Legal Aid: Post-Implementation Review

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Thursday 7th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

I thank the Secretary of State for the advance copy of the report. It is regrettable that journalists were briefed on the report’s contents this morning, with new articles appearing on websites before this statement and before the report was available to me.

The Government announced their LASPO review more than two years ago, and it has since been delayed time and again, which is simply unacceptable given the human costs and suffering caused by legal aid cuts. The question is whether this report has been worth the wait. Sadly, the answer from the Opposition has to be a clear no. It has been a wasted two years.

Some of the review’s conclusions call for more reviews. Does the Secretary of State seriously think that the measures outlined today will undo the damage done by his predecessors? LASPO set out to make savings of £410 million and, according to the Department’s figures, it has saved almost £200 million more than that since April 2013. Does he regret that his Department has cut even more than planned? Will he explain why it has happened? Will he confirm that the Government are going to provide just £8 million in extra legal aid investment?

Beyond the budget figures is the very real human cost behind these cuts. In the last few weeks alone, there have been yet more shocking press reports on the social damage they have caused. The number of people who have been refused legal aid to secure court orders against abusive ex-partners is at a five-year high. The number of parents forced to represent themselves in child custody battles has doubled in six years, and new analysis shows that up to 1 million people live in areas with no legal aid provision for housing. How will this report help people in such situations? Can the Secretary of State give more detail about how this review will offer legal help to those faced with a rogue landlord, a difficult family break-up or the Prime Minister’s hostile environment?

Legal advice on welfare benefits cases has been cut by an eye-watering 89%. The UN special rapporteur labelled the legal aid cuts as a denial of those people’s human right to a remedy. Does the Secretary of State believe that the very limited pilot outlined today for just one area of social welfare law will do anything substantial to reduce this inhumane suffering? Does he really think that a little investment in Skype services is the way to restore access to justice?

From the outset, the Opposition have sought to make reasonable demands of the Government’s review. Labour initiated the extensive Bach review to inform how legal aid will be turned around under a future Labour Government. We accept that this Government will not deliver the widespread change recommended by the Bach review, so we called for emergency measures to ameliorate the worst effects of legal aid cuts through the restoration of early legal advice. The Government should accept that there are strong arguments for early legal help, so why does the Secretary of State not have the political will properly to address it? With increasing evidence that cuts to legal aid have been a false economy, can he confirm whether he has commissioned any independent economist to look at the savings that could be made through early legal advice? If not, why not?

This year marks the 70th anniversary of the Legal Aid and Advice Act 1949, introduced by that great Labour Government. Access to health and education is rightly recognised as the right of every single citizen. Access to justice should be recognised in the same way but today we see, with this delayed review, yet again how the Conservatives are not the party to restore to legal aid the respect it deserves.

[Mr Gauke]

I hope it will be helpful to the House if I put this debate in a little context. A significant rise in the cost of legal aid took place over a number of years, a point recognised by the last Labour Government. If the hon. Gentleman wishes me to, I could give him a long list of quotations from Labour Ministers raising their concerns about the increase in the cost of legal aid. That is why Labour’s 2010 manifesto contained a commitment to cut the costs of legal aid, and I suspect it is the reason why in both 2015 and 2017 Labour gave no commitment to reverse those cuts. Therefore, there has been a consensus that we cannot return to what happened in the past. What is important is that we find a way in which limited resources are directed in the most effective and proportionate way, and that is what this review has been about.

The hon. Gentleman raises the issue of early intervention. The conclusion from our research is that the empirical evidence is not necessarily clear that early intervention will make savings, but there is a strong case for wanting to explore this further. That is why we are proceeding with pilots in the area of social welfare. It may be in the context of housing that we should look to proceed in this area to see whether there is a case that early intervention can make savings and we can build that case. That is precisely what I want to do.

There will continue to be areas of disagreement with the hon. Gentleman. I am sorry that he has not been more welcoming of what has been put before the House, because this is a constructive attempt to address this issue, in an environment where there are not unlimited resources. I point the House to the comments made by the Law Society this morning about how there is much to be welcomed in what we have announced.