Legal Aid Reform

Rehman Chishti Excerpts

Thursday 3rd February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue) on introducing this debate. She spoke with enormous clarity and mapped out the ways in which the cuts in legal aid will have an impact on our constituents. I also congratulate the hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) who made many points with which I agree, including a warning to beware labelling all lawyers as fat cats. Legal aid lawyers work extremely hard for relatively modest remuneration, and we should remember that.

I do not wish to repeat the key points that these cuts represent a false economy; that there are real dangers in taking whole areas out of the scope of legal aid because so many cases are complex, and cases such as debt and housing run into each other and cannot be separated out; or that there are limits to the value of phone advice. These are very important points, but I will not dwell on them further.

I want to make three further points. First, if there was ever a time to be scaling back on legal aid, particularly in civil and social welfare law, this is not it. We are seeing massive upheavals in public service delivery: in education, to which I will return; in housing, through the proposals in the Localism Bill, which will introduce short-term tenancies; in welfare, with £18 billion being taken out of the welfare budget through the cuts in housing benefit; in disability benefits; and, as mentioned, in rising unemployment and the broader economic context.

[Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)]

Does the hon. Lady not accept that the current cost of legal aid is unsustainable? We are spending £38 per head of population on legal aid, whereas in Australia it is £9, and in France £3. These reforms are therefore essential to get our economy back on track.

[Ms Buck]

There are so many points with which to respond to that intervention. We cannot compare systems between countries. It is not helpful because the legal systems and the delivery of legal aid support are so different. The Labour Front-Bench team are willing to discuss the legal aid budget, particularly in some aspects of criminal legal aid. There are areas in which savings can be made, but I am particularly concerned about civil and social welfare law.

My second point, which was made strongly during an earlier Westminster Hall debate, concerns the impact of these cuts—given the speed and depth at which they are being made—on the legal aid firms, law centres, citizens advice bureaux and other advice agencies. In many cases, they draw on legal aid for part of their funding. The removal of legal aid funding is like a game of Jenga: we start pulling out the sticks and the whole edifice is in danger of collapse. I think we will see a massive, unplanned spate of service closures across the country, and we will not be able to control where they happen. There will be advice deserts, and many of our constituents will struggle as a consequence.

I will provide an example of what I am talking about. This reform is being delivered at the same time as cuts in local authority spending. The London grant scheme is being repatriated to the boroughs without ring-fencing, which means that advice services in London are at the whim of local boroughs that are themselves under pressure. Therefore, the grant funding that should complement the Legal Services Commission funding is unlikely to be there. That will clearly impact severely on citizens advice bureaux and law centres. As has been said, politicians will regret taking this decision. I am already seeing—I am sure that other hon. Members are seeing it too—people coming to me for what should be a legal advice and representation service that in many cases we are not qualified, and certainly not resourced, to provide. I predict with absolute certainty that our surgeries will be flooded with more and more desperate and angry people who cannot get the proper representation they should.

Finally, I want to touch on the disproportionate impact on women, children, people with disabilities and people from black and minority communities. We know from the scope of the areas affected that these cuts will fall most heavily on them. We have heard about family law and asylum-seeking communities, particularly asylum-seeking children, who will be left at risk because of these cuts. However, I want to make a particular case for education and special educational needs. In my borough there is a particular problem of children without school places—350 were without a place before Christmas. Those children and their families need advice and representation, and the parents seeking to take action against their local authority for denying them a statement of special educational needs are a particularly vulnerable group. We know from the number of tribunals that succeed that 82% of parents’ appeals that reach tribunal are upheld. The removal of assistance from those parents, many of whom simply do not have the skills or resources to make their own case, will mean that their children will not get the education to which they are entitled.

