Legal Aid

Lord Bach Excerpts

Thursday 10th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bach (Lab)]

My Lords, I start by thanking all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate. It has been an excellent debate, which is hardly surprising given the stellar cast list. I am particularly grateful to my noble friend Lord Howarth of Newport for agreeing to open the debate. My Front Bench responsibilities mean I have to wind up for the Opposition. I am sure the House will agree that the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, did a superb job.

Rather unusually, I thank someone who has not taken part: the noble Lord, Lord Pannick. He, as the noble Lord, Lord Lester, reminded us, devoted his column in today’s Times to this debate. What he has to say about the Government’s conduct over the past few years and—as importantly—his suggestions about the future of legal aid are, as the House would expect, extremely clear and telling. If I have one regret about the debate it is that, apart from the excellent Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, there will be no one speaking from the government Benches today. It makes us regret even more than normal the absence of the late Lord Newton of Braintree, who used to be such an important part of these debates.

The subject of today’s debate is the future of legal aid. In instigating the debate, I thought it well past time for this House, with its obvious expertise in this field, to discuss once again this vital issue. I confess I also had another purpose. Noble Lords will know now that the new leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, has asked me to lead a review into the future of legal aid under the auspices of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, the shadow Lord Chancellor. Mr Corbyn is, I believe, the first leader of a political party in this country really to understand legal aid and its importance, not just in our legal system but for the type of country we want to be. In my view, it is well past time that a major political party undertook such a review. This is not because there has been a lack of excellent work done in this field. I have only to mention the three reports from the Low commission—and it was very good to hear the noble Lord, Lord Low, today—the Legal Aid Practitioners Group, Justice and many more. A political party that hopes to win power needs a robust, thought-through policy that is credible, practical and principled. What better way to ensure the review’s success than to canvass the views of this House and listen to its analysis of where legal aid is now and what should be done in the future to ensure it plays its proper role? We are in the process of asking people to sit on a commission that will advise on the way legal aid should go. When the make-up of the commission is announced—shortly, I hope—it will be clear that its members have been chosen not for their political views but for their expertise in a wide variety of law, lawyers and non-lawyers alike.

What approach will we adopt? We hope to be inclusive; we will collaborate with the considerable and well-evidenced work and ideas that have already been developed; and we will not be afraid of innovation. We all have to look for new approaches—as has been said, many may involve the new technology—to meet the huge unmet needs that exist. Finally, we will do our best to try to stem the decline which there clearly has been and which exists in our justice system at the moment. It is a critical time, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, reminded us. Poorly thought-out reforms, many of them not evidence-based, have begun to affect the reputation that our legal system enjoys. If access to justice becomes no more than a theoretical right but is in fact denied to many, then, as has been pointed out by the senior judiciary, the rule of law itself is put at risk.

It sometimes seems that everyone in the world except the Ministry of Justice knows that LASPO has had a profound and debilitating effect on access to justice. Having removed, in such an unthinking way, so much from the scope of legal aid—so much family law and nearly all social welfare law—it is hardly surprising that litigants in person flood the family courts. In the area of social welfare law, many people—very largely the poor and the vulnerable—are no longer able to receive even advice.

It is perhaps just worth repeating the shocking statistic that, whereas in 2009-10 there were 471,000 advice and assistance new matter starts, by 2013-14—just four years later at the end of the first year of LASPO’s implementation—that figure had fallen to 52,000, a drop of nearly 90%. To put that in human terms, it represents hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens who only a few years ago could get legal advice and now are not able to. It is almost beyond belief but the figures show it to be true.

In the field of criminal legal aid, which I will not have time to go into today, we have heard some passionate and very well-made speeches from all sides of this Chamber. I thank the noble Lords who have spoken about the real crisis that there undoubtedly is in the criminal system.

There were many decades when a broad consensus between the political parties helped to develop legal aid as an essential part of the social security system that every citizen was entitled to in a civilised country such as the United Kingdom. Sadly, that consensus has broken down to some extent, particularly in the last few years. I argue that the reason for that is largely, although not completely, the administrative and legislative action of the coalition Government. I was very grateful for what the noble Lord, Lord Marks, said a few minutes ago about that.

If there is one thing that I would like to see arise from the review that I am undertaking, it is the possibility of a return to that consensus. One hopes that it would be about the principles set out so well by the Young Legal Aid Lawyers—a very impressive group—in its briefing note:

“Equal access to justice for all irrespective of wealth should be the absolute core principle of our legal aid system. We believe that the cost of legal aid should be met by the state through general taxation. We believe that access to justice is a public good”—

I emphasise the words “a public good”—

“that should be classed by government in the same category as the rights to healthcare and education”.

These are principles that should unite us all, and I believe in principle that they do. However, if I may say so to the Minister, whose remarks I look forward to hearing, a good start would be for Her Majesty’s Government to think urgently about undoing some of the damage they have caused.