Social Welfare Law Cases: Legal Aid

Lord Bishop of St Albans Excerpts

Tuesday 1st February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

My Lords, I made a commitment to myself today not to mention the words “Grayling” or “Gray”. What I would say is that, in this area, there is no going back to the pre-LASPO position. What we want to do in other areas of law where LASPO gave people legal aid is to divert them from the courts altogether. For example, in private family cases we have a mediation voucher scheme. We do not want people in court arguing about private family cases; we want them to resolve their problems outside court through mediation.

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

My Lords, it is to be welcomed that there is pilot scheme going on. I am particularly pleased to hear about the mediation scheme, which is crucial to trying to find ways to deal with things one-to-one. Can the Minister say a little more though about what is going on? What I hear from people working in the legal system is that it is absolutely blocked up by people who cannot get advice, or indeed aid, coming with hopeless cases. If only they could be given guidance earlier on, we might be able to solve some of the huge backlog, which is in itself an injustice.

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

The right reverend Prelate is right: we want to ensure that people do not go to court when they do not need to. During the pandemic we invested £5.4 million in not-for-profit legal support services, to make sure that people can have access to early legal advice so that only those who need the assistance of a judge go to court.