Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Lord Collins of Highbury Excerpts

Wednesday 1st February 2012 Lords Chamber

As regards accidents in the workplace, some people would think that an engineering workshop is very dangerous but I know, through my work with the National Union of Public Employees, that a hospital kitchen can be a very dangerous place. A person can break a hand through a fall in a kitchen. Usually, the person who starts an inquiry is a shop steward who gets the information together. Then there is a visit from the full-time trade union officer who would need transport and an office from which to operate, with secretarial back-up, in order that the paperwork can be put together to send to the solicitor. It is only right and fitting to have a referral fee which can help with the ongoing costs of a trade union office. Again I go back to the point that most people think, when they join a trade union, that it is for wages and conditions, but this is another area of help that is given. There is a financial cost and it is right and fitting that the trade union should get a referral fee to offset those costs.

[Lord Collins of Highbury]

My Lords, I obviously have an interest in that I have put my name to Amendment 166ZB. First, I want to state clearly that, as a former full-time trade union official for what is now Unite, on this issue I have had its assistance and that of the solicitors with whom I worked over many years. I want to separate the principle of referral fees from what we have heard in terms of the scandalous behaviour of certain commercial operations, including insurance firms, in road traffic accidents. It is important to do that because, as I said at Second Reading, we are using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. I fear that a lot of deserving people will be adversely affected by these changes.

The consequences will be devastating on working people and their unions. It is important that I set out—I am sorry if I take up a bit of time in doing so—precisely the sort of help and package that most unions offer to their membership. I also draw attention to the Prime Minister’s remarks about the importance of the big society—that is, members helping themselves. We are talking about organisations of members for members who are, as the noble Lord, Lord Martin, said, regularly supporting their fellow members, very much in an unpaid capacity. No matter how much we have changed things, industrial accidents and diseases are still unfortunately far too common. We should be defending that principle of big society.

As a senior officer in the Transport and General Workers’ Union, I took considerable time in building a relationship with solicitors and in ensuring that we had a clear understanding about the sort of services that solicitors should provide to our members. Referral fees were not about extracting huge sums of money but about ensuring that we could build services for our members. More than 6 million people in the UK, and their families, can take advantage of those services. I was proud to build them.

We talk about representation in personal injury cases but we also provide free wills and free telephone legal advice help. The services go beyond employment matters to consumer rights, neighbour disputes and a whole host of issues and services. There is free personal injury cover for members injured at work, including devastating industrial diseases caused by exposure to asbestos and other dangerous chemicals. We provide free personal injury cover for members’ families if they are injured away from work, criminal law representation for work-related matters and criminal injury representation for members who are assaulted at work. As members of the Transport and General Workers’ Union, that was quite a common occurrence for bus drivers and conductors. I know that we do not have too many conductors now but there is still a huge problem. We do not hear about these issues in the newspapers and we certainly have not heard enough about these issues in this debate.

Representation, legal representation and relationships with solicitors are vital for working people. In an open and transparent way, referral fees have been used to build that relationship and to extend the services provided by specialist law firms. As I have said, that relationship is about building the quality of service. The union is able to monitor and regulate the relationship. Of course, unions are highly regulated and required to register all their finances and services with the certification officer.

This relationship is also able to provide appropriate complaint procedures and mitigation. If there are failures on the part of the solicitor, the union is able to intervene, which takes the burden away from other agencies. It is important that we are able to continue to do that work. The last figures I was able to get hold of were for 2010, when, for example, Unite, UNISON and the GMB’s legal services helped more than 25,000 members to win damages through industrial accidents and personal actions. That figure applies just to cases with damages and ignores the tens of thousands who got other services. When I left Unite, we had established the legal telephone helpline through the introduction of referral fees. Now, 25,000 people ring it every year for advice. I feel like ringing it at the moment because the draught coming through here is potentially hazardous to all our health. I will ring it when we have finished.

[Noble Lords]

Hear, hear.

[Lord Collins of Highbury]

I accept that there is no justification for excessive commercial referral fee arrangements, but we could establish criteria for these fees to ensure that they are reasonable in amount and provided wholly or mainly in services rather than in direct financial payments. We have talked about other organisations that are able to build legal services, and I am sure that other noble Lords will refer to campaigning and charitable organisations that rely on these services, particularly for work on industrial diseases. It may be an unintended consequence of this Bill, but that is why I want to stand up and be explicit about and proud of the sort of services that unions have been able to build up and give their members as a consequence of the arrangements they have made in an open and transparent way with solicitors.

I return to the point I made about road traffic offences in my Second Reading speech: this is a sledgehammer to crack a nut. My noble friend referred to the RTA portal and those arrangements. I wish that the department would not only build on that success, but also examine its impact. Maybe it needs to be improved, but not by introducing a piece of legislation that is going to hurt. After all, the statistics speak for themselves. Figures collected by Datamonitor and the Compensation Recovery Unit reveal that between 2007 and 2011, motor claims increased by 43 per cent to 799,000, but employer liability claims were down by 6.6 per cent to just under 81,500. Are we dealing with like for like here? Let us address the road traffic accident issue—but why damage the interests of ordinary working people? They need their own organisations to defend them, with the support of professional solicitors who those organisations work with and regulate. I ask the Minister to see whether the Government can pay attention when considering these amendments and look at the specifics rather than let them be drowned in the road traffic accident problem, to which I know we have a solution, and on which we could do more.