulnerable groups such as asylum seekers and refugees—often people who face persecution, are separated from their family, and perhaps do not have English as a first language?

[Yvonne Fovargue]

I agree with my hon. Friend. In times of stress, people often need the support of a friendly face.

For every £1 of legal aid expenditure on welfare benefits in the Wigan borough, £20.50 per year of additional benefit is obtained for clients. Nationally, for every £1 of legal aid expenditure on welfare benefits, the state potentially saves £8.80.