I urge the Minister to rethink many aspects of the proposals, in particular the narrowness of the scope that is being applied to legal aid cases and the arbitrary way in which the services are being withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Bradshaw]

My right hon. Friend is exactly right. Indeed, I was about to make the point—gently, I hope—to the hon. Members for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) and for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) that it is not good enough for Government Members to excuse every cut that this Government are implementing by talking about the need for fiscal consolidation. There is a clear choice to be made about the speed and degree of fiscal consolidation, and there is growing evidence that the speed and degree of fiscal consolidation being pursued by this Government is not only damaging important services such as the CAB, but damaging our economic recovery. All hon. Members need to do—

[Rehman Chishti]

rose—

[Mr Bradshaw]

No, sit down.

All hon. Members need to do is look across the Atlantic at the example of the United States under Barack Obama, who is pursuing a Keynesian economic policy, like the one that we advocate, where growth was 3.5% in the last quarter, as opposed to a 0.5% contraction here. So please, let us have no more lectures from Government Members about there being no alternative to these savage cuts.

For all the Government’s rhetoric about the big society, the CAB is the big society in action. It is staffed mainly by volunteers, helping everyone, and in particular the vulnerable, and saves the state millions of pounds in the process by ensuring that people in difficulty do not fall into crisis, the fallout from which the state then has to pick up. The Government’s proposed changes to legal aid and their impact on the work of CABs such as mine in Exeter will have a deeply damaging impact on the fabric of our communities and will cost us all far more in the long term. I therefore urge the Government to think again about this short-sighted and false economy.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

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

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue) on bringing forward this important topic for debate. For as long as I have worked in the community, legally aided lawyers and law centres have often been at the forefront of the fight for justice for marginalised groups who could not otherwise have made their voices heard. Those were often groups of people who were not necessarily getting help from their trade union, their councillors or their MP, because lawyers can often pinpoint issues, because of the cases coming to them, before they come to the attention of politicians. Because I know that so many legally aided lawyers and practitioners who work in citizens advice bureaux and law centres are often extraordinarily dedicated, I deprecate the tendency of Governments of all colours—my Government were just as bad—to talk about legal aid just in terms of the money going to lawyers. On the tendency to slide into talking about fat cat lawyers, I can say with confidence that, since the Carter reforms, nobody has made a fortune in legal aid law practice. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] I can hear hon. Members from both sides supporting me on that point.

[Rehman Chishti]

Prior to becoming a Member, I was a criminal barrister for a number of years, and, to confirm what the hon. Lady says, I must say that as a barrister at Crown court one would earn £40 for a mention and could be there all day. The idea that barristers or lawyers are fat cats is completely wrong, and I fully support what she says.

[Ms Abbott]

But sadly, when Governments of all colours consider legal aid, they seem to zero in on the lawyers and the money that they make, rather than the millions of people whom they help.

I repeat what Opposition Members have said about the potential of the reforms to undermine totally the law centre movement. Nobody who has seen people queuing outside their law centre for help could support any action by any Government which undermined that movement. I must add, however, that the legal aid reforms will also undermine the practice of many high street solicitors, who are often close to and help their community. A disproportionate number of them are black and minority ethnic solicitors, and I do not believe that the Government have fully considered how the reforms will undermine the structure for providing the legal advice, help and support on which communities rely.

Earlier, a Member said that one reason why people have recourse to lawyers is the inefficiency of the Department for Work and Pensions, to which I should add the inefficiencies of local councils and the immigration service and the inefficiencies and, sometimes, unfairness of education authorities. But what are we to do? We acknowledge the systemic inefficiencies in many parts of the public sector, but are we going to leave tens of thousands of people to suffer injustice and unfairness in order to save money in the short term on the legal aid budget?

I also want to address the limits of phone advice. Talking down a phone might be all well and good for people in wealthier areas, but in the inner city many people do not have English as their first language, and if English is their first language they might be inarticulate, afraid and inhibited. In 20 years as a Member, I have had to advise hundreds of thousands of people. Often, they come in and mumble about some issue or other, and only after carefully questioning them, looking them in the eye and showing them my sympathy do they tell me their real problem. If we submit such people to talking down a phone, we will find that their issues are completely lost. They will put the phone down, never having explained what they really wanted to talk about.