Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill [HL]

Lord Low of Dalston Excerpts

Monday 13th July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

May I just clarify a comment that I made to the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis? I talked about local authorities, but it does actually exclude London boroughs.

[Lord Low of Dalston (CB)]

My Lords, I should like to speak to Amendment 67, which is not an opposition amendment but an amendment in my name. I apologise to noble Lords for entering the fray at such a late stage, but the fact is that I completely failed to appreciate the significance of this legislation for the provision of advice services in which I have a strong interest. That is entirely my failure, but I crave your Lordships’ indulgence and hope that noble Lords will not mind too much if I take a few moments to draw their attention to the matter on Report.

My interest, which I have declared, stems from the fact that the amendment emanates from one of the key recommendations from the commission that I chaired on the future of advice and legal support on social welfare law—namely, that:

“Local authorities or groups of local authorities should co-produce or commission local advice and legal support plans with local not for profit (NFP) and commercial advice agencies. These plans should review the services available, including helplines and websites, while targeting face-to-face provision so that it reaches the most vulnerable”.

The fact that my amendment emanates from a commission of which I was myself the chair does not necessarily make it a bad amendment—indeed, one might think rather the reverse. In fact, there are a number of considerations which come together to suggest that this amendment makes a lot of sense in a Bill which is dealing with the devolution of power to larger, more strategic authorities. Advice services such as citizens advice bureaux, law centres and other charities provide crucial support to individuals in dealing with financial, legal and welfare problems concerning such things as housing, debt, disability benefits and claiming unpaid wages from employers, and they help communities to adjust to economic shocks and the effects of changes in government policies on things such as welfare reform. As non-statutory, or non-protected, services, they have suffered as a result of funding cuts, most social welfare issues having been removed from the scope of legal aid at the same time as cuts to a range of social support budgets.

The first report of my commission in January 2014 was entitled Tackling the Advice Deficit. Just over a year after that, in March this year, we published a second report which concluded that the advice deficit had increased significantly. In the first year since the implementation of LASPO, nine law centres had closed, comprising six of the Law Centres Network’s membership, and the Law Centres Network estimated that local government support for law centres had reduced by almost a quarter since 2010-11.

Our commission’s principal recommendation was that a strategic approach should be adopted towards the provision of advice. On 10 June this year, the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, for the Ministry of Justice in answer to Questions endorsed this approach when he said:

“The Liberal Democrat manifesto contains a number of wise things, including the suggestion that we should, ‘develop a strategy that will deliver advice and legal support to help people with everyday problems like personal debt and social welfare issues’. I entirely agree with that”.—[Official Report, 10/6/15; col. 792.]

If we take Manchester, which is highly relevant in the present context, as an illustration of these points in microcosm, CAB funding of £1.3 million will be cut by more than one-third between 2015 and 2017, involving major restructuring, including the closure of South Manchester Law Centre and other CAB services, as well as reductions in some face-to-face services. That after £1.2 million had already been stripped out as a result of the LASPO cuts, despite increasing numbers of families and individuals running into debt and legal problems.

As for the strategic response, a combined authority could collaborate with the local advice sector to plan services within a wider range of resources, including the welfare support grant, the universal credit local services framework, the homelessness prevention fund, the troubled families programme, lottery projects to support those with complex and multiple needs, the better care fund and other resources, such as support services for victims provided at local level by police and crime commissioners. This offers a viable model for the rehabilitation and stabilisation of our system of advice and legal support on social welfare law. Such collaboration has been facilitated since 2013 through partnership programmes supported by the lottery’s advice services transition fund. This funding has now run out, although we hope that the Cabinet Office might still work with the Big Lottery Fund to extend this into a rolling programme that could be match-funded from a number of sources and built into a national advice and legal support fund to support the local plans which the recommendation in our report, which I referred to, calls for.

Co-ordination across funding streams and services would not only prevent duplication but help to sustain partnerships across the advice sector. The whole would be greater than the sum of the parts. This is aptly demonstrated by the example of Sheffield, which we studied in our report. The council brought together some 19 separate organisations under CAB leadership, which made for not only economies of scale but gains in efficiency—for example, through three in-house lawyers becoming available to the whole organisation.

Section 4(1) of the Care Act 2014 states that:

“A local authority must establish and maintain a service for providing people in its area with information and advice relating to care and support for adults and support for carers”.

Combined authorities operating the sort of collaborative model that I have outlined offer a perfect vehicle for discharging this obligation. It seems a no-brainer. This is just the sort of thing that combined authorities are being set up to do—if not this, then what?