Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (Amendment of Schedule 1) Order 2013 Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateLord Richard
Main Page: Lord Richard (Labour - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Richard's debates with the Ministry of Justice
(11 years, 5 months ago)
Lords ChamberI am flattered that the noble Lord should find me menacing. Does he not see that there is a clear distinction between access to justice and access to legal aid? Does he not see that in certain circumstances certain people who are denied legal aid are denied access to justice? That follows as night follows day. If someone cannot afford to go to the courts in order to get justice, that is denying them justice.
Access to justice may also be by other forms of advice. Not all advice is legal advice.
When a tribunal is involved, it is not a question of advice but of having to go to a tribunal to get a decision. That is where the justice comes from—the decision of the tribunal, not the advice that one is given before one gets there. Surely the noble Lord sees that distinction.
Built into the system are corrections to the tribunal. The noble Lord will know that the tribunal system was initially conceived as a relatively lawyer-free zone where people could make their case. The other part of our reforms of justice is, in a whole range of measures, to offer different forms of mediation and arbitration that reduce what was becoming an over-lawyered system, including in tribunals.