Coroners and Justice Bill

I very much appreciate the sentiment behind Amendment 101, which was so ably spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford. As the Minister with responsibility for legal aid in the Ministry of Justice, I am certainly aware of the need constantly to keep legal aid and its application to inquests under ongoing review. However, I have to say straightaway that I believe that that matter can be best dealt with outside legislation and is not appropriate to be in the Bill. I am much less sympathetic to Amendment 25, which would require the Secretary of State to provide non-means-tested legal aid to all bereaved families at inquests. I ask noble Lords to forgive me for being realistic. I apologise if the noble Lord thought I was laughing at a serious moment. I certainly was not. But I am afraid that I was amused by the argument that £127 million went from the civil legal aid budget in one year and that therefore there was a gap. Probably that money went straight to criminal legal aid, which is the part of the legal aid fund that seems to be able to grab anything it really wants because of the ECHR requirements. Of course, that is a field of the law in which the noble Lord practises so successfully. The idea that there is a gap of £120 million in the legal aid fund that can be just moved from one quarter to another is completely unrealistic. I know that many noble Lords here today are interested in the legal aid situation. Our legal aid spend remains about £2 billion a year, which is extremely high by international standards. It has gone up from £1.5 billion in 1997-98 to marginally more than £2 billion now. Much of that increase has been on criminal legal aid, with some on family legal aid. We split our legal aid spend into about £1.1 billion for criminal legal aid and the balance of £900 million for civil and family legal aid. As a consequence, we help more than 2 million people each year to deal with their problems. But this budget will not go up. It will not go up under this Government in the next few years and I very much doubt that it will go up under any other Government who may take our place. I am sorry to lay it so frankly on the table. These are issues that I have to deal with in deciding where we spend this large, but restricted, amount of money; I am privileged to be allowed to do so. We need to be realistic. Providing legal aid to bereaved families at all inquests, which is what Amendment 25 asks for, we estimate—it is just an estimate and could be out—would cost in the order of £240 million per year. That is more than 12 per cent of the total legal aid budget. No Government could make that kind of offer, much as they would like to. Therefore, I have to make it clear that that amendment is not acceptable. The noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, asked me to explain where legal aid in the coroner field is available and I shall do my best to do so. Some of the background to the legal aid system relating to coroners is as follows. We have said it before: coroners preside over inquests and are responsible for ensuring that all interested parties are properly heard. They have a duty to protect and look after the interests of those who are not legally represented. No witness or interested person to the inquest is expected to present complex legal arguments. Most inquests do not need representation of any kind because by their nature they are inquisitorial and not adversarial. That is one reason why we have put an appeals system in this Bill. If interested persons feel that they have not been properly served by the investigation and inquest process, they may appeal to the Chief Coroner any of the decisions set out in Clause 32. As the appeals process is intended to be accessible and straightforward, and largely based on written representations, we are also of the view that interested persons will not require legal aid routinely to benefit from it. But of course there are certain cases where bereaved people require representation and get it. Funding is means-tested to protect the limited resources of the legal aid budget and is available only in exceptional circumstances, of which there are two. That is where there is a significant wider public interest in the applicant being represented or where representation is necessary to enable the coroner to conduct an effective investigation under Article 2 of the ECHR. For example, funding for deaths in state custody has been authorised, subject to the funding criteria being met. We want to retain and protect this funding. The way that the system works is that the Legal Services Commission, which is responsible for the maintenance of the legal aid fund in England and Wales, receives requests for funding. If it agrees that that is a suitable application, it comes up to the Ministry of Justice and the decision lies on my desk as to whether legal aid funding should be given for that inquest. I will state the obvious: were all things equal and I had a bottomless pit of money to allocate to the coroners system in England and Wales, I would like to extend legal aid in many cases, particularly to those bereaved families who feel that they are not able to speak up for themselves. But I remind the Committee that legal aid representation for inquests was not available at all until 2000, when legislation introduced by the Government made it available in the circumstances I have tried to explain this evening. Reforms in the Bill, with the co-operation of coroner’s officers, guidance in the charter for the bereaved, input from third-sector organisations and pro bono groups—they always play an important role—will continue to ensure that those people most in need of support and representation receive it. I repeat, as I finish dealing with the first amendments, that keeping legal aid arrangements under continuing review in the light of the proposed changes to the system, would seem the most pragmatic and sensible way forward.