Legal Aid (Rural Wales)

Nia Griffith Excerpts

Wednesday 26th June 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mr Williams]

I concur with much of what the hon. Lady says. This is about process, and what her constituents will find more difficult when they are faced, I think, with nine solicitors’ practices in the whole of Gwent is physically accessing legal aid, if it is available to them.

On the proposals themselves, the model is inappropriate for rural areas. The geography of our country is such that defendants will be allocated a solicitor whom they will find it extremely difficult, physically, to meet sometimes. The proposals do not take into account the vast distances and travel challenges across my area of Ceredigion and the rest of rural Wales. If a defendant from Newtown was allocated a duty solicitor in Llanelli, a meeting would require the defendant or solicitor to make a round trip of more than five hours—not to mention, of course, the challenges with transport links that we face in rural areas.

The reduction in firms that are able to bid for contracts will lead to huge delays in solicitors attending courts, or possibly a police station, and that has serious implications for the defendant. I understand from a local solicitor that, just before Christmas, GEOAmey—one of the private companies—transported a constituent of mine from Manchester to Aberystwyth but was unable to take the constituent off the prison van. It had to take him back, as it had brought only two members of staff, and at least three are needed to escort a prisoner. That vast journey, at huge expense, was a wasted opportunity. A future with a criminal defence system providing that level of service is a worrying one.

[Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Williams]

I give way for the last time—[Interruption.] Sorry, nearly the last time.

[Nia Griffith]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that affording that transport is virtually impossible for many clients and that, if they were allocated different people on different occasions, which can happen with repeat offences, they could end up with several different firms representing them at one court hearing? Again, that would be massively wasteful.

[Mr Williams]

The hon. Lady pre-empts another of my later remarks. The relationship between solicitors and those repeat offenders is critical, and we risk losing that.

It is asserted that there would be four providers across the whole of Dyfed Powys. There would be real access issues, and are the proposed consortia feasible? As we have heard from hon. Members, the proposals plan to have four providers across the whole of Dyfed Powys, four across the whole of north Wales—sorry, I correct myself—and four in Gwent and nine across the whole of south Wales. By contrast, 37 contracts are planned for Greater Manchester, which has a similar population to south Wales. Again, will the Ministry of Justice, and the Whip speaking for the Ministry today, outline how that was calculated? How was rurality factored in? Although my hon. Friends from south Wales and the M4 corridor will have strong feelings about the provision of access there, for those of us who work, live and function in mid-Wales and north Wales, the picture is disastrous. We lose out yet again, and we are put at a real disadvantage compared with other people across the country.

My next concern is that competitive tendering at 17.5% less will drive solicitors out of business. The competitive tendering proposed for contracts remains a major cause for concern. It will simply drive solicitors out of business. Those remaining will be firms that are willing to cut costs, possibly to unworkable levels. That would lead to tenders being awarded to less able and potentially less experienced firms, which may find themselves unable to deliver on the prices promised to secure the tender. I am clear in my mind where I would like to go if I needed legal advice. However, there is the spectacle of Eddie Stobart or Tesco providing the service. The Co-op has been mentioned recently, and I am a great supporter of the Co-op. It is an admirable place to go to buy food and it has a fine record of burying people—the Co-op funeral service is very good—but we should not be using such examples to justify changes to the legal system.

I am greatly concerned about the capacity of companies such as Capita, GEOAmey, Serco and G4S—and whether they are best placed to represent my constituents. My colleague in another place, Lord Thomas of Gresford alerted us in a Queen’s Speech contribution to Stobart Barristers—an offshoot of Eddie Stobart trucks. Lord Thomas noted that the Stobart Barristers legal director, Trevor Howarth, had confirmed that the firm would bid for the new criminal defence contracts and had said:

“We can deliver the service at a cost that’s palatable for the taxpayer… Our business model was developed with this in mind. We at Stobart are well known for taking out the waste and the waste here is the duplication of solicitors going to the courtroom. At the moment there are 1,600 legal aid firms; in future there will be 400. At Stobart, we wouldn’t use 10 trucks to deliver one product”.

As my noble Friend concluded, the problem with that is that criminal law is not a unit and justice is not a product that can be delivered like a load of bricks. That is the contrast in terms of what we are facing. There is a real fear that many of our high street solicitors will be lost; many will go out of business. The firms with the most cut-throat prices and cut-throat tactics will be the most successful, but I believe that liberty should be in the hands of the best, not the cheapest.

I come now to the loss of specialisms.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Evennett]

And yet we are talking about a phenomenal amount of taxpayers’ money.

The Government’s latest reforms, published in the “Transforming Legal Aid” consultation in April this year, tackle the cost of criminal legal aid, as well as finding further savings from the civil legal aid scheme. In particular, the proposal to introduce price-competitive tendering into the market for criminal litigation services has attracted a number of comments, such as those made by my hon. Friend the Member for Ceredigion and others this afternoon. If our proposals are implemented, the number of contracts tendered by the Legal Aid Agency will reduce from about 1,600 to about 400.

For the record, I would like to dispel a few myths, which have been highlighted this afternoon, about the model on which we consulted. The 400 figure relates to the number of contracts the Legal Aid Agency would tender, not the number of firms in the market or the volume of work available. The proposals on which we consulted do not prescribe how many lawyers would be available or how those who have the contracts can divide the work allocated to them. The proposed model would result in a consolidation of the market, but that does not mean that smaller firms of solicitors will go out of business. Some may choose to join together to bid for contracts. Others may decide to act as agents.

[Nia Griffith]

rose—

[Mr Mark Williams]

rose—