Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Lord Bach Excerpts

Tuesday 10th January 2012 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Bach]

6: After Clause 1, insert the following new Clause—
“Pre-commencement impact assessment
(1) The Lord Chancellor must commission an independent review to assess and report on the following areas—
(a) the expected costs and impacts of Part 1 on—(i) children and young people; (ii) people with disabilities, including people with learning, physical, mental and psychological disabilities;(iii) women;(iv) victims of domestic violence;(v) black and ethnic minorities;(vi) government departments;(vii) courts and tribunals, including any changes in time and resources; and(viii) local authorities; and(b) any expected impact of Part 1 on—(i) the incidence of homelessness;(ii) the incidence of ill-health, or suicide;(iii) the commission of criminal or anti-social behaviour; and(iv) the future provision and availability of services including, but not limited to, law centres and citizens advice bureaux.(2) The Lord Chancellor must lay a copy of the final report commissioned under subsection (1) in both Houses of Parliament at the same time as laying a draft commencement order for any other section in this Part.”

[Lord Bach]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 6 I will speak also to my Amendment 194. In this group there are also two amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Martin of Springburn, namely Amendments 191 and 195. My amendments would require the right honourable and learned gentleman the Lord Chancellor to lay before Parliament a full independent impact assessment of the planned cuts to legal aid before the Bill—or the Act, as it then will be—can commence. Inter alia, we would require him to quantify the impact on groups with what are described as protected characteristics—namely children and young people; people with disabilities, including those with learning, physical, mental and psychological disabilities; women; victims of domestic violence; and black and ethnic minorities. We would also like him to quantify the impact on the public purse, other government departments and courts and tribunals, including any changes in time and resources. We would also like him to quantify the impact on local authorities. Finally, we would like him to quantify the impact on the incidence of the most severe negative outcomes for individuals and society—namely first homelessness; ill health, and perhaps suicide; and criminal or anti-social behaviour—and on the future provision and availability of services, including but not limited to law centres and citizens advice bureaux.

These amendments have been tabled simply because the Government have failed to get to grips with the serious consequences of their proposed legislation. They simply have not quantified the impact of the cuts on the individuals involved, on society or on the public purse. I concede at once that the Government have at least tried to describe what some of the impacts might be. The Government’s impact assessment, which they made in their response to the consultation process, states that their cuts threaten,

“reduced social cohesion … increased criminality … reduced business and economic efficiency … increased … costs for other Departments … [and] increased transfer payments from other Departments”,

particularly in higher benefit payments for people who have spent their savings on legal action.

Those are pretty extraordinary statements. It sounds a bit like the end of the world, does it not? If this legislation results in reduced social cohesion and increased criminality, it will go not only against everything that the Government support—a big society, and, of course, less crime—but against everything that all of us believe in, which is more social cohesion and less criminality. The Government cannot be accused of not being honest. They are honest to a fault if this is what they say will be the consequence of their Bill. However, they can be criticised for putting forward a Bill which in their opinion will have those consequences.

Given that the aim of these cuts is to save money, it would seem prudent for the Government to have calculated how much will be saved, not least because in March 2011—about 10 months ago, after the consultation had ended—the Justice Committee in the other place, following an inquiry into these proposals, was critical of the Government for not assessing the likely impact on spending from the public purse. I wish to quote from two paragraphs of the report. At paragraph 69, on page 32, it states:

“According to the Government’s own figures, the changes it is proposing to the scope of legal aid will result in 500,000 fewer instances of legal help”—

we know that the figure is much closer to 650,000—

“and 45,000 fewer instances of legal representation being funded by legal aid annually. The Government has conceded that it does not know the extent to which these reductions would impact upon people with disabilities and black and minority ethnic people because of information gaps. While it is taking some steps to address those gaps, evidence we have received, and the Government’s own thinking, suggest that these people, as well as other vulnerable groups, rely more on legal aid services than do the less vulnerable, and so there is the potential for them to be disproportionately hit by the changes. If this were to happen it would sit uneasily with the Government’s commitment to protect the most vulnerable in society”.

At paragraph 136, the report comes to the following conclusion:

“It has been put to us that the removal from scope of many areas of social welfare law will lead to significant costs to the public purse as a result of increased burdens on, for example, health and housing services. We are surprised that the Government is proposing to make such changes without assessing their likely impact on spending from the public purse and we call on them to do so before taking a final decision on implementation”.

