Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Debate between Lord Wigley and Baroness Doocey

Monday 16th January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Doocey]

My Lords, I should like also to speak to Amendments 35 and 89. These amendments relate to the ability of claimants, the majority of whom are disabled, to appeal against decisions on their entitlement to welfare benefits. The intention behind these amendments is to protect some of the most vulnerable people in our society. The Bill as it stands would remove social welfare cases from the scope of legal aid, which would have an adverse and disproportionate impact on disabled people in particular, and would leave them unable effectively to challenge decisions when they are let down by the system.

Legal aid is currently available to assist individuals with a range of welfare benefit issues, from navigating complex benefit administration to reviewing and appealing against official decisions. When appealing against such decisions, advice is available to clients before appeal and tribunal, but legal aid does not cover legal representation—and there is no suggestion that it should. A number of noble Lords have already made the point that the welfare benefits system is complex, and more than half the welfare benefit assistance that is funded through legal aid relates to disabled people. However, despite the best efforts of all involved in a claimant’s initial application, mistakes are frequently made, and these are well documented.

The need for such legal aid is best demonstrated by the fact that nearly 40 per cent of all appeals against work capability assessment decisions are upheld. In addition, between October 2008 and February 2010—a period of just 17 months—60 per cent of disabled people who appealed were eventually found to qualify for employment and support allowance, even though they had initially been assessed as having no factors that would affect their ability to work. The proposals in the Bill would, every year, deny specialist legal advice for complex welfare problems to more than 130,000 people, of whom nearly 80,000 are disabled. Without legal aid, the ability of people to appeal against a decision would be undermined because the rules for benefit eligibility are extremely difficult to understand.

To give just one example, the complexity of the extensive legal precedents determining the criteria for being classed as virtually unable to walk make professional legal advice vital for anyone even thinking of appealing against a welfare benefit decision. We all recognise the need to make economies but the Government’s own impact assessment puts the spending on legal aid for welfare benefits at just £25 million, compared to a total legal aid budget of £2 billion. This is a relatively minor saving but it would have a major effect on large numbers of vulnerable people who need help with appealing when mistakes have been made about their entitlement to benefits. I also argue that failure to provide timely legal advice to assist disabled people who are put on the wrong benefit is a false economy that will almost certainly result in additional demands being placed on services such as the NHS, rather than delivering the savings that the Government are hoping for.

To make matters worse, the Bill is being considered at the same time that the Government are undertaking a dramatic overhaul of the welfare benefits system. With a reform on this scale, there will be a new and unfamiliar set of complexities to navigate through for both claimants and officials. During the transition, there is bound to be an increase in the number of inaccurate benefit decisions made and a consequent need for legal advice to challenge these.

I share the Government’s desire to reduce the number of appeals against decisions, but this reduction must not happen because the loss of legal aid prevents disabled people from challenging decisions. I therefore commend these amendments to the Committee as a means of securing justice for some of the most vulnerable people in our society whose needs are constantly overlooked. I beg to move.

[Lord Wigley]

My Lords, I strongly support the amendments so ably moved and spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey. I recall her impressive speech on these matters at Second Reading. Some of us sat through 17 sessions of the Welfare Reform Bill in Committee and, in session after session, we came across the potential loss of important and valuable benefits on which many vulnerable disabled people depend.

Some of the changes will not be easily understood, and some will be seen as depriving this cohort of people of essential resources that would at least compensate for their disability or enable them to live with it. When they lose or are in danger of losing such benefits there will clearly be a strong feeling that they have been badly treated. If there is any dubiety in law with regard to the way in which they are losing, they will want to challenge that.

I put it to noble Lords that to introduce these two pieces of legislation simultaneously—tonight we are dealing with the legal aid Bill; tomorrow we are back to the Welfare Reform Bill on Report; and on Wednesday we are back to legal aid—given the combined effect that they may have for disabled people, is absolutely wrong. There should at the very least be a facility for those who may be deprived of benefits which are so important to them to challenge that in law during the opening period of the implementation of the Welfare Reform Bill. If, in due course, when things settle down, there is a need to change things, all well and good, but I remind noble Lords that the degree of benefit fraud in the context of disability is minimal. Therefore, it is a question of depriving people of resources to which they have been entitled, the loss of which will make a significant difference to their lives.

The Government should seriously look again at the cost implied by the amendment and the implications of the legislation to find a way in which disabled people and other vulnerable people affected by the Bill can at least have the basic right to challenge it in court.