Coroners and Justice Bill

Pilots can provide important evidence about the effectiveness and cost of new arrangements for legal aid. Clause 133 will allow us in the future to test new arrangements for civil legal aid, such as new types of advice, new delivery mechanisms, and new eligibility arrangements. As the legal aid Minister, I have concentrated as much as I can in difficult times on ensuring that social welfare law and the advice that is given under that law, which is civil legal aid advice, is at least protected. We are looking at all times to see what we can do, particularly at a time of recession, to ensure that those who suffer as a consequence of the recession are at least protected in law so they can get legal advice. Part of the purpose of Clause 133 can be to make the Legal Services Commission more flexible in the scope of what it can do on legal aid spend. Amendment 191AD is a probing amendment that seeks to remove subsection (2) of the clause, which allows the Lord Chancellor to authorise or direct the Legal Services Commission to fund on a pilot basis cases that could not otherwise be funded. Such a pilot could relate to the funding of cases that may apply to one or more areas or localities or specified courts or tribunals, or funding only for specified classes of persons or persons selected by reference to specific criteria or on a sampling basis. This subsection is an important part of the Bill as it allows us to conduct limited pilots of new arrangements to assess whether they should be implemented more widely. I understand the noble Lord’s concerns, and those of Liberty, that the pilot provision may be used to restrict access to legal aid. I assure the Committee that it is not our intention to use the piloting provision to do that. The power would allow us to trial extensions of civil legal aid—for example, specialist advice delivered in limited areas, such as in housing possession cases, where of course legal aid is already granted at the door of the court, or more generous financial eligibility limits for particular kinds of legal advice, subject, of course, to the resources being available. I always have to say that. It is also not our intention to use the piloting provision to amend directions in order to restrict inquest funding. I know the noble Lord feels very strongly about this. It is perhaps worth pointing out that funding for legal representation in inquests was not available at all until this Government changed that in the Access to Justice Act 1999. Directions and authorisations can be amended under existing powers. As I explained during the Committee’s consideration of Part 1 of the Bill, funding for advocacy for inquests is already available on an exceptional basis, when certain criteria are met. There is no intention to use these powers to impose additional restrictions on the availability of funding in those cases. So the answer to whether we will use the pilot proposal to amend directions to restrict the inquest funding is a clear "no". The directions and authorisations that provide for inquest funding in certain circumstances can already be amended under existing powers, if we were so minded to do so—and I am certainly not. The pilot powers do not go further than this; they simply allow the powers to be used in a more limited way, to enable pilots to be conducted. Funding for inquests is already available on the exceptional basis, when certain criteria are met. I hope that in my brief remarks I have satisfied the noble Lord to some extent.