Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Bill [HL]

Lord Beecham Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard - continued) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Tuesday 3rd March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Walker of Gestingthorpe (CB)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, has spoken so fully and clearly on her amendment that it is difficult to find much to say in support of it without repetition. However, three points are entitled to a bit of expansion or repetition: first, prenuptial agreements; secondly, the extraordinary flexibility—or, one might say, disarray—of the reasons the court has to take into account at present in making a financial provision order under Section 25 of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973; and, thirdly and lastly, the suggestion, which the noble Baroness modestly did not refer to, that her drafting of this amendment shows a degree of favour for her own preferred solution to the very difficult problem of general rules for financial provision.

I will take these points in turn. First, on prenuptial agreements, in the early days of divorce, the notion that an engaged couple might think about and discuss a future divorce was regarded as so shocking that it was ruled in English law as a matter of public policy that a prenuptial agreement was unenforceable. That rule has gradually diminished in importance and has certainly now disappeared, as was confirmed by the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom in the important case of Radmacher v Granatino about 10 years ago. What the Supreme Court did in Radmacher v Granatino was to take account of the premarital agreement, not to enforce it.

The suggestion is—and it is a powerful suggestion—that the courts should now go further and treat any premarital agreement as to the division of property and resources on divorce as being valid and enforceable so long as it was entered into fairly and so long as it was based on full disclosure of assets by each side of the marriage and full access to independent legal advice for each partner to the marriage. The Law Commission has made a very clear recommendation to that effect, which was in striking contrast to its failure to agree any other part of the changes that might usefully be made to financial provision.

Secondly, turning to the court’s discretion under the existing law as to what financial provision to make, there is an extraordinary provision that has been in force for many years. Section 25(2) of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 sets out a confusing list of eight disparate factors with no clear hierarchy or pecking order between them and no clear guidance to first-instance judges as to how they are to take account of these eight disparate factors in ordering financial provisions. Moreover, these eight factors were there long before 1973, since the 1973 Act was, of course, a consolidating Act. It has been very difficult to provide reliable and clear guidance to first-instance judges who have had to deal with these matters, sometimes on inadequate presentation of the facts and considerations in order to do justice.

In the case of White v White, which was decided about 20 years ago, the Law Lords, as they then were —and since then the Supreme Court—did their best to spell out, of the eight disparate factors, some sort of coherent code to be followed. The top court of this country has made heroic efforts to do that, but the result has been, I regret to say, singularly disappointing. It is also necessary to try to relate these factors, which have been part of the law for half a century, to the very different social conditions that we have today.

Surveys and research undertaken by numerous bodies—some working in conjunction with the Law Commission—have shown that there are wide variations in the way the eight factors in Section 25(2) are applied in different parts of the country and by different judges in the same parts of the country. That is not good for the administration of justice. It adds further stress and expense to what is in any event a sufficiently stressful and expensive procedure, especially if one has to take account of the possibility of appeals to higher courts because of the different ways in which the discretion is exercised. By contrast, the new rules for financial provision in Scotland, which are much clearer and which limit much more the extent of judicial discretion, are working well, as a recent survey has revealed.

Thirdly and finally, it has been suggested—I think politely—that the noble Baroness’s amendment is tilted in favour of her own views as to the amendments that should be made to the law. One simple answer to that is that it would be unsurprising if that were so, because she has of course spent a great deal of time thinking about it. However, she has been somewhat modest about the fact that they are not only her own views. The points mentioned specifically in her amendment, including the rule on prenuptial agreements, are not simply her thoughts. She was too modest to mention the fact that they have been embodied in two Bills which passed twice through all stages in this House without a single adverse vote, but which have never passed into law because neither Bill succeeded in finding a sponsor and getting through the House of Commons before the end of the relevant Parliament. Therefore, the matters specified in the amendment reflect the views which have twice been before this House and which have twice been approved by it, without becoming law. I support the amendment and commend it to your Lordships.

[Lord Beecham (Lab)]

The provisions of Amendments 7 and 17A clearly relate to an important aspect of matrimonial proceedings; namely, the financial settlement. The amendments seek to ensure that there are no discussions about such financial settlements for 20 weeks unless both parties agree. However, does this not illustrate the need for legal advice to be available to the parties, or at any rate to at least one of the parties, in the situation of a divorce? I understand that attempts were made to amend the Bill in that respect, but it was ruled that it was not possible to do so. However, will the Minister undertake to look again, or to persuade his colleagues in the Government to do so, at the issue of providing legal aid for matrimonial matters, particularly of this kind, where one party may well have insufficient resources to procure the necessary advice in this important area of the consequences of a divorce?

