Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012

Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames Excerpts

Thursday 7th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for repeating the Statement. Sadly, I am not grateful for its content, which offers very little very late. The Government wasted two years investigating their own devastating cuts, perpetrated by the coalition Government on so many ordinary people in this country, for whom access to justice is no longer a reality. The review is a missed opportunity to restore legal support to people facing rogue landlords, debilitating family breakups and the Government’s hostile environment to not just migrants but poor people and people living on benefits.

There have been 99% cuts to benefits legal aid for some of the most vulnerable people in our society, which is completely unacceptable. The Statement’s accompanying documents include an action plan that is incredibly disappointing, in many cases offering just more reviews rather than the action that the term “action plan” would normally suggest. Legal aid has been slashed by hundreds of millions of pounds. Even the Government’s target of saving £410 million was exceeded by £200 million. Is that a record of which the Ministry of Justice can be proud?

On many occasions technology, as with the Northern Ireland border, is offered as a panacea to replace real lawyers offering people early advice and subsequent representation where necessary. That is what anyone would want when dealing with a difficult dispute in their life, and it should be available to everyone—rich or poor.

Cuts to public services and austerity are always political choices, but when the cuts are to the legal advice and representation at the heart of our rule of law, they become particularly ideological. All the exquisite legislation brought forward and scrutinised in your Lordships’ House remains a dead letter in a closed book without adequate legal aid. That is the situation in the United Kingdom—one of the wealthiest countries on earth—at this moment in the 21st century. To my mind, this is a national disgrace.

This year marks the 70th anniversary of the Legal Aid and Advice Act 1949. That piece of Labour legislation, of which we are proud, was as important in the post-war settlement as healthcare or universal education. I am sad to say this because I think that matters concerning the rule of law should be cross-party and bipartisan, but I have come to the view that only a Labour Government will restore access to justice, advice and representation for all.

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)]

My Lords, after a delayed process that took an entire year, we now have the post-implementation review of LASPO. I will focus on legal aid.

Of its four stated objectives, the MoJ claims success in just one: significant savings have been made. Well, we know that. As the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, pointed out, the savings wildly exceeded what was expected. However, on each of the other three objectives—discouraging unnecessary and adversarial litigation at public expense; targeting legal aid at those who need it most; and delivering better overall value for money for the taxpayer—the answer is an unimpressive “Don’t know”, dressed up in weasel words such as, “It is impossible to say with certainty”. I suspect that an independent review would have come to clearer conclusions.

The review identifies six themes echoing the experiences of all of us involved in the justice system. First, these changes in the scope of legal aid undermine value for money, particularly by preventing early intervention. Secondly, financial eligibility and operational requirements limit access to legal aid too harshly. Thirdly, the exceptional case funding scheme is not working well. Fourthly, legal aid fees are now so low that future provision by practitioners is at risk. Fifthly, increasing numbers of litigants in person increase costs and risk the perception of a two-tier justice system. Finally, advice deserts across our country threaten access to justice.

The legal support action plan seeks to address those issues, at least in part. I am more hopeful than the noble Baroness in saying that the action plan is welcome. Among the Government’s pledges, some of which were mentioned in the Statement, they promised to review eligibility requirements, increase public awareness of how to access legal aid, broaden the scope of legal aid in some immigration and family cases—that will not go nearly far enough—improve the exceptional case funding scheme, review criminal legal aid, widen access to the telephone gateway, increase support for litigants in person and examine complementary ways of providing legal support. Both those pledges and the others made must be kept and implemented soon. We will have further demands for improved support. We will hold the Government’s feet to the fire.

Can the Minister do two things today on this vital topic? Together, the four documents represent a massive report. Will he please use his influence to secure a debate, with adequate time and soon, on the reports and the action plan? Secondly, will he reassure us that where the promises in the action plan are not backed up by implementation dates—and some are—the MoJ will treat them with urgency?

Notwithstanding the warnings in the paper and in the Statement that all this cannot be delivered overnight and is the first step in the process, the rescue of our legal aid system and the improvement of our legal support system needs more urgency than was ever accorded to this review.

[Lord Keen of Elie]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, and the noble Lord, Lord Marks, for their contributions. I am a little disappointed by the response of the noble Baroness. These reports have been welcomed in many quarters, although not universally and not without qualification. However, that is hardly a surprise because, let us be clear, this is a difficult and controversial area.

Let us look for a moment to the background. We had a financial crash in 2008. It is easy to say that austerity is a political choice but essentially it is not; austerity is a consequence. Furthermore, after that financial crash, which impacted right across our society, we had the party manifestos for the election in 2010. The Labour manifesto said explicitly that it would be necessary to address the cost of legal aid provision, and that was its intent—the cost was too high. That was recognised by other parties and indeed by the coalition Government themselves, who brought forward the LASPO Act to try to bring some degree of control over the ever-spiralling actual financial cost of legal aid. The noble Lord, Lord Marks, acknowledged this.

We not talking just about the immediate cost of legal aid but about the wider issue of access to justice and the means by which we can ensure that there is legal assistance as well as legal aid for all in our society, but particularly for the most vulnerable, who truly require it. That is why I am thankful that the noble Lord has welcomed the action plan which is designed to look not only at the provision of financial resources for legal advice and assistance but the manner in which we can deliver legal support for people at the right time and in the right place. To do that, we want to see the development of web-based products, for example. We want to see proper signposting and advice for people. Moreover, we want to encourage that sort of advice and signposting at an early stage because there is a belief that if we can do that, we can help resolve people’s issues before they develop into major and costly litigation. All of that is to be considered.

In addition, we are going to test the impact of early legal advice by promoting certain pilots, particularly in the area of social welfare law, to see what results can be secured. I note the observation of the noble Lord, Lord Marks, about the need for implementation at pace, and indeed we are committed to the implementation of all of these recommendations as soon as we can. For example, we will be looking at the financial levels for qualification for legal aid and we intend to bring that to a conclusion by summer 2020 so that these matters can be addressed as soon as possible.

There are areas where we face difficulties with regard to the provision of legal advice. The noble Lord referred to legal advice deserts. In fact, in the areas of housing and debt, we are generally well covered across England and Wales so far as advice is concerned, but I accept that there are still gaps which have to be filled by, for example, telephone advice, which is not the ideal. Indeed, one of the reasons we want to roll out the web-based access that I mentioned earlier is to address the demand for legal advice and assistance in rural areas and other areas outside urban centres where that is more readily to hand. That is certainly part of our proposed action plan,

On the assurances the noble Lord sought, he readily appreciates that it is not in my power to secure a debate in this House, but no doubt the usual channels will have heard his observations. I concur with his reference to the depth and breadth of these reports, and perhaps the need to look at them in more detail to figure out just where we are going forward and how quickly we should go forward on these issues. As I sought to reassure him earlier, we are concerned to ensure that there is implementation of these proposals as soon as it is possible to secure it.