Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Yvonne Fovargue Excerpts

Wednesday 29th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Yvonne Fovargue (Makerfield) (Lab)]

As I am the chair of the all-party group on legal aid, it will come as no surprise that I wish to speak today mostly about the proposals to reform legal aid. However, I first wish to take issue with the attempt by the Government to legitimise the cuts in legal aid by insisting that England and Wales have by far the most expensive legal aid system in the world. The one piece of research that has been done on this is on the Ministry of Justice website and it says that it does not compare like with like. It is an interesting piece of research and I commend it to hon. Members.

Legal aid is the smallest proportion of the justice budget and it is the hardest hit. More than 5,000 individuals and groups responded to the consultation and 90% said, “Do not take social welfare law out of scope.” I stress that these were not fat cat lawyers, worried about their income, but individuals and organisations who see the effect that the proposals will have on their most needy and vulnerable clients—those who are least able to defend themselves.

[Stephen Lloyd (Eastbourne) (LD)]

Does the hon. Lady agree that the reforms will be a tragedy for the citizens advice bureaux, which have a tremendous reputation for serving those very disadvantaged individuals who will lose out as a result of these cuts in legal aid?

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[Yvonne Fovargue]

I accept that point and I will address the effect on citizens advice bureaux and other advice agencies later in my speech.

The Government’s impact assessment acknowledges that the losers will be predominantly women, people from ethnic minority backgrounds and the ill and disabled—yet another example of the most vulnerable bearing the brunt of the cuts.

It is worth reminding the House why the scope of legal aid was extended to include social welfare law, and why advice agencies and not-for-profit advisers were able to enter the field. The Labour Government recognised that it was cost-effective to provide early intervention and advice and help with dealing with a cluster of problems. Dealing with problems at an early stage stopped people reaching crisis point and turning to other more expensive Government-funded services.

The Government recognised that advice agencies, such as the CAB, had expertise in this area and could provide an effective and a trusted delivery mechanism. Not all bureaux have contracts, but more than 200 do, and they have more than 1,500 outlets that provide advice. Throughout the country, they provide specialist services that are funded by the Legal Services Commission. Without this funding, the viability of all those outlets and their main bureaux is under threat coupled as these cuts are with cuts to local authority funding, loss of primary care trust funding and no certainty about the financial inclusion fund.

In 2010, 3,080 cases in my own borough were procured by the LSC. If these plans go through, there will be a 76% cut in those cases. Some 2,342 people will be denied access to justice. The total loss of funding in Wigan will be £428,000. Behind those figures are people, including the woman who attended my local CAB because she was being prosecuted for fraud by the Department for Work and Pensions. She was told that she owed £26,000, but after three appeals, it was found that she owed less than £300, due to departmental errors.

There was also the couple who had borrowed money to adapt their property for their disabled child. After her unexpected death, they could no longer maintain all the repayments due to the drop in their income, and they had the bailiffs at their door. Then there was the woman in the secure mental health unit who needed help after she had been refused disability living allowance and had had her jobseeker’s allowance suspended for not attending an interview. I could go on but each example demonstrates that it is the vulnerable who are losing out, and they are now losing those who are there to speak out for them.

The timing of such cuts, with the Welfare Reform Bill coming in in 2013, is absolutely appalling. People’s fundamental right to have a decent income and to live without fear of debt is being removed. The loss of legal aid in welfare law means that people are also losing the ability to hold Government Departments to account. The DWP already loses more than 60% of its cases, and those cases will now no longer be challenged by advice agencies.

Demand for debt advice is also going up, as rising prices, static wages and job losses mean that people can no longer afford to maintain payments. Tackling the issue when it reaches crisis point and people are in imminent danger of losing their home is not a sensible, fair or economic way in which to deal with the problem. Dealing with debt at an early stage ensures that priority debts are not ignored to pay the clamorous non-priority creditors and, most important of all, it takes away the extreme levels of stress and depression that any threat of losing a home or possession, imminent or not, causes to individuals. In 2009, the Legal Services Research Centre found that unresolved debt matters cost the public purse more than £1,000 on average. Legal aid for each debt cases costs £196. The figures speak for themselves.

I could go further but I would like the Minister to answer some questions. What is his Department doing to address the impact of the Government proposals on the advice sector? What assessment has he made of the availability of advice in 2013? What assessment has been made of the effect on the tribunals service of increasing numbers of people representing themselves? Finally, has any assessment been made of the cost to the public purse of not providing access to social welfare law under the legal aid scheme?