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern]

My Lords, I very much support Amendment 20, which the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, spoke to. Not very long ago, I got a fairly impassioned letter from a gentleman I knew who had recently been involved in a divorce. He said that one of the great difficulties in approaching that, which he found by no means easy, was that it was not easy to find out what was likely to happen in relation to finance, and that it was extremely difficult to guess. The reason for that primarily is that the present structure involves a very large amount of judicial discretion. Those of your Lordships who have had the experience of prophesying how a judge will react will understand the difficulty that you encounter with that kind of thing.

Discretion, as I think Lord Bingham said, is a departure from the rule of law, because the discretion becomes the rule not of law but of the judge’s wisdom or lack of it. I remember the old judge in the Court of Session when I first went there: Lord Carmont. He used to say that if you give a thing to a man’s discretion —he was not thinking of women at that time—you commit it also to his indiscretion. The limit of discretion is quite wide.

I thought about trying to do something about this in 1996, but I concluded that it was too difficult to try to mould it to what I was trying to do then. It is probably right that it should not be attempted as part of this Bill. On the other hand, it is mightily necessary to get on with it and get a framework that can be used in the majority of cases. It is true that some discretion may be required—you do not want the framework to be too rigid—but you want it to be fairly clear that this is the way the thing will work unless there are special reasons requiring the exercise of judicial discretion.

--- Later in debate ---

We consider this Bill a necessary first step to reducing conflict in marriage and divorce. We consider it appropriate to commence, when we can, a review regarding financial provision upon divorce. I hear what has been said across the House about the scope for such a review, but setting the parameters of a review before assessing what needs to be done is not the way forward. At this stage, in light of the commitment I have sought to give the House about commencing a consideration of a review, I invite the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.

[Lord Beecham]

Can the Minister respond to my request for the Government to look again at the issue of legal aid in matrimonial cases?

[Lord Keen of Elie]

The matter of legal aid is not within the scope of the Bill, and it is not the present intention to address it.

Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (Commencement No. 14) Order 2019

Lord Beecham Excerpts

Tuesday 11th February 2020 Grand Committee

I simply ask the Minister: why the rush to judgment? The point of piloting, provided for in the enabling legislation, was to give us the information to decide on the merits and effectiveness of alcohol monitoring requirements before they were rolled out. I suggest that implementation without that information is not what the legislation intended and is wrong in principle.

[Lord Beecham (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his explanation of the order. I concur very strongly with the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Marks. The documentation produced about the order makes it clear that the proposals are meant to punish the offender by ensuring that they do not consume alcohol. However, as has rightly been said, there is little to back that up. What will be the role of the probation service in supporting those involved, given the pressures on the service to which the noble Lord referred? For that matter, what is the role of the NHS? If one of its patients is involved, will doctors or general practitioners also be involved and invited to support individuals through the period during which the order applies? It would seem sensible for another professional who knows the person in question to offer support, in addition to the very overstretched probation service.

It is clear that, while the proposal is seen in the impact assessment as

“punitive as well as rehabilitative”,

there needs to be clear evidence that adequate support is available for those going through the process. Otherwise, it may be simply the temporary response to which the noble Lord, Lord Marks, referred, without any guarantee of a significant impact on future conduct. The objectives described in the impact assessment’s limited explanation of the proposal, which says that AAMRs

“are meant to punish the offender by ensuring they do not consume alcohol during the period in which the AAMR is in force”,

may be attained, but the long-term situation does not seem to be addressed by anything alongside this order. I therefore invite the Minister to say what discussions, if any, have taken place with the Department of Health and Social Care on what support can be given to patients of general practitioners who are in this position. Without that support, the chances of an enduring response are somewhat limited.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, I do not want to be repetitive, but I will add a couple of extra thoughts. No one has spoken against the principle of these orders, or of this legislation. The concerns are more about the adequacy of the rollout process, particularly the information that has been made available. I note that the legislative framework was passed in 2012 and, as the Minister said, the final rollout across the jurisdiction will not be until 2023 or 2024. That is a very long time between the passing of law and order legislation and rollout across England and Wales. The piloting of such orders is a very good idea if it is done well and the data is independently evaluated and shared with the public, professionals and so on. However, if the pilots, followed by incremental rollout, go on for too long, it creates a different legal and punitive regime for people across the jurisdiction, with the potential under Article 14 for arguing that people are not being treated equally in sentencing and rehabilitation. Does the Minister have thoughts on what good governance looks like and the appropriate balance between experimentation and piloting new orders, on the one hand, and equal treatment in sentencing across the jurisdiction, on the other?

