Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Lord Beecham Excerpts

Monday 21st November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Beecham]

My Lords, not for the first time, although I think it is fair to say no doubt inadvertently, children and young people will be among the prime casualties of government policy. The Family Rights Group reports that 300,000 children are living with family or friends as carers because of illness, violence, separation, drug abuse or whatever by their natural parents, and a third of these carers give up work to look after the children. They can apply for a residence or guardianship order, but the Bill will allow legal aid funding only where the child is at risk of abuse and in particularly constrained conditions.

For example, under Clause 10, evidence of abuse would have to be provided, including ongoing criminal proceedings for child abuse, where a local authority child protection plan is in being, or where a court has found that child abuse has occurred within a period of 12 months prior to the application. Therefore, a carer cannot obtain funding to anticipate a situation in which a child might be abused, nor will an application be able to receive legal aid support 12 months after the last incident of abuse. I hope that the Minister and the Government will look very closely at the requirements to facilitate the granting of legal aid in circumstances in which, for example, there is a reasonable cause for the carer to fear that abuse would occur even if it has not already occurred.

Alternatively, the 12-month time limit for proving abuse should be waived, and in particular there should be no bar to obtaining funding for resisting an application to discharge an order simply on the grounds that any abuse took place more than 12 months before that application was made. Equally, funding should not be restricted where the court has made a Section 37 order requiring the local authority to investigate whether abuse has occurred.

In any event, the restriction of legal aid funding to instances of child abuse, as such, is much too narrow a definition. Of course, where the welfare of children is concerned, access to justice should surely not depend on private resources where legal aid is not available.

The position of children is affected in other ways, too. The noble Lord, Lord Alton, referred to the fact that 6,000 children will be denied legal aid and assistance. Indeed, 69,000 youngsters between the ages of 18 and 24 will lose access to legal aid and advice. The range of cases is quite remarkable. There are nearly 2,000 employment cases, 9,000 debt cases, 11,000 immigration cases, 210 education cases, 9,000 welfare benefits cases, 1,090 clinical negligence cases, and up to 34,580 private law cases involving children. Those are very significant figures, and large numbers of young people will therefore be denied legal aid.

The Government seem to rely on the voluntary sector to pick up the slack that will be created by the withdrawal of legal aid funding. Citizens Advice estimates that the 500,000 people whom they currently serve will lose out because of cuts that they are sustaining. They have an 80 per cent success rate in the cases that they bring, supporting claims with legal advice. They estimate that 75 per cent of their cases in debt would lapse, and they take on an astonishing 9,400 cases a day nationally.

The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, referred to the difficulties faced by law centres and quoted extensively the position in Newcastle. In fact, virtually the same observations were made at cols. 844 and 845 in Hansard on 26 October, when I made a speech that very much involved Newcastle. However, I undertake to the noble Lord that I will not bring any action for breach of copyright whether or not no-win no-fee arrangements are available to me. In any event, the point is well made and it is broader than simply Newcastle.

Local authority cuts to law centres nationally average 42 per cent; in London the average is 61 per cent. Four law centres have received a complete 100 per cent reduction in their funding from the local authority—in Birmingham, Oldham, Warrington and Wythenshawe in Manchester. More may well be on the way. The total cut in grants from local authorities to law centres is some £7 million. That has to be set against the £20 million, to which others of your Lordships have referred, which the Government are proposing to award in a grant. I understand that reference has been made to that £20 million about 14 different times. Whether it is the same £20 million no doubt the Minister will advise us, but perhaps when he replies he will indicate whether it is a one-off payment or whether it is envisaged that it will be continued. If it is a one-off payment, frankly, it will not go very far to staunch the flow of resources from law centres at a time when demand will constantly be rising.

I do not for a moment suppose that the Minister would associate himself with the rather strange attitude evinced by one of his ministerial colleagues in the Ministry of Justice who was reported in the Guardian last October as saying that legal aid work will be useful filler for unemployed lawyers, or for women returning to work. That is hardly a sensible definition of legal aid and what it has to offer.

Many of us have been concerned that the Health and Social Care Bill, with which we continue to deal at some length, will undermine the National Health Service. It is clear to many of us in your Lordships' House that this Bill clearly demonstrates that the Government are taking a wrecking ball to the structure of access to justice. That is in the context in which, on their own figures, 80 to 85 per cent of cuts to legal aid will affect the 20 per cent poorest people in this country. I can do no better than conclude with the words of Lord Justice Jackson in his report from which the Government have cherry-picked their selection of reforms. He said very explicitly:

“I do not make any recommendation in this chapter for the expansion or restoration of legal aid. I do, however, stress the vital necessity of making no further cutbacks in legal aid availability or eligibility. The legal aid system plays a crucial role in promoting access to justice at proportionate costs in key areas”.

Those should be the watchwords of any reform. Thus far, the Bill does not match them.