Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Yasmin Qureshi Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd November 2011 Commons Chamber

Yes, legal aid is expensive. When it was introduced in the 1940s by the very progressive Labour Government, it was seen as part of the welfare state. The welfare state included social security, housing, health, unemployment benefits and a right to access to justice. I honestly believe that the trend of cuts in legal aid means that universal access to justice is slowly disappearing before our very eyes, and that is wrong.

[Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)]

I support everything that my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) said from the Front Bench about the cuts in welfare rights, and I also agree with the comments by my right hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Joan Ruddock) and my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn). I shall not reiterate everything that they said as time is short, but I want to address clause 12 and ask the Minister to remove it from the Bill.

Before I go into the reasoning behind that request, I have a general caveat. What I am about to say is not a criticism of police officers. In all professions and walks of life there are people who do not do their jobs properly and have mala fide motives. Section 52 of PACE, which was introduced in 1984 by a Conservative Government, gave people arrested at a police station the right to see a solicitor of their choosing. As hon. Members may remember, that particular piece of legislation came about because of several riots over the sus laws, and Lord Scarman was asked by the then Government to investigate the cause of those riots.

In those days, under the old sus laws, the police could stop anyone walking on the street without any justification and without having to show reasonable cause. Inevitably, a lot of the people stopped were young men of Afro-Caribbean origin in London and young men from working-class backgrounds in the rest of the country. As a result of Lord Scarman’s inquiry and investigation, the then Conservative Government passed that piece of legislation, which, generally, was a good one that brought us up to date with many other countries with similar economies to ours and with what we could call western democratic institutions. We would be hard-pressed to find, in any of those countries, a defendant at a police station being denied the right to free legal advice. Taking away that right will almost put us back three centuries. It is not compatible with modern, 21st-century Britain and its place in the world.

We talk about saving money, but more money is saved when people are advised properly at a police station. I agree with the hon. Member for Dewsbury (Simon Reevell) and my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner). From the prosecution and defence perspective, they talked about how such advice should be allowed. As someone who has both prosecuted and defended for the past 20-odd years, I think that access to legal representation at a police station is not only the fair, right and proper thing for a civilised society, such as ours, to do, but in the long term it saves money. It avoids unnecessary not-guilty pleas and saves unnecessary time going to court and prosecuting people. If people are spoken to by a solicitor, often—in most cases, I would say—solicitors advise their clients correctly. In my experience, if there is evidence against clients, the solicitors and lawyers tend to advise people to plead guilty. This proposal, therefore, will not save money, but waste more money. If the argument is about economy, I would have to point out that it is a false economy.

I shall give an example involving the Crown Prosecution Service. Following the Narey review, which looked into why so many cases going to court were leading to acquittals, Crown prosecutors started going into police stations, looking at cases and working with the police in order to speed up the criminal process. As a result of that direct input by lawyers at the beginning of the criminal prosecution system, the number of cases going for not-guilty pleas has been reduced and many more people now plead guilty.

I also want to mention the disclosure system, which was introduced under a fantastic piece of legislation brought in, again, by a Conservative Government—the Criminal Procedure and Investigations Act 1996. Prior to that, we had a system under which some police officers and police forces withheld material evidence in criminal cases, leading to many miscarriages of justice. The new disclosure regime came into being to deal with that and, as a result, everything now has to be disclosed.

Those were Conservative Government policies, which is why I am so surprised that the Government have proposed clause 12. It will not save any money, but there is a more fundamental point. The worst thing that a person can face is being arrested, detained, taken to a police station—often a very hostile environment—and having no one to speak to who understands the procedures. This proposal will remove a fundamental right.

Despite our financial difficulties, we are still a rich nation in comparison with the rest of the world. When I worked for the United Nations Mission in Kosovo, I helped to deal with criminal justice issues, and one of the first things we did when we got the system up and running was to draft—I was involved in it—the regulation of access to a lawyer for a person arrested by the police. That was 11 years ago in a country that had suffered 10 or 12 years of civil unrest. Its institutions were not working properly and it was financially not very solvent, but even there, 11 years ago, this particular provision was brought in because it was recognised that a person who is arrested and taken to a police station must have independent legal advice.

[Mr Ward]

Does the hon. Lady not think it quite telling that although we had intervention after intervention from those on the Government Benches last night when it was argued that existing legislation allowed action to be taken against squatters, we have had no interventions today to explain why we are wrong about clause 12 or new clause 17, which stands in the name of the hon. Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue)?

[Yasmin Qureshi]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that observation, and I agree with him.

I shall conclude my remarks, because I know that we want to get on to the next piece of business. My fundamental plea is this: please do not take away the right to legal advice at a police station.

[Kate Green]

I want to ask the Minister two questions about social welfare law. I also feel obliged, even at this late stage in the debate, to speak briefly to the three amendments standing in my name—amendments 69, 70 and 71—which have not yet been debated.

My first question for the Minister follows the sensible remarks of the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Stephen Lloyd) earlier about how the Government are making significant legislative changes to a number of areas in social welfare law. They include some that he mentioned, such as the introduction of the universal credit and the changes to disability living allowance. I would add to that the substantial changes to housing, child maintenance and the immigration system, where I can already report a shortage of supply in my constituency when it comes to accessing good advice. If legal aid is not to be available to take people through what will be a period of incredible complexity and confusion, what discussions has the Minister had with ministerial colleagues in other Departments to ensure adequate provision and funding for people to receive advice, at least in this transitional period? Failing to put that funding in place will cost the Government more rather than less.

My second question for the Minister relates to the additional £20 million of funding that has been made available to support advice agencies—or really, to cope with the loss of legal aid coverage in certain categories of law. That is particularly important in my constituency, because Trafford law centre stands to lose almost all its funding, given that it is currently funded by an immigration contract and an employment contract, both of which will go. It also receives Equality and Human Rights Commission funding, which is due to end, with a small and diminishing proportion of its funding coming from the local authority. Can the Minister tell us a bit more about the £20 million fund, which my law centre is understandably interested in, but which it rather suspects has already been earmarked to support agencies elsewhere? Is it a one-off fund or will it be available in future years? What is the process for deciding how the money will be disbursed?

Finally, my amendments 69, 70 and 71 deal with the transfer of Legal Services Commission staff to the civil service, which the Minister spoke about in his opening remarks this afternoon. My understanding is that the Bill is proceeding on the assumption that TUPE will not apply to the transfer. Of course, only the courts can finally determine whether that is the case, but in any event, the Bill should proceed on the basis that transferring employees will have at least the same protection that would apply if TUPE applied. In any event, what should apply is the Cabinet Office statement of practice on staff transfers in the public sector, paragraph 19 of which says that

“transfers at the instigation and under the control of Central Government will usually be effected through legislation,”—

as is true in this case—

“in particular those involving Officeholders. Provision can then be made for staff to transfer on TUPE terms irrespective of whether the transfer is excluded from the scope of the Directive implemented by TUPE. Departments must therefore ensure that legislation effecting transfers of functions between public sector bodies makes provision for staff to transfer and on a basis that follows the principles of TUPE along with appropriate arrangements to protect occupational pension, redundancy and severance terms.”

I was grateful for the assurances that the Minister offered this afternoon on some of those points, and I understand that transferring employees will be offered membership of the premium section of the principal civil service pension scheme. I accept that that is at least as favourable as the Legal Services Commission’s own pension arrangements. The terms on which members of the LSC scheme can transfer their accrued rights to the civil service pension scheme will no doubt be set out in the transfer scheme contemplated in schedule 4. Will the Minister confirm that my understanding of the position is correct?