Legal Aid Reform

Sadiq Khan Excerpts

Thursday 27th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Jane Ellison]

I hope it is possible not to do so, for the reason I have just explained. There is also a short, but important, debate to follow.

[Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

If it helps, may I say that as the Justice Secretary is running scared and is not here today, and as the Government are failing to allow a vote on this issue, the Opposition will use some of the limited parliamentary time available to us to hold an Opposition day debate on it?

--- Later in debate ---

[Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

I congratulate the Backbench Business Committee on holding this debate.

The Justice Secretary may be a rising star in the Conservative party, but this policy and his non-appearance this afternoon are misjudgments. More than 30 Members of Parliament have applied to speak on a Thursday when there is a one-line Whip and more than 98,000 people have signed a petition expressing concern about the proposals.

I have only 10 minutes to address the various points that have been made, so I will rush through the most pressing of them. First, I will make the position of the Opposition clear. We support efforts to find savings across the justice system. We support making those who can afford to pay their legal fees do so and restricting legal aid to those who are most in need. We support using the frozen assets of criminals to fund their legal costs. We would support moves to address the problem of very high-cost cases. We would support a root-and-branch review of our criminal justice system to cut out the waste and inefficiency that anyone who works in the sector or has used it knows is rampant.

We do not support the Government’s proposals to place the quantity of cases processed ahead of the quality of legal provision and to remove choice from defendants. We believe that those proposals could lead to more miscarriages of justice. We do not support legal aid being run by the same global corporations that run prisons, probation services, courts and tagging. I should say that those are the proposals not just of the Justice Secretary or the Conservative party, but of the Government, including the Liberal Democrats and Lord McNally.

I pay tribute to all 32 Members who have contributed to today’s debate. I agree with much that has been said and look forward to the Minister’s response. Will he clarify whether the changes will require primary legislation and when parliamentarians will have a chance to vote on the proposals? My right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) spoke about dividing the House this afternoon. I tell him that although we have a limited number of Opposition days, in the light of the Government’s failure to move on this issue, it will be a priority for us. We will have a debate on a motion that divides the House because of the issues that have been raised this afternoon.

The Government’s latest proposals on legal aid are this Parliament’s second attack on access to justice. Social welfare legal aid has been decimated. We were accused of scaremongering during the passage of those proposals. However, law centres have closed—we hear today that the law centre in Birmingham will be closed—leaving the most vulnerable without recourse when they suffer wrong decisions by the Government and other organs of the state. In the recent past, more than 600,000 people have been denied access to advice in areas such as social welfare, debt, employment and housing law. There has been a 30% fall in the providers of civil legal aid and a 12% fall in the providers of criminal legal aid. None of those providers was a fat cat or ambulance chaser.

It is disappointing that the Justice Secretary is not here. If he was, he would have heard 30 mini tutorials on our legal system. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) would know all about that. Fundamental to our legal system is a presumption of innocence. A decision on guilt is taken by a court of law only after the evidence for and against a prosecution is presented and cross-examined in an open and transparent manner. Due process needs to happen. After all, removing an individual’s liberty is one of the most important powers in the gift of the state. Properly administered legal aid means that all individuals charged with a criminal offence have legal representation, not just those who can afford it, and ensures that our country’s precious rule of law applies to everybody. Legal aid helps those who are wrongly accused to maintain their innocence, and ensures that the state proves, beyond reasonable doubt, the case against a defendant. Please note that I use the word defendant, not criminal. I do not, unlike others, make sweeping generalisations that all those who receive legal aid are guilty criminals. The last time I checked, we still had a presumption of innocence in this country.

Many miscarriages of justice have happened because of an absence of proper representation for defendants: the Birmingham Six, the Guildford Four, the Maguire Seven and others. Because of legal aid, victims have confidence that genuine perpetrators of crime are prosecuted and punished. Victims of crime want certainty that the true perpetrator has been found guilty. They do not want the wrong person pleading guilty or being found guilty, and they certainly do not want the guilty walking the streets. Legal representation for defendants is crucial in minimising miscarriages of justice. These proposals introduce perverse incentives that could unbalance the criminal justice system, with representatives being paid the same whether someone pleads guilty or stands trial.

The Justice Secretary may not have turned up this afternoon, but he has sought to portray legal aid solicitors and junior barristers as fat cats. He knows that the profession has a public relations problem, and he has sought to exploit that in the media to further his own political aims. That is all a tough veneer that masks the real impact of his proposals. Local providers, often high street firms that know their local authorities, courts, police and probation, will be replaced by big corporations, maybe even the same ones that run prisons, probation and tagging—conflicts of interest at every turn. Strangely for a party that claims to be pro-enterprise and pro the high street, this will sweep away hundreds of small and medium-sized enterprises. High street firms will go under, an unintended consequence that will have an impact on the diversity of the judiciary.

