Community Legal Service (Funding) (Amendment No. 2) Order 2011

My Lords, I declare an interest as chairman of the Bar Standards Board. The Bar Standards Board is the regulatory arm of the Bar Council, not the representative one, and I have no direct concern with the pay that barristers earn. My job is to further the objectives laid down for the Bar in the Legal Service Act 2007. There are eight in Section 1, including protecting and promoting the public interest, improving access to justice and encouraging an independent, strong, diverse and effective legal profession. What I have to say tonight when I encourage your Lordships to annul this order is based entirely on the application of those objectives in the regulation of the education and working lives of barristers. Last Sunday, an advertisement appeared in the Sunday Times headed, "““Helping the most vulnerable in Society””." It was for a new chief executive of the Legal Services Commission, which hands out legal aid. I quote from the ad: "““Our role is to ensure through our providers that independent, high-quality legal advice and representation is available to vulnerable people who cannot afford it themselves. We enable people to protect their rights and defend their interests””." This order flies in the face of the aspiration in that advertisement and of the achievements of the objectives in the Legal Services Act and the profession. Let me turn first to the effect it will have on women and black and ethnic minority barristers. This is a central plank of the work that we do at the Bar Standards Board in encouraging and retaining those very barristers. The effect of this order is to cut the rates payable in family advocacy by 10 per cent. It will be felt hardest by women and black and ethnic minority barristers, who are disproportionately represented in dependence on legal aid, while white men are the least dependent sector. There has been considerable government pressure to open up the legal profession still more to entrants from all backgrounds, albeit that it is already a very diverse profession. Alan Milburn’s report of 2009 singled out the legal profession in his survey of social mobility, even though the Bar and solicitors go to enormous lengths to explain and reach out to young people all over the country. The Bar has a record to be proud of, with over 15 per cent of pupillages going to black and ethnic minority students in a very competitive market. The cuts in fees in this order undo all that work, and make the Government appear two-faced. Sixty per cent of the family Bar are women, and they do 66 per cent of legally aided children work. Half the family Bar relies on public funds for more than 60 per cent of its turnover. From their gross earnings, modest though they are, barristers have to pay overheads to chambers and clerks—typically 20 per cent—and in addition meet their own pensions, illness and professional insurance cover and expenses. The King’s College London survey of barristers in 2008-09 indicated that 80 per cent of them intended to abandon legally aided public work. This generation of young people have university tuition debts and huge fees at Bar school, and the modest but reliable income that was once their support in the early years at the Bar is now to diminish to such an extent that they cannot earn a living. There is no point in the great efforts put into outreach in this situation. It continues on into the judiciary. The noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, reported on judicial diversity in 2010. A less diverse profession means a less diverse judiciary, and fewer women judges. The diminution of the profession also means more litigants in person taking up more court time, not less, with problems being stored for several years down the line because they cannot be settled in court in a proper and timely way. As with other demanding professions, women are being lost to the Bar after five to 10 years in practice, because of the costs of childcare. It is unaffordable and will be even more so. Twice as many women leave the Bar as do men for that reason. The cut in fees in this order will weaken retention. It will also damage the children who are the subject of court orders, because now the experts who give evidence in child cases are placed within this table of reduced fees, and the fees are set at below the level needed to maintain their practices. The Government have given no evidenced reason for cutting by 10 per cent, and they have not waited for the outcome of the Family Justice Review, chaired by David Norgrove. In March of this year, its interim report commented on the adverse impact that cuts would have, the lack of data about case-handling and flow through the court, and the contribution made by the lawyers in the cases. In the 2009 study Family Law Advocacy by the very experienced researchers John Eekelaar and Mavis Maclean of Oxford University, it was shown that where lawyers were involved in family law cases concerning money and children, the majority of cases were resolved without court process or contested hearing. Even where the cases went to court, in the highly charged emotional atmosphere that one would expect, the presence of specialist family lawyers enhanced the prospects of resolution and shortened the court process, for they are minded to act collaboratively and in the interests of the children. Additional damage has already occurred to women and children through the closure, because of already instituted cuts, of the advice agencies Refugee and Migrant Justice, the Immigration Advisory Service and Law for All, as the noble Lord, Lord Bach, has just mentioned. There are more constructive ways to save money. First of all there is too much judicial review, now used as the citizen’s right of appeal. I was surprised to find when I was the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education, running an alternative dispute resolution service for students, that those students obtained legal aid to challenge our decisions. There should be a push back against the notion that human rights mean that any and every decision can be judicially reviewed at great cost to the public. As for human rights, the real denial of those is to the middle classes, who are neither poor enough to be eligible for legal aid, nor can afford to go to law at their own expense. They are therefore the real victims, who cannot access justice. The other substantive reform needed is to bring certainty into the law of maintenance on divorce. An obvious model for this is the continental European system of community of property, to which the Scottish system is similar, which entails a fixed fifty-fifty split of post-marital property and little ongoing maintenance. Broad-brush justice it may be, but it is cheap and efficient to arrange. As long as we have our Rolls-Royce discretionary system of settling property issues on divorce, couples will continue to waste sums they can ill afford—sometimes amounting to as much as the property in dispute—on deciding who gets what. This order should be annulled. The Government should await the Family Justice Review report and change substantive law to get a more efficient system without damaging the profession and its diversity.