Legal Aid

Lord Low of Dalston Excerpts

Thursday 10th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Low of Dalston (CB)]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, with whom I so often find myself in accord. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, for securing this debate. The legal aid landscape is in such flux these days that it is important for Parliament to keep on top of it. I apologise to the noble Lord and to the House that I arrived so late for his opening speech. On the way here, I am afraid I dropped my BrailleNote on the floor and could not get it to start again. It is only thanks to the doorkeepers and staff of the House, who, with great resourcefulness, managed to connect it to the mains, that I have anything at all to say to your Lordships this afternoon.

I first came into contact with the legal aid system some 50 years ago when I was doing a PhD—sadly, still unfinished to this day—on legal aid in criminal cases. To that extent, I suppose I am one of those people whom JK Galbraith described as having built a successful career on their unpublished works. Fifty years later I was brought into contact with the legal aid system again—although things are very different now—when I was asked by the Legal Action Group, with funding from a number of charitable trusts and foundations, led by the Baring Foundation, to chair a commission on the future of advice and legal support on social welfare law in the wake of the cuts to legal aid introduced by the LASPO Act.

When I saw who else was on the commission, I said I did not think I had sufficient expertise to be there at all, to which they said, “That’s why we thought you’d make the ideal chair”. As regards the name, we went for something completely boring and bureaucratic—the Low commission—because all the other names seemed too close to campaigns against the LASPO Bill. Some people thought it was a misprint for the Law Commission, and the Guardian even got hold of the idea that it was the Low Pay Commission, presumably thinking it had something to do with barristers’ remuneration. It was intended to be just a one-year inquiry but the charities were so pleased with our work that they kept funding us to do more. We have now produced three reports but we will probably be drawing things to a close next March.

We saw advice and legal support as a continuum, including public legal education; informal and formal information and general advice, often provided by local authorities; specialist advice; legal help; and legal representation. However, in a situation where we have to accept that there will be less money for legal help and representation, it seemed clear to us that the advice end of the spectrum was going to need to take more of the strain. That is why we have been focusing more, of late, on what needs to be done to strengthen local advice services.

We argued for a national advice strategy, supporting local advice and legal support plans, produced by local authorities with the local not-for-profit sector and commercial advice agencies. I am happy to say that there seems to be an appetite for this on the part of government and a recognition of the contribution the advice sector makes to society. The Minister has always been very supportive. I remember that, at one Question Time, he even commended the Liberal Democrats’ endorsement of this approach in their election manifesto.

Money is not really the issue. There is no shortage of potential funding streams—Help Through Crisis, Reaching Communities, Building Better Opportunities, the Local Sustainability Fund, Commissioning Better Outcomes, the Social Outcomes Fund and the Troubled Families programme. What is needed is co-ordination of these funding streams, with provision for advice services as a central strategic theme.

There is one other matter I want to raise because of the impact it has had on access to justice. There has been a massive hike in fees for taking a case to an employment tribunal. From nothing at all in August 2013, the issue fee can now be £250 and the hearing fee as much as £950 in more complex cases. These may include discrimination, equal pay and unfair dismissal claims. For claims to the Employment Appeal Tribunal, the issue fee is £400 and the hearing fee £1,200. It has been said that the remission system operating in the civil courts, under which fees can be waived if a party cannot afford to pay, is to be extended to employment tribunals and the Employment Appeal Tribunal. However that may be, since the introduction of fees, the volume of employment tribunal claims has plummeted. Between October 2013 and September 2014, single claims brought by individuals were 64% down on the previous 12 months. Multiple claims were down by 67%. Even if one accepts that the imposition of fees flushed out some unmeritorious cases, it is clearly having a very negative impact on access to justice.

The Government’s recent decision to abandon the criminal courts charge is extremely welcome. Can the Minister say if the Government are minded to row back on the system of fees which has obviously had such a deleterious impact on access to employment tribunals?