The driver of the new contracts is how many cases can be done at the lowest cost per unit, not the quality of the legal representation provided. Why else propose to pay the same fee regardless of whether there is a guilty or not guilty plea? It is as if Ministers do not know the substantial difference in work load between the two pleas. In an era when so much in the public sector is about choice, the opposite will happen in legal aid. People will get what they are given, whether it is rubbish or good. The state will prosecute people and decide who defends them. The Justice Secretary would not accept a special adviser—also paid for by the taxpayer —or the external legal advice relied on by his Department, to be imposed on him. Nor would he accept where his children go to school being decided by someone else. Why then should someone who is facing serious allegations, but is presumed innocent, have no choice in their solicitor?

Lawyers who have the confidence of defendants are more able to give robust advice, for example for a defendant to plead guilty when the evidence determines that that is the best course of action. A lawyer who has acted in previous cases will know about a client’s learning difficulties, language and other problems that may be relevant to their current case, leading to a more efficient legal system that saves money.

Let me be clear and save the Minister’s time. He talked about Labour wanting to spend more, but we would make savings to the legal aid budget. We did so in government, as many legal aid lawyers keep reminding me. Despite what the Government claim, our legal aid budget was not increasing:

“The Government’s legal aid bill increased very substantially in real terms between around 1965 and 2000, but it has been cut since then”.

Those are not my words, but those of the President of the Supreme Court, Lord Neuberger, last week. The hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes) also talked about cost pressures on solicitors as a result of Labour proposals. However, they did not lead to defendants being denied choice. In government, we did look at a version of price competitive tendering. We looked and we considered, but we recognised that it was fraught with danger and thought better of it. Back in 2009, the current Attorney-General, the then shadow Justice Secretary, supported that decision. He actually committed the Conservatives to suspending the scheme, claiming:

“We really should be concerned about the lasting damage that could be done if we’ve got this wrong”.

He said:

“It could permanently damage the provision of criminal legal aid.”

He knew that the proposals could mean a generation of lawyers leaving the profession and that once they are gone, they are gone. I see from recent press reports that he is unhappy at current plans, which are even worse than the ones he opposed when in opposition.

I note from the look on your face, Mr Deputy Speaker, that—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

It is 4 o’clock and we need to hear from the Minister.

[Sadiq Khan]

Notwithstanding your generosity in allowing the debate to carry on, Mr Deputy Speaker, time means that you have cut my comments short. I understand that, but may I say that it is unacceptable for the Government to be railroading these plans through, with no pilots, no proper consultation and no working with key stakeholders to see whether savings could be made in a less oppressive way? We oppose the current plans, but we are happy to work with the Government, with or without the Justice Secretary, to see whether we can make savings that are less unjust.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Jeremy Wright)]

May I start, as others have, by declaring an interest, as a non-practising barrister? I practised in the field of criminal law and a great deal of what I did was legal aid work.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather) and the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) on securing this debate, which has been a very good, and understandably passionate, one. Having listened to a good deal of mock outrage from Opposition Members about the absence of the Secretary of State and their being stuck with me—I am trying not to take it personally—it is worth my reminding them of two previous occasions when we have discussed matters of great importance in the context of justice policy. The last statement in this House on a justice matter was about the rehabilitation reforms. It was a statement that Opposition Members had called for repeatedly, but the shadow Secretary of State was not here for it. Neither was he here the last time we had questions on justice matters, when we covered a range of important issues, including legal aid. I am sure we would not want to read too much into that, just as I am sure Opposition Members would not want to read too much into the Secretary of State’s absence today. As hon. Members have said, he will be appearing before the Justice Committee next week to discuss this very matter.

[Sadiq Khan]

Why does the Minister not just share with us where the Secretary of State is?

[Jeremy Wright]

I note that the right hon. Gentleman did not take the opportunity to share where he was the last two times, but I suggest that we might want to move on.

This is an important debate, as hon. Members from all parts of the House have said. Before I try to respond to a number of the specific points made—the House will understand that the time constraints we face mean that I will not be able to respond to everything, and I apologise for that in advance—let me say something about the context of these reforms.

It is right to say that the previous round of legal aid reforms, culminating in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, will have already removed about £320 million from the legal aid budget by 2014-15, but those proposals were primarily focused on civil legal aid scope and eligibility. Alongside those changes, we have made sweeping reforms to the central administration of the legal aid system. We have strengthened accountability and introduced a more rigorous approach to financial management by creating the Legal Aid Agency. But the successful delivery of that programme has not eliminated the need for reform. In order to meet the ongoing financial challenges facing the justice system, which many who have spoken have recognised, the Government have had to look again at the cost of civil legal aid, as well as turning their attention to arguably the most difficult part of the legal aid reform agenda: the reform of criminal legal aid.