Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Debate between Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe and Baroness Deech

Tuesday 20th March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Deech]

My Lords, I should have declared an interest as chairman of the Bar Standards Board, which prohibits barristers from receiving or dealing in referral fees. If I gave the impression last week that referral fees that go to unions go direct to the political party and that is wrong, I apologise. My point is that it is happening in another way. I have not yet been corrected but my research on the internet showed that direct referrals from a party to a firm resulted in the firm paying a referral fee to the political party. Therefore, if it is not happening in one way, it may be happening in another.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe]

My Lords, I support the line taken by our Front Bench. Without any question, there are risks with referral fees but they are fairly minimal. The questions that the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, and others should ask themselves are whether they believe that there will be more of the kind of litigants who at present benefit from the union offering these services, admittedly through using referral fees, especially given what we are doing to legal aid in this Bill; or whether there will be fewer people taking action. My view is that if these changes are put through, the likelihood is that unions will not be able to offer services on the same kind of basis that they have in the past. As a consequence, fewer people will pursue cases and the people who will not be pursuing those cases will be the ones at the bottom of the pile, and not those who are higher up with a fund of money to pursue the law without any trouble whatever. I put those very serious questions to those who are pursuing this line.