Legal Aid: Post-Implementation Review

Thangam Debbonaire Excerpts

Thursday 7th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gauke]

For rural areas as a whole, this review underlines the need to ensure that we are prepared to look at technology and innovation so that access to justice is greater and we have the ability to point people in the right direction. There is a real opportunity here, and it is important that we embrace it. The innovation fund of up to £5 million will encourage investment in this area so that we can find new and better ways of ensuring that, wherever a person is in the United Kingdom, they are able to access justice.

[Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)]

Although I welcome the inclusion of separated children in legal aid for immigration cases, the plan otherwise does little to deal with the many problems faced by people in the asylum and immigration system in getting good quality advice. Inadequate legal advice has a damaging impact on people with a right to sanctuary, but no advice is worse, so will the Lord Chancellor please reconsider the decision to keep legal aid for refugee family reunion out of the scope of civil legal aid?

[Mr Gauke]

As I have said, the change that we have announced today in the context of unaccompanied minors is an important step. I am grateful to the hon. Lady for welcoming that. We do spend money on the legal aid system—I think it is something like £40 million on immigration and asylum—and it is important that we provide support in this area. There is a wider point that must be accepted: there are limited resources available, and we need to ensure that they are targeted in the best way possible. It is right that we have announced changes today in the particular context of unaccompanied minors and immigration.