Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Lord Thomas of Gresford Excerpts

Monday 16th January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Mallalieu]

My Lords, I wonder what on earth could, in fact, be a valid reason for objecting to the spirit of the amendments in this group, in particular the one proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Faulks. If, as I fear, some parts of the Bill remain unchanged by amendment and legal aid is withdrawn from some areas, it is almost certain that it will be shown in due course that legal of aid was essential for the smooth running of our benefits systems, our legal system and our society. I suspect that there will be a public sense of unfairness when the extent of the proposed cuts is more widely known. I suspect that at that stage there may need to be, as others have already said, some rapid amendment to the existing system.

Who knows whether our economy may once again prosper? Further money may be available to spend, not just on more lavish opening ceremonies for the Olympics, royal yachts or high-speed railways but on the needs of people who are poor and disadvantaged. It is surely not beyond the bounds of possibility, as history has often shown, that a new field of law will develop rapidly and that legal aid will need to be extended to a different category that has not been anticipated to require it. Flexibility, as others have said, so that further primary legislation, which is costly and time consuming and inevitably involves considerable delay, can be avoided, ought surely to be embraced by the Minister with enthusiasm. I look forward to seeing it in a moment.

[Lord Thomas of Gresford]

My Lords, the problem for many lawyers is that we so often look into the past. Common lawyers in particular try to piece together what has happened before. Consequently, we tend always to look for evidence to support our interpretation of events. I certainly share that problem, but I have also had some experience of running an independent local radio company. During that time I realised the great difference between businesspeople and lawyers. Businesspeople have to take decisions about the future, and they can do that only on limited information.

In this instance, the Government have had to take a decision; it has been forced upon them. To adopt a phrase first used by the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, 50 years ago, “The Visigoths were at the gates”. It was therefore necessary to decide how best we can cut the deficit and how, in this instance, legal aid should share that burden. This is an issue which I think I raised with Ministers before the Bill came here—I certainly referred to it in my Second Reading speech—and I have had further discussions since. When taking decisions about the future, one has to have flexibility when the future happens. One has to be able to adopt what was decided at one moment in accordance with experience.

This is an instance of that. Some of the prognostications that we have heard from the lawyers around this place—and there have been a lot of “mays” and “what is likely to happen” and so on from lawyers—might happen in the future, in which case the provision of legal aid will have to change. The changes might be positive and legal aid granted more widely. It is therefore essential that the Lord Chancellor has the power to add back into the scope of legal aid matters that prove not to be profitable in the way that the Bill envisages. There are not the alternatives that the Minister speaks of for dealing with various legal issues and the very important question of access to justice. That is why I am speaking to Amendment 25 in my name. This is a very positive way in which the Minister can demonstrate that the Government will be flexible in this area, will listen to the concerns that are voiced in the Chamber and will adapt the Bill accordingly.

[Lord Scott of Foscote]

My Lords, I support strongly the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, and the other amendments in the same spirit. It is important in considering the merits of the amendments that we bear in mind the purpose of a civil justice system. I suggest that a country is not entitled to regard itself as civilised unless it has a proper, workable system for the administration and attainment of civil justice. I spent my professional life working in the civil justice system. Of course, the criminal justice system has its own imperatives, but a civil justice system whereby individuals can obtain remedies or resist attempts to obtain remedies against them is of critical importance if our country is to retain the status that it has earned over many years of being a civilised country in which it is a pleasure to live.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

I am second to none in my admiration, indeed my gratitude, for AVMA, which helped me and my family at a very difficult stage of our lives. I am deeply appreciative of them. If the list of expert witnesses was to be maintained both by the NHSLA and by AVMA, rationally speaking that is a list that should command confidence. None the less, in the emotionally fraught circumstances of a dispute, particularly where a baby has been damaged at birth or where some other catastrophic injury has taken place, it is asking a lot to expect people to trust witnesses and reports that are to be commissioned—the noble Lord’s amendment would require that—by the NHSLA.