In the light of previous contributions, I am sure the Minister will say whether he now thinks that the concerns addressed by the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee have been met. As the noble Lord, Lord Marks, said, the comments about limited information being “unacceptable” are very strong. I also hope that the Minister will respond to what my noble friend said about the tension whereby such an order is described as being both a punishment and a rehabilitation measure in the context of abstinence. It is hard to see how telling offenders that their abstinence is a punishment is going to achieve voluntary abstinence and rehabilitation at the end of the relatively short enforced abstinence.

I am also interested in the choice of pilot areas, from the point of view of equal treatment and Article 14, particularly given that there is such a long period before national rollout. How are areas chosen for such pilots? Is the same methodology applied to both datasets to aid evaluation? Is there an independent element in the evaluation? Many of the comments seem to come from enthusiastic stakeholders and the offenders them- selves, many of whom said that they would drink less at the end of the process. With respect, they would say that, wouldn’t they? What is the non-profit-driven, independent element that does not involve those who are monitoring the orders, or the offenders themselves?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Beecham]

What does the Minister envisage the role of the probation service to be under this new arrangement?

[Lord Keen of Elie]

Clearly, probation staff will have access to the monitoring data and will therefore use it to inform their supervision of individuals who are under licence, for example.

[Lord Beecham]

Has the matter been discussed with the probation service, and does it have the resources to do this? It is very stretched, and this will be an additional responsibility, presumably. The question therefore arises: can it meet it?

[Lord Keen of Elie]

There is no suggestion that it will not have the resources to address this matter. It will receive data in circumstances where there will be some 400 active monitoring requirements at any one time. That, I respectfully suggest, is not an overwhelming imposition in addition to the demands made upon the probation service.

Release of Prisoners (Alteration of Relevant Proportion of Sentence) Order 2019

Lord Beecham Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd January 2020 Lords Chamber

[The Advocate-General for Scotland (Lord Keen of Elie) (Con)]

My Lords, I will also speak to the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015 (Consequential Amendment) Regulations 2019.

These draft instruments form part of the Government’s wider plans to reform sentencing and law and order, through which we aim to strengthen public confidence in the criminal justice system. The purpose of these instruments is to ensure that serious violent and sexual offenders serve a greater proportion of their sentence in prison, and to put beyond doubt that these release provisions will apply in relation to offenders receiving consecutive sentences, ahead of further changes the Government will set out in a sentencing Bill.

Under the provisions of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, all offenders sentenced to standard determinate sentences must be automatically released halfway through their sentence. These orders move the automatic release point for the most serious offenders who receive a standard determinate sentence of seven years or more. Instead of being released at the halfway point of their sentence, they will be released after serving two-thirds of their sentence.

A key component of our criminal justice system should be transparency, but currently, a person convicted of rape and sentenced to nine years in prison will be released after only half that sentence. Victims and the general public do not understand why they should serve only half their sentence in custody. While improved communication about how a sentence is served will help, this measure aims directly to improve public confidence by making sure that serious offenders will serve longer in prison.

Some may suggest that the whole sentence should be served behind bars, but this would not serve victims’ interests. It is crucial that when someone is given a custodial sentence, they spend part of this sentence under supervision in the community. The licence period has long been an integral part of the sentence, and it should remain so. It provides assurance to victims through the imposition of conditions to protect them such as non-contact conditions and exclusion zones, through supervision by the probation service and through the power to recall that offender to prison if they breach their conditions. It is also an important period for rehabilitation, giving the offender the chance to address their offending behaviour and undertake activities that can help to prevent them reoffending. So, a licence period must remain.

However, it is not in the interests of public protection that when someone has committed a serious offence for which they rightly receive a long sentence, such as grievous bodily harm with intent or rape, they are entitled to be released half way. This instrument aims to address this by moving the release point for these serious offenders so that they will serve two-thirds of their sentence in prison and the remainder on licence. Retaining them in prison for longer will provide reassurance to victims, protect the public and restore public confidence in the administration of justice. It will also provide longer periods for these offenders to undertake rehabilitative activity in prison and prepare effectively for their release and resettlement in the community.

