Oral Answers to Questions

Teresa Pearce Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Virendra Sharma (Ealing, Southall) (Lab)]

3. What steps he is taking to increase access to the criminal justice system.

[Teresa Pearce (Erith and Thamesmead) (Lab)]

7. What steps he is taking to increase access to the criminal justice system.

[Janet Daby (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

20. What steps he is taking to increase access to the criminal justice system.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lucy Frazer]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very important point, because those who work within the criminal justice system play a vital part in upholding justice. That is why, over the course of last year, we have consulted the professions and put a further £23 million into the advocates’ graduated fee scheme. It is also why we have recently announced that we will be doing a holistic review of criminal legal aid with regard to the professions, looking overall at a whole range of issues across the Bar and across the duty solicitor schemes. That review has already started.

[Teresa Pearce]

I thank the Minister for that reply, but there is a crisis in legal aid and in legal representation. The Law Society data says that within five to 10 years there will be insufficient criminal duty solicitors in many regions. She has mentioned the review and mentioned more money, but what specific steps will she take to make sure that people have their right to be represented while being interviewed by the police?

[Lucy Frazer]

Doing a review and putting in £23 million are specific steps to ensure that we get better justice. I am very grateful to the Law Society, which the hon. Lady and the hon. Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma) mentioned, because it is actively engaged in our review, as are the Bar Council and the Criminal Bar Association.

Future of Legal Aid

Teresa Pearce Excerpts

Thursday 1st November 2018 Westminster Hall

[Andy Slaughter]

My hon. Friend raises that issue from a position of knowledge, as she used to serve on the magistrates bench. There is a deskilling of the professions because of the decline in the number of practitioners who can secure funds. Although informal and non-legal advice, such as that from McKenzie friends, can play its part, too often it is stepping in where proper professional legal advice is needed and, as my hon. Friend has said, it is too often being done by people who are, effectively, rogues.

It becomes wearing to hear Minister after Minister repeat the mantra that legal aid is an important part of our legal system and that all individuals must have access to justice, without ensuring that the resources are there to allow that to happen. That is a disconnect. Although I welcome the remit and engagement of the LASPO review, the feedback from those who have met the Department suggests that little action will follow the warm words we have heard. More specifically, this week’s Budget confirmed that the Department will continue to make hundreds of millions of pounds of cuts over the next five years, some of which will inevitably come from the legal aid budget. The Minister must realise that that is unsustainable and incompatible with her stated support for legal aid.

Let me try to make it easy for the Minister to say yes. In garnering public support for this debate, More United specified three asks to put to the Government to deal with some of the worst consequences of LASPO, which were: access to early advice, access to welfare advice and simpler criteria for obtaining legal aid.

Those will not be unfamiliar requests to the Minister, but they encapsulate solutions to three major and predicted calamities of LASPO. First, cutting early advice means problems fail to get sorted while they are small and manageable, with worse consequences to the individual and the state down the line. Secondly, taking welfare advice out of scope leaves those people who need help most struggling. Thirdly, restrictive and complex eligibility criteria have become an effective way of stopping even those of very limited means getting access to what legal aid is still available.

[Teresa Pearce (Erith and Thamesmead) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is being extremely generous in giving way. During the passage of the Bill, the Government said that they believed that withdrawing legal aid for family matters would increase mediation, but research shows a 56% decrease in mediation. The Law Society says that early advice from a solicitor was a significant source of referrals to mediation in family matters. I agree with that, and I wonder if my hon. Friend does too.

[Andy Slaughter]

Yes. I will come on to mediation. My hon. Friend highlights two points: first, the lack of early advice and its consequences, and secondly, that the so-called alternatives put in place by the Government have failed, so we are left with effectively no safety net.

Oral Answers to Questions

Teresa Pearce Excerpts

Tuesday 17th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Kenneth Clarke]

As I explained earlier, I feel that concern strongly. The matter does not so much require legislation as sensible organisation, change in the structure of Prison Industries, and more leeway for governors to arrange work when there is a sensible opportunity to do so. A significant change in the culture of parts of the Prison Service would add to the good work that goes on at the moment, which is quite rare and is scattered across the prison estate. I agree with my hon. Friend that that is an important aim.

[Teresa Pearce (Erith and Thamesmead) (Lab)]

T6. Earlier this month, the foetal anti-convulsant litigation against Sanofi Aventis was discontinued after six years’ preparation. The claimants and their families have been denied their day in court because legal aid funding was withdrawn at the last moment. Will the Minister say what funding arrangements will be available for multi-party actions in future so that such families are not denied access to justice?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Jonathan Djanogly)]

The funding of clinical negligence cases in this country is about 50:50 between legal aid and conditional fee arrangements—in other words, private funding. We believe that when people have the opportunity of private funding, they should take that option. In looking at our proposals for reviewing privately funded litigation, we are taking clinical negligence cases on board and are moulding our proposals to help those who want to take such cases.