Legal Aid Reform

Mary Glindon Excerpts

Thursday 3rd February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)]

First, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue) on securing the debate. Unlike her, I do not have any experience of giving legal advice or doing legal aid work, but I did benefit from the legal aid system many years ago when I successfully pursued maintenance payments for my daughter.

My reason for speaking in the debate is that I was alerted to the Government’s proposed reforms by a constituent of mine who practises as a solicitor in a well-respected law firm in Newcastle upon Tyne. She spelled out to me just how devastating the cuts would be for many of my most vulnerable constituents who need legal aid now or might need it in future. The Government claim that they want to be fair, but removing the right to help with legal costs from those who need it to obtain appropriate representation when they are making a legal challenge is overtly denying those very people a right to justice. Indeed, the chairman of the Bar Council of England and Wales, Nicholas Green, QC, has described the cuts as a “shrinkage of justice”.

Like many MPs, I have been contacted by a number of organisations on this matter, each making a case for retaining the £350 million in the legal aid budget. They were all concerned about the range of areas being taken out of scope because of the huge cut in funds being made towards 2014. The Law Society has stated that

“the civil legal aid scope cuts, in social welfare law, appear to be targeted against areas of law, which are most relevant to the poorest and most vulnerable members of society”.

That is borne out by the information I have received from the director of the citizens advice bureaux that operate across the borough of North Tyneside, serving the constituencies of both North Tyneside and Tynemouth. He advised me that the cuts to legal aid are a double whammy, as the Government have just announced the end of North Tyneside CAB’s financial inclusion fund from April this year. So, with cuts to legal aid, North Tyneside’s CAB will lose two and a half debt specialist posts and one and a half benefit specialist posts, and the end of the financial inclusion fund means that a further four and a half posts will go.

Last year, our CAB handled more than 72,000 cases. Staff dealt with cases involving £25 million-worth of debt, not including mortgages, and managed to write off £4.5 million-worth of that debt for local people. Furthermore, with work carried out on benefits this year, the CAB in North Tyneside is projecting benefit gains of nearly £900,000. In the light of those figures, it is easy to imagine the hardship that will be caused by the loss of funding that to date has made such a difference to constituents, whose only avenue of help is the legal aid route.

[Rehman Chishti]

On page 5.5 of the 2010 Labour manifesto, on which the hon. Lady stood for election, her party committed to

“find greater savings in legal aid”.

How does she intend to satisfy that commitment if she does not support the changes that the Government are bringing in?

[Mrs Glindon]

Our Front-Bench team do not deny that certain efficiencies had to be made. In fact, as was said previously, they committed money to help during the recession.

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

The problem with the proposed cuts in legal aid is that they are wholly counter-productive. The Government may save money in the legal aid budget, but they will incur expenditure in other budgets. There are ways to save money in the Ministry of Justice budget, and I will touch on them in my speech.

[Mrs Glindon]

Mark Almond made it plain to me that the work carried out by the citizens advice bureau with the help of legal aid funding definitely helps the most vulnerable—those whose lives are the most chaotic, or who have literacy and other language problems. Self-representation, as proposed in the Bill, is a non-starter for that group of constituents.

In debt advice, private debt advisers are not the answer. The Government’s own study on private debt advice found that more than 80% of those businesses provide incorrect and inappropriate advice, often at a cost to the client, and that they refer clients to advisers who are, in fact, debt collectors. Do the Government really want to impoverish the poorest more by directing them down that path?

The most vulnerable would, again, not benefit from the proposed telephone helpline. In North Tyneside, it is estimated that fewer than 10% of citizens advice bureau legal aid clients would be able to access the system, because of literacy or language problems. Such a system could be considered only as an adjunct to the present system.

Through the work of Lord Carter’s review, the Labour Government made efforts to find savings, always with the aim of striving to protect social welfare law. Labour Members believe that savings could be found in other areas to continue that protection. As the director of North Tyneside CAB told me, although losing jobs and expertise is a massive problem, his biggest regret is that the changes to legal aid will fail clients. The coalition Government need to take heed of this debate and of the views expressed by the many experts who are making the case for the 500,000 people who will lose out as a result of the cuts. The cuts are not fair and definitely not just.