Automatic release from a fixed-term custodial sentence is a long-established measure. The Criminal Justice Act 1991 made a clear distinction between long-term and short-term prisoners. Short-term prisoners would be released automatically at the halfway point of their custodial sentence. Under Section 33(2) of that Act, long-term prisoners could be released automatically only at the two-thirds point of the custodial period. The 2003 Act removed this distinction between sentence lengths, requiring all standard determinate sentence prisoners to be released at the halfway point.

This order is the first step in restoring that distinction, beginning with those sentenced to standard determinate sentences of seven years or more, where the offender has been convicted of a serious sexual or violent offence, as specified in parts 1 and 2 of Schedule 15 to the 2003 Act, and for which the maximum penalty is life. Moving the release point to two-thirds for these offenders will correct what this Government consider to be an anomaly in the current sentencing and release framework.

Take the example of an offender convicted of rape. They could receive a standard determinate sentence, or, if they are determined by the courts to be dangerous, an extended determinate sentence. If they are given an extended determinate sentence with a custodial term of nine years, they could spend the whole custodial period behind bars if it was necessary for the protection of the public, but the Parole Board could consider them for release on licence after two-thirds of that period—namely, six years. However, if they were not assessed to be dangerous but had still been convicted of this very serious offence and sentenced to a standard determinate sentence of nine years, currently, they would be released after four and a half years. This measure will bring the two sentencing regimes closer into line, so that the offender could be released only after six years, ensuring that offenders committing these grave offences serve time in prison that truly reflects the severity of their crime.

We are starting with those sentenced to seven years or more because this strikes a sensible balance between catching those at the more serious end of the scale and allowing time for the change to embed sustainably. While the measures will apply to anyone sentenced to a standard determinate sentence of seven years or more for a relevant offence after the orders commence, the effects will not begin to be felt until nearly four years later—that is, until we approach the stage at which the first affected prisoners reach the halfway point of their sentence and remain in prison rather than being released. The impact will be felt gradually; our best estimates are that this will result in fewer than 50 additional people in custody by March 2024, rising to 2,000 over the course of 10 years.

The House’s Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee has drawn attention to the impact of this measure. I am content to offer assurances that this Government will act to ensure that the additional demands on HM Prison and Probation Service will be met. We will continue to invest in our prisons, both to build the additional capacity of 10,000 places announced by the Prime Minister—as well as the 3,500 places already planned at Wellingborough, Glen Parva and Stocken—and to undertake maintenance across our prison estate to manage the anticipated increase in demand. We have also invested significantly to increase staff numbers, recruiting between October 2016 and September 2019 an additional 4,581 full-time equivalent prison officers, thereby surpassing our original target of 2,500. We will continue to recruit officers to ensure that prisons are safe and decent, and to support both the current estate and planned future additional capacity.

Our impact assessment is based on assumptions that judicial and offender behaviour will continue unchanged, although of course, that cannot be certain. We are putting in place mechanisms with our partners across the criminal justice system to monitor the impact of the additional officers and give us the ongoing and future insight necessary to allow us to plan the prison estate. As these offenders spend more of the sentence in prison, correspondingly less time will be spent under probation supervision in the community.

These measures will enable us to take swift but sustainable action ahead of the wider package of reforms that the Government intend to bring forward in the sentencing Bill. They are not retrospective and will apply only to those sentenced in England and Wales on or after 1 April 2020.

Not proceeding with legislation would mean continuing with a system which fails properly to ensure that serious offenders serve sentences that reflect the gravity of their crimes and continue to be released halfway through their custodial period. In our view, that is not in the public interest, nor does it promote confidence in the justice system. I beg to move.

[Lord Beecham (Lab)]

My Lords, for some time this country has had the dubious distinction of having among the highest number of prisoners relative to population in Europe, with the numbers having risen by almost 70% in 30 years, with the vast majority of those, some 60%, being imprisoned for non-violent crimes. Moreover, the length of sentences has increased substantially, with 2.5 times as many people being sentenced to 10 years or more in 2018 as in 2006. On average, those receiving mandatory life sentences spend 17 years in custody, an increase of four years since 2001, while the average minimum period imposed for murder rose from 12.5 years in 2003 to 21.3 years in 2016. And yet, typically, the Prime Minister chooses to play to the gallery by reviewing sentencing policy without any consultation beyond the inner workings of the Ministry of Justice, and emerges with proposals for a draconian increase in the length of sentences which is likely to increase substantially the problems faced by an overworked and understaffed Prison Service, and indeed by the majority of prisoners.

