Legal Aid Reform

Debate between Meg Hillier and Robert Neill

Thursday 27th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

I declare the interest that appears in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests that I am a member of the Bar, although I do not currently practise and have not done so since I have been in the House. For 25 years, I practised in criminal courts around London and the south-east. I defended almost invariably on legal aid rates and when I prosecuted, the remuneration was broadly the same. I have spent enough time at the sharp end to know and value the importance of legal aid in our justice system.

It is because I value legal aid that I find some of the responses to the Government’s consultation deeply disappointing. The criminal justice system and legal aid deserve better than the rather Panglossian view adopted by some Opposition Members and, I am sorry to say, some spokesmen of the profession that all is as well as it can be and that it would horrific to alter it.

More thoughtful Labour Front Benchers of the past have recognised that that view is not tenable. The former Lord Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), not only recognised that the growth in legal aid spending that we had seen over a decade or more was, to use his word, unsustainable, but observed that the profession needed to consider not just efficiencies, but structural change. He pointed out the opportunities that the Legal Services Act 2007 provided for such structural change. It is interesting that there is, yet again, collective amnesia on the Opposition Benches.

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

If we put aside the issues of cost for one moment, because there is agreement that we must always consider value for money, is the hon. Gentleman content that the Secretary of State has conducted the consultation in a timely and proper fashion? The rush in which this matter is being dealt with and the lack of a substantive vote in the House are of real concern, given the issues with which we are dealing.

[Robert Neill]

It seems to me that the Secretary of State has adopted a careful and measured approach. What the hon. Lady says is thoroughly misleading. I am sorry to say that she does herself no service by making such a thoroughly meretricious point.

This matter has been the subject of great public debate. I have referred to the former Lord Chancellor’s speech in 2009, in which he made specific proposals, including bringing in fixed fees and graduated fees as a precursor to best value tendering. He may not have delivered on those proposals, but the ideas have been out there for a long time.

The Lord Chancellor has met the chairman of the Bar Council and the president of the Law Society. It is right and wise that he chooses temperate interlocutors. He has been most willing to engage with Members of this House who are interested in legal matters. The hon. Lady therefore does herself a disservice to characterise the process as rushed.