That was in March 2011. We are now in January 2012, and the Bill has been through the other place and is in Committee in your Lordships' House. Why have the Government not produced such assessments, as the Justice Committee invited them to do? I invite the Minister who will respond to this debate to tell the Committee why they have not done so.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord McNally]

Coming from a Preston girl, that is a compliment—I think. I will read Hansard. I realise that very interesting points were made, which I will study carefully and draw to the attention of the Lord Chancellor. With that, I ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Bach]

My Lords, we have had a very full debate, as the Minister reminded us. However, it was very worth while because this is a very important subject that goes to the heart of whether the Government did the work they should have done before bringing in such controversial and fundamental legislation. I start by saying how grateful I am to noble Lords from all sides of the Committee who spoke in the debate. I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, for backing the amendment, as I am to the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar. I forgot to say earlier, as I was asked to, that she was unable to attend when the amendment was moved because of her appearance at a very well known and important committee. I am very glad to see her in her place now.

I thank noble Lords for making some very important points. I do not wish to embarrass the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, but I will thank him for his contribution if only because it gives me the chance on behalf of the Committee to congratulate him on the honour he received in the New Year Honours List. However, other speeches were just as good, on all sides of the Committee. The one thing they had in common—this is something that the Minister must take back to his department—is that they were all, in one way or another, critical of the way in which the Government approached this part of the Bill.

I will not speak for long; I do not for a moment believe that more than a few noble Lords are in the Chamber to hear me wind up the debate on this amendment. They are here for another reason that I cannot think of. However, it is necessary to make one or two points. Although of course I will not press the amendment, the issue is important and we may well come back to it on Report because it is fundamental to the Bill. If the Bill comes into force with us knowing so little about what its effects and costs are likely to be—whether to the MoJ, other government departments or society as a whole—that is not a satisfactory way of law making. This is not a political point but a common-sense point, and I hope that the debate has been conducted from a common-sense point of view.

The points I want to make are these: everyone around the House, including my party, knows that savings have to be made in the legal aid budget. Of course that is right. We put forward proposals in relation to criminal legal aid in the last few months when we were in government. We said it in our manifesto. Other proposals for savings in legal aid have been put forward in various amendments that we are going to debate in due course in this House. The Law Society has also put forward proposals. The question is not: should there be cuts in legal aid? The question is: where should those cuts be?

For the life of me, I cannot understand why the Government have chosen that part of legal aid—the social welfare law part, the law of everyday life, which is a pretty small part of it, in fact—which in its own way works successfully in helping the most underprivileged in our society get basic legal advice on legal problems that affect their daily lives. It follows that that early advice often sorts out the problem and means that courts and tribunals are not bothered with hopeless cases and that people’s lives can be improved. I cannot for the life of me understand why the Government should have chosen that aspect when they refused to do anything about criminal legal aid, where a number of us think that there is room for substantial savings in some parts of it. It is disappointing that when the Government say that they are not going to implement Part 1 of the Bill until April 2013, they go on to say that they are not even going to look at criminal legal aid again until 2015. That is disappointing. That is my first point.

My second point is that we believe that it is a false argument that the Government have chosen life and liberty as the only places where legal aid should apply today. The point has already been made in this debate that it is difficult to think of a more obvious place where legal aid is appropriate than to solve legal problems that affect people who are, through no fault of their own, poor or disabled or who lack any privileges. That is surely where a legal aid system should bite. To remove legal aid from there is a completely wrong thing to do.

I thank the Minister for his contribution because it is not easy to face the Committee which, on this issue at least, is pretty dead-set against him. He made a point about how weekly reports come out suggesting that the policy is wrong, and he appeared to criticise that. The fact is that there would not be so much criticism if the Government had done the work they should have done before they tried to legislate in this way. All we ask is that in the time between now and Report, he goes back to his department and asks—I do not think he answered this in the debate—why the Government have not done the assessments of costs and social costs so that Parliament has a better idea of what it is being asked to legislate for. The Government have clearly not done the work that should have been done—that is a pretty universal feeling around the Committee. It is not too late for them to start doing it now, and I would encourage them to do so. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 6 withdrawn.