As the Prison Reform Trust has pointed out:

“No evidence is given about the re-conviction of people currently released from these sentences”


and there is a risk that

“the people affected will spend a shorter period under the supervision of the probation service after release.”

The trust points out that reconviction rates are indeed lower for those serving more than four-year sentences, but there appears to be no evidence that sentences of seven years or more lead to any further reduction in reoffending on release.

The trust also reveals that the Ministry of Justice’s own research discloses that, when they are given the full facts of individual cases,

“the public tends to take a more lenient approach than sentencing courts.”

Moreover, they are likely to be confused by the fact that, when two convictions lead to consecutive sentences of less than seven years but with a total of more than seven years, the new provisions will not apply. And, of course, it is in any event open to the trial judge to impose longer sentences where this is deemed necessary.

As the trust rightly points out, there are other and better approaches to combating potential reoffending, not least by tackling the problems of the understaffed probation service. It rightly points out that the Chief Inspector of Probation has raised the issue of unacceptably large case loads for officers responsible for the supervision of long-serving former prisoners. Typically, no detail has been supplied of the additional costs of providing the offender management of those in custody that the new regime will require. Can the Minister supply any information about the relevant staff numbers and the costs involved?

For that matter, is he able to provide an estimate of the costs likely to be incurred by local authorities to meet the needs of families struggling for even longer periods without the income of an imprisoned partner or parent? What assessment has been made of the impact on prisoners’ employment possibilities after serving longer sentences and the consequential cost of benefits if, as seems increasingly likely, they find it even more difficult to find employment after a longer period of imprisonment?

Other financial questions arise. Four years ago the Government declared that they would provide an extra 10,000 prison spaces. All of 200 have been created. How many places will be required now to meet the need created by this order? How long will it take to provide them? What is the estimated cost of their provision and of the necessary increase in staffing? To what extent does the estimated increase in prison numbers of 3,200 by March 2023 reflect this new policy—or did that increase precede the policy contained in this order?

The last decade has seen a shocking worsening of conditions in our prisons. Sexual assaults quadrupled between 2012 and 2018; 117 prisoners have died having used or possessed new psychoactive substances; self-harm incidents rose from 23,158 in 2012 to a staggering 55,598 in 2018, with women disproportionately affected; and assaults rose dramatically, tripling to more than 10,000 on staff between 2013 and 2018. Yet staff numbers were cut by 26% between 2010 and 2017-18—albeit with some partial restoration since then. But—this is surely alarming—54% of the officers who left the service last year had served less than two years. What, if any, attempts were made to understand the reasons for this drastic loss of staff in such a short period and to avoid its repetition? Currently, 35% of staff members have been in post for less than two years and only 46% have served for more than 10 years. What, if anything, is being done to address this disturbing position and what, if any, is the difference between privately and publicly managed prisons in those respects?

In 2018, 58,900 people were sentenced to prison, 69% of them for non-violent crimes. Of those who received custodial sentences, 46% served six months or less. Is it not time to review the utility of such sentences against alternative measures? Would it not be better to secure greater investment in the probation service and the youth service as an approach to tackling the problem?

Should it not be a priority to promote purposeful activity for those sentenced to imprisonment? Just two in five prisons received a positive rating for this in 2017-18, while the quality of teaching and learning in prisons has declined, with the number of those rated as good reduced to 42%. Some 62% of those in prison had a reading age of 11 or lower in 2017-18. What will the Government do to address this serious situation, which is mirrored in a significant fall in the number participating in education while in custody?

There are serious matters to be addressed in our Prison Service. Will the Minister use his influence to persuade the Prime Minister to address them rather than play to the gallery with a populist approach that at best will achieve nothing and is likely to make matters worse, not just for prisoners but for prison staff and society as a whole?

[Viscount Hailsham (Con)]

My Lords, my contribution will be very brief. I support the principle enshrined in these regulations, but I share and strongly echo two concerns expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Beecham—and I do so as one who was until relatively recently on the monitoring board of a local prison.

