Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

That was one speech. On several occasions, we had three-hour speeches where points were recycled and regurgitated without use to the legislative process. It is unfortunate that the hon. Gentleman claims that I am padding things out, as I hope that I am addressing points not yet raised in this Chamber. I am going to do so briefly. I feel I should do so, as although I am happy to admit that I am not someone from a legal background and that I do not have a previous interest in this area of domestic violence, I have the experience of sitting in the Public Bill Committee and understanding the arguments put both by the Opposition and the Government in this difficult area. I speak as a layman and I hope to offer my support to points made by Members on both sides of the House. On amendment 113, tabled by the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), we face a small issue about whether people from the European economic area are caught within this legislation. It will cover only a small handful of people, but the inevitable consequence of missing it out—if that happens—is that there will be some travesty and miscarriage of justice precisely in a case where someone falls through the gap. I hope that the Government will carefully examine that suggestion in the first half of the amendment. I also fully support what my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon said about undertakings. I have heard much evidence from people practising in this field who give a reasonable argument that a counter-productive eventuality of this Bill is that, if undertakings are excluded, it could end up greatly prolonging cases, and not only to the detriment of litigants: it would also affect the costs of the court. I hope that his constructive and sensible suggestions, which come with considerable experience of sitting on the bench and acting as counsel, will be taken up by the Government as the fair-minded suggestions that they are. More broadly, we have a problem on self-reporting. I hope that hon. Members, especially Labour Members, will bear me out on this. Anyone who has contact with the family courts and who talks to family judges will know about the impact that allegations of child abuse have had in private law cases. In the opinion of many counsel and judges, in the past few years, allegations of child abuse have increasingly been made far too readily when no substance is behind the claims. It would be unfortunate if, under the new regime, allegations of domestic abuse and domestic violence were made as a precept to gain legal aid, because that would devalue the claims other people make completely legitimately. That is what is happening in the courts at the moment with allegations of child abuse. Several judges have remarked to me that so often is it claimed that one party or another has committed child abuse, it is beginning to numb the senses of the judges hearing those cases. It would be wrong if a similar situation were to arise with this new regime. The Government must therefore phrase the definition of domestic violence very carefully. I hope that the Government have heard the concerns of Opposition and Government Members, such as those of my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