Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

The hon. Lady is absolutely right and has hit on an important point. In any event, this is the wrong time for this Bill. I hope that the Government pause in Committee to think again. As I set out in my contribution to the legal aid debate in February, if the legal aid reforms are implemented, they will create a market for legal aid, which will be driven by cost rather than by the needs of clients. The most vulnerable people, including those with mental health problems and other disabilities, will find it almost impossible to gain access to free legal advice, because their cases will be too complex for firms to take on. The MOJ's equality impact assessment acknowledges that the losers will predominantly be women, ethnic minorities and disabled or ill people at 57%, 26% and 20% respectively. The proposals about which I was most concerned—removing ancillary relief and private family proceedings from the scope of legal aid—remain largely unchanged, despite respondents, including me, arguing that not all cases can be successfully diverted to mediation; that without early legal advice fewer cases would settle, increasing the burden on both courts and those involved in disputes; and that decisions should be delayed until the outcome of the family justice review. Those pleas have fallen on deaf ears. Ancillary matters, such as child custody and maintenance, will not be dealt with sensibly, I am afraid, and it is difficult to overestimate the devastating effect that that will wreak on children caught up in these kinds of disputes. I speak as someone with 30 years' experience in family cases, both as a solicitor and a barrister—I should declare that many of those cases were publicly funded. In their response to the consultation, the Government conceded that legal aid should be available for victims of domestic violence. That is an important step, since in a 2005 study by Tridner et al 53% of women reported physical or emotional abuse as a cause of separation. Sir Nicholas Wall, president of the family division, has pointed out how ““ill advised”” the Government are to concentrate on domestic violence alone. Abuse, as Sir Nicholas said, is much broader and can be psychological, financial and/or emotional. One-size-fits-all solutions simply do not work with the complexities of our justice system. The cuts to legal aid will increase rates of injustice, which is difficult to square with what the Prime Minister said about the reforms. He said last week at a press conference on the wider proposed reforms that his mission was to make sure that families felt safe in their homes—a worthy aim, of course, but there are many, many problems with the detail of the Bill. Vulnerable people will be left to go it alone. As Justice has said:"““The duty of a democratic state should be to ensure that members of society abide by, and benefit from, the provisions of the law.””" Both considerations appear missing from the cuts. Hon. Members do not need to take it from me how dangerous these moves are. The European Court of Human Rights has criticised them, as has the United Nations Committee on Human Rights and the UN Human Rights Council. Our justice system should serve everybody, not the few, but these cuts to legal aid are crude, cumbersome and callous. The cuts to the scope of legal aid will undermine not only the reforms that the Government are promoting, but, if the cuts are implemented, the very principles on which our justice system rests.