Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Debate between Yasmin Qureshi and Elfyn Llwyd

Monday 31st October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Yasmin Qureshi]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the criminal courts accepted many years ago that in criminal cases defendants could not cross-examine victims on matters such as sexual offences? To take away that right in the civil courts, where people are facing equally harrowing situations, is completely wrong and would be at variance with the criminal courts.

[Mr Llwyd]

Yes, and I wonder about the quality of the evidence coming out of that flawed process.

I was assisted in drafting amendment 93 by the Bar Council, which has said that the effect of preventing such distressing and costly consequences is worth looking into urgently. Amendments 94 to 102 relate to proceedings involving children’s welfare. As the Bar Council has said:

“It is not understood why, under Schedule 1, the provision of legal aid is limited to proceedings relating to the children, and not the associated financial remedy proceedings. The child’s economic welfare is important in abuse cases; particularly given the higher incidence of abuse in low-income households.”

Amendments 96, 97 and 98

“would have the effect of bringing within scope…proceedings leading to an order under the Children Act 1989 section 37…and…all subsequent steps in family proceedings once a section 37 order has been made. They would also ensure…that…the person against whom allegations of abuse are made is within scope.”

Amendments 94 and 95 are consequential amendments.

The Minister said in Committee that cases involving financial provision are not a priority for legal aid. I firmly believe that all private family cases should be retained within the scope of legal aid. It is difficult to overestimate the damaging effects on children caught up in untidy, bitter and lengthy disputes. Protecting the interests of children is at the heart of amendments 99 to 102. As the Bar Council has said:

“Paragraph 13 provides for the provision of legal aid for the child parties in cases which come under subsection (1)(a)-(e), but not for the adult parties,”

which, as I have said, will

“result in unrepresented adults being forced to cross-examine expert witnesses and, in many instances, the child concerned.”

Amendments 99 to 102 would have the effect of

“bringing within scope the provision of legal aid for adult parties in such cases.”

I want to talk briefly about amendment 83, my final amendment, which deals with judicial review. I thank the Immigration Law Practitioners Association for its help in briefing me on this amendment. We know that immigration-specific exclusions have been made. In their Green Paper, the Government set out a robust defence of judicial review and the need for retaining legal aid in such cases, saying:

“In our view, proceedings where the litigant is seeking to hold the state to account by judicial review are important, because these cases are the means by which individual citizens can seek to check the exercise of executive power by appeal to the judiciary. These proceedings therefore represent a crucial way of ensuring that state power is exercised responsibly.”

None the less, the Government have compromised their position in immigration cases. My amendment 83 seeks to rectify that anomaly. In explaining why immigration cases are to be exempted from legal aid for judicial review claims, the Government say that they have drawn on the response to the Green Paper by the senior judiciary, who raised concerns about unmeritorious judicial reviews, but in so doing the Government have ignored three key aspects of the judiciary’s proposals.

First, the judiciary’s proposals were advanced only on the basis that

“careful further consideration would need to be given”

before the proposals that the Minister is now pushing could be taken up. However, no consultation has been held on those proposals. What is more, the judiciary also advanced their proposals on the basis that, in principle, legal aid should be available for appeals before the first-tier tribunal. However, the Bill removes legal aid in such non-asylum appeals. Finally, the proposals were advanced on the basis that legal aid should not generally be excluded, but instead be available where a positive decision was made in favour of granting legal aid in any individual case—for example, because the judge decided that it had merit. However, the Bill removes legal aid for such immigration cases, regardless of the merit of any individual case. All in all, this is a sorry state of affairs.

The Government seek to justify the new exclusions for judicial review in immigration cases by stating that public funding is not merited in cases that have

“already had…one full oral hearing,”

yet the provisions exclude legal aid even where there has been no oral hearing. The Government have effectively reversed their position that holding the state to account was of especial importance—hence the need to retain legal aid for judicial review. As a consequence, legal aid will not be available to hold the state to account at any stage, because immigration applications and appeals are also being removed from the scope of legal aid—a Catch-22 situation, or perhaps “Kafkaesque” would be a better description.

To remind ourselves, the changes will affect cases involving non-asylum claimants who face removal from the UK, and therefore from their families, homes and communities. Such claimants include trafficking victims receiving rehabilitative care and treatment; British children and spouses facing permanent separation from their parents or partners; children who have lived in the UK for many years—sometimes all their lives—facing removal to countries that they have never seen and do not know, and where they do not speak the language; adults who have lived in the UK for many years, and sometimes decades, facing removal to countries that they do not know; and victims of torture and other trauma who are no longer at risk of persecution in their home countries, but who are reliant on professional care and treatment.

The position now advanced by the Government is not supported by their stated principles or by the position advanced by the senior judiciary, and would leave a powerful agency of the state—the UK Border Agency—free from effective judicial oversight when exercising powers to remove people from their families, homes and communities, including where doing so will harm their welfare, health or life prospects. For those reasons, sub-paragraphs (5), (6) and (7) of paragraph 17 of schedule 1 have no place in any legislation with any regard for human rights or humanitarian issues.