[Lord Thomas of Gresford]

My Lords, I hope the Government do not think that this debate is special pleading, as the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, feared. There are a number of reasons for that. First, clinical negligence—at the moment, exceptionally in personal injury cases—already attracts legal aid. It is currently within scope. Secondly, there are considerable difficulties in proving clinical negligence. When a car accident happens, almost anyone, given proper evidence, can determine who is responsible. Clinical negligence is a very different field. It is very difficult to prove causation. If you can prove causation—that the condition of the claimant has been caused by the clinician concerned—you then have a further hurdle to surmount: whether that clinician has exercised the proper standards of care as known at the time.

I vividly remember a case in which I was involved where it was established that the arachnoiditis was caused by an injection into the spinal cord by a clinician. Arachnoiditis affects the limbs of a person and causes considerable paralysis. We could establish causation, but by the standards of the time it could not be shown that the injection was negligent.

The third matter that I draw to the Committee’s attention was referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay—that there is currently quality control in the provision of legal aid in clinical negligence cases. There are panels provided by the Law Society or Action for Victims of Medical Accidents, and it is only to solicitors who are on those panels that legal aid certificates will be granted. That ensures that there is a proper approach to the issues that arise in clinical negligence cases, and a proper conduct of those cases. For all those reasons, this is not special pleading; clinical negligence deserves consideration quite separately from all the other matters that we are raising under the first schedule.

I would like the Government to consider at what level legal aid can be granted. The noble Lord, Lord Faulks, and my noble friend Lord Carlile referred to the possibility that legal aid should be granted in serious cases that have an impact upon the lives of people. For example, if a case is worth only £4,500, which has been referred to, that may not be one in which public money should be involved—certainly not to the extent of £95,000. However, if, as so often happens, the lives of people and members of their families are altered for good, surely a humane society should provide legal aid to cover the cost of litigation in those circumstances?

[Lord Beecham]

My Lords, this has been a very thoughtful debate, and that owes much to the fact that so many of those who have participated have experience, either legal or medical, of cases of this kind. They are certainly among the most difficult that either clinicians or lawyers have to deal with. The noble Lord, Lord Wigley, referred to the rather alarming statistic that 10 per cent of National Health Service patients in any year suffer from clinical negligence. That ought to concern all of us, especially those with responsibility for the health service.

However, it is also right to point out that this does not give rise to a spate of litigation. In view of the numbers of people who must suffer from clinical negligence, the fact that only around 10,000 or 11,000 cases a year receive legal advice, and of those only about 3,500 proceed to receive legal aid for representation, completely contradicts the assumption that there is a compensation culture—certainly in this area of law and, many of us would argue, generally. There is no compensation culture. However, it is a measure of the scale of the need for representation that of the successful legal aid cases—some 1,500 cases adjudicated in, I think, 2009-10—the average period during which these cases were pursued was as long as 55 months. That might partly be a reflection of the complexity of the evidence, or partly of the fact that you cannot really settle a case until the prognosis becomes clearer, until a client’s needs are defined, particularly in the case of children who suffer perinatal injuries or other forms of clinical negligence. Obviously their future lives cannot be predicted with any certainty at too early a stage. However, it also owes something, as the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, pointed out, to the reluctance of authorities—the NHS bodies and, I suppose, private bodies—to admit liability.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

My Lords, I think the position is that if they lose they do not pay it. That is what we are retaining in cases of clinical negligence. In short, poor people will not have to pay up-front for the necessary expert reports in clinical negligence cases.

[Lord Thomas of Gresford]

The problem is that you cannot get a conditional fee agreement unless you have a case, and you cannot get insurance unless you can show that there is a case. In clinical negligence, you do not have a case unless you have the medical reports. That is the problem. The Government’s solution, as put forward in Clause 45, does not solve the problem at all.

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

My Lords, we certainly believe that going down this road will mean that poor people do not have to pay up-front for their necessary expert reports. Indeed, that is why we draw a distinction between our reforms as they affect clinical negligence and the reforms that affect claims for damages in other areas.

We are working closely with the NHSLA and other stakeholders to discuss how the commissioning of these reports can be improved so that joint expert reports can be commissioned wherever possible. That would involve the NHSLA commissioning and sharing expert reports on liability with claimants at an early stage. There is a lot of agreement that that is what we should be doing—trying to get it at such an early stage. That, in turn, will help to encourage the early notification of claims.