My first point relates to the availability of relevant courses for prisoners to take in order to demonstrate that they can be safely released. When I was on the monitoring board, I was very concerned by the fact that a number of IPP prisoners were not able to find courses that could demonstrate that they were safe to release. I hope, therefore, that the Minister is able to say that resources will be dedicated to the provision of relevant courses.

The second and related point has already been made by the noble Lord, Lord Beecham: the longer a person stays in prison, the more difficult it is for them to be reabsorbed into the community and, more particularly, the more difficult it is for them to get a job. When I was on the monitoring board, I was very concerned by the lack of meaningful out-of-cell activity, particularly in the field of education and the acquisition of work skills. Therefore, I very much hope that my noble friend is able to tell the House that the Government will increase the provision available to prisons to provide for meaningful out-of-cell activity, particularly in the field of education and the acquisition of relevant work skills, which will enable prisoners, when released, to be absorbed back into employment.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Beecham Excerpts

Wednesday 8th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Beecham (Lab)]

My Lords, “Justice, justice thou shalt pursue” is a biblical exhortation which should be the hallmark of policy and practice in this critical area of government policy.

There is little evidence of it to be found in the Ministry of Justice’s contribution to government policy and its legislative programme, with the exception of sensible measures such as the Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Bill and the Sentencing (Pre-consolidation Amendments) Bill. There is no recognition of the impact on access to justice of the last nine years of coalition and Conservative government policy, nor any indication of a determination to tackle the dreadful conditions in our overcrowded and understaffed prisons in a country with among the highest incarceration rates in Europe and a dreadful level of violence which we are encountering regularly. On the contrary, the Government seem determined to promote longer sentencing and potentially counterproductive measures such as more hours of unpaid work of an undefined nature. Nothing appears to be happening in ensuring that in this area profit is not a key factor.

However, it is not just the custodial system that is found wanting. The Law Society, not noted for left-leaning tendencies, describes the justice system as being “at breaking point”, citing

“shortage of duty solicitors and independent experts, court closures, barriers to accessing legal aid, and crucial evidence not being disclosed in court until the last minute.”

It also describes the criminal justice system as being at breaking point. It is true that the Ministry of Justice’s budget for criminal justice is being increased, but this is largely devoted to providing new prisons and supporting the appointment of new police officers to fill the gap caused by cuts over the last few years. The probation service continues to be overstretched. The Law Society calls on the Government to ensure adequate funding across the whole criminal justice system, not just a few parts of it. This will include the need to ensure the availability of legal representation by increasing fees and updating the means test to increase it in line with inflation since 2010, given that the present level falls well behind.

Similarly, the society invokes the need to facilitate access to civil justice, so badly affected by LASPO, which currently leaves many people on very low incomes ineligible for legal aid. It also draws attention to other failings of the present system, including the need to restore legal aid for early advice in housing and family law. Here, at least, and at last, there will be a belated piloting of an advice scheme in relation to housing law. We have to see the extent to which effective changes are made. As I pointed out several times in earlier debates, there are legal deserts in this important area, where 37% of the population live in local authority areas with no legal providers for housing law cases, in particular at a time when there are many problems in the private rented sector.

The society raises further issues, including concerns about the apparent failure to proceed with the court modernisation programme embodied in the Courts and Tribunals (Online Procedure) Bill, which passed through your Lordships’ House and appears to have since disappeared. Since 2010, the Ministry of Justice budget has been cut by 40%. This translates to applications for employment tribunals collapsing, legal advice services reducing from 3,266 in 2006 to less than 1,500 in 2015, and by 2017 there was a reduction in legal aid providers by 20%—presumably by now there has been an even greater reduction. Moreover, many courts have been closed, others are in poor repair, videolinks are sparse, and waiting areas sometimes fail to provide separate facilities for parties in domestic abuse cases.

One correspondent who works in the public children’s law sector sees some of the most vulnerable children in society and reports seeing,

“a court system where judges are struggling to cope with high numbers of litigants in person—some very vulnerable people—trying desperately to navigate a system so that they can either protect their child, see their child or respond to serious allegations against them … it is not unusual to see a case where there have been 3, 4, 5 social workers in the space of one year”,

with grandmothers offering to look after children and then delays of months, even years, to obtain appropriate housing.

This underlines the need not just to ensure that the legal system and proper advice and representation are accessible but that other critically important services are properly funded and available to assist both the parties and the courts. What steps will the department take to work with other departments, for example, local government and education, to contribute to the resolution of such pressing problems?