My noble friend Lord Faulks and the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, expressed some concern about whether there would be a market for ATE insurance if it was not recoverable in other areas. We certainly recognise that these concerns about the funding of medical expert reports have been expressed, but the reality is that claimants usually take out ATE insurance. We expect the ATE market to adapt to the new arrangements. As my noble friend Lord Faulks accepted—although he queried whether it should have been done earlier, rather than during the passage of legislation—a working party has been set up to consider the recoverability of ATE and to ensure that premiums for expert reports reflect the risks involved. ATE insurance brokers have been asked to contribute to this working group. It is a concern to which we are alert and one that we seek to address.

Furthermore, we wish to reassure the Committee that we will be introducing qualified one-way cost shifting, which will be available in personal injury claims and, therefore, will by definition apply in clinical negligence claims. Qualified one-way costs shifting will mean that, in the majority of cases where damages for clinical negligence are sought, the claimant is not at risk of having to pay a winning defendant’s costs. We have therefore protected the claimant’s interests to ensure that they are not denied access to justice for fear of having to pay the defendant’s costs if they were to lose.

One of the main areas of concern in respect of expert reports is those cases concerning babies who suffer obstetric brain injury. This has been reflected in a number of contributions. While we consider that in most clinical negligence cases funding will be available through a combination of conditional fee agreements and ATE insurance, we have always recognised that there may be obstetric injury cases with high disbursement costs, which are currently funded by legal aid but for which it may be difficult to secure conditional fee agreements.

My noble friend Lord Faulks expressed concern as to whether the provisions in Clause 9 with regard to these exceptional payments, which we will debate later, would be fit for purpose and meet the task which we wish them to achieve. It is because of this that we have sought to make funding available. The safety net would be in the form of an exceptional funding scheme, which will ensure the protection of an individual’s rights to legal aid under the European Convention on Human Rights as well as those rights to legal aid that are directly enforceable under European Union law. In considering whether exceptional funding should be granted in cases engaging Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, the director will take into account general jurisprudence set out by the European Court of Human Rights on Article 6. The jurisprudence takes into account the following relevant factors: the ability of the client to present his or her own case; the complexity of the matter; the importance of the issues at stake; and all other relevant circumstances. It is important to put this into context. Our impact assessment estimates that we will continue to spend £6 million of the £16 million we currently spend on clinical negligence cases on exceptional funding cases. We estimate that the vast majority of this £6 million—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

We do not wish to inflict the scenario which my noble friend indicates. The scale at which we believe the exceptional funding will be used is indicative of our expectation that exceptional funding will be available to assist these very profound cases. No one is disputing the seriousness of this. However, the amount of money that is being made available is not insignificant by any stretch of the imagination—£6 million out of the £16 million that is sought to be saved overall—which indicates that this measure is not just incidental but tries to address very directly the proper and sensitive concerns that have been raised.

[Lord Thomas of Gresford]

My noble and learned friend referred to Clause 9 and to exceptional cases. He will be aware that a specific category of special exceptional cases is delineated in that clause: namely,

“advocacy in proceedings at an inquest under the Coroners Act 1988”,

where there is a “wider public interest determination”. Are the Government prepared to consider whether in this very sensitive type of case there could be a subsection inserted into Clause 9 which deals with the very difficult issue of clinical negligence instead of leaving it under the broad wording of subsection (2)?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Bach]

I am grateful to the noble Lord as he is absolutely right about the social and financial costs of abolishing this sort of legal aid. It is impossible to say what they will be, but they will be huge, which I should have thought was fairly obvious.

The outcomes that we have talked about in this debate are not beyond the realms of probability, nor can anyone say that they would be unexpected. It is up to us in this Committee, and in the House perhaps on a future date, to decide whether the outcomes that have been described would cross the basic line of British decency that it is our obligation to defend. As part of that decision-making, we must look at whether these particular cuts are economic in the first place. Would they achieve even the Executive’s highly limited narrow goals of saving money?

The ministry plans to remove entirely funding for welfare benefits from scope. It claims that that will save £25 million a year. That sum normally goes to dealing with 135,000 cases per year. The advice is delivered, not altogether but pretty much through third-sector not-for-profit agencies such as Citizens Advice, law centres and many other advice centres. Advice goes to those seeking reconsiderations of decisions by the DWP and related agencies and to those appealing decisions before the First-tier Tribunals and then the Upper Tribunals. We have heard who receives the advice. Women are disproportionately users of this advice, as are ethnic minorities. As the noble Baroness indicated, 69 per cent—a very high percentage indeed—of those receiving advice are ill or disabled in some way.

As for who gets more complex advice—that relating to grounds for appeal—the published data for First-tier Tribunals show that of the 50,000 or so benefits-related cases heard a year, 90 per cent relate to disability-related benefits. That is hardly a surprise. For all its sins, jobseeker’s allowance is a simple entitlement for which to calculate eligibility. When there is a degree of subjectivity in deciding on the impairment caused by disability, agencies are more likely to make mistakes and thus require decisions to be appealed.

What does the advice funded by legal aid deliver? Colleagues in another place tabled a series of Parliamentary Questions to establish the percentage of people who win their appeals before tribunal with and without advice. The figures provided by the ministry show that in 2009-10 in welfare benefits-related cases, people were 78 per cent more likely to win if they had advice than if they did not have advice. For ESA the figure was even higher. People appealing employment support allowance decisions were more than twice as likely to win with advice than if they did not have advice. I point out what is obvious: those winning appellants are all legitimate claimants. They are not scroungers; they are not feckless—for the main part they have probably suffered some form of disability. They have been denied their rights by an emanation of the state, by the Executive, and they are legitimately challenging that decision.

[Lord Thomas of Gresford]

Would the Minister agree that the statistics he has just—

[Lord Bach]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for calling me a Minister.

[Lord Thomas of Gresford]

It is just habit. Would the noble Lord agree that his statistics suggest that where there is advice, meritorious claims are brought forward and money and time are not wasted by tribunals in hearing litigants in person?

[Lord Bach]

I agree absolutely. It seems to follow because the people who practise this kind of law—and we know that they are not particularly well-paid lawyers—are very careful, on the whole, to give advice on the position in law and not necessarily what the claimant wants to hear. It is right that people with hopeless claims do not go forward and those with meritorious claims do go forward—as they should do.

These are legal problems—let us make no mistake about that. The truth is that the welfare benefits field, as we have heard all round the House from great experts, is very complex in many cases and people need help with these matters before they can decide the right thing to do.

Judge Robert Martin, the head of the Social Entitlement Chamber of the First-tier Tribunal, gave evidence to the Justice Committee inquiry some time last year. The 7,500 pages I referred to in an intervention are the reference material that was issued to the tribunals and which is now spread over six volumes. He made that point to the Justice Committee. He was asked by the chair, the right honourable gentleman Sir Alan Beith:

“Will it bring more people into the tribunal because they have not been advised that their case has no chance of success in the tribunal”?,

which I think is the question the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, asked me. Judge Robert Martin said:

“Yes, because a general public awareness of tribunals is very low. Very little is put into public education of the law and how to seek redress for grievances. There is this risk that we will see many people who have been drawn to the tribunal believing it is the most appropriate forum to solve things, whereas it may be just a mistaken conception about the tribunal”.

He continued:

“Legal help is so important in that triage function of sifting out cases which can be redressed but not through the tribunal or the court, and assisting those cases where the tribunal or the court can assist to have the case prepared in a way that maximises the chance of success”.

That gives the answer from someone who is, as it were, at the coal face. He went on to say:

“With the removal of legal help, we will have to spend a lot more time explaining simply what the tribunal is about rather than getting to the heart of the matter”.

This Bill is at its worst in this particular part. I argued at Second Reading—and I argue again today—that it is unconstitutional in that it removes access to justice for a large number of citizens, it is immoral because the state should not try to save a fairly small amount of money by targeting the poor and the disabled by removing their legal rights, and it is financially crazy because the savings will be non-existent. As benefits mistakes are not remedied, the problems will grow and the cost to the state will explode.

We are very proud of our legal system in this country and we encourage, quite rightly, foreign citizens to litigate their cases in British courts. They do so because of the extreme fairness and expertise of the British legal system from top to bottom. It is ironic, is it not, that we should be asking foreigners to litigate their serious cases in our courts because of the greatness of our system, while at the same time we seek to reduce some basic rights in law for our own citizens who are the least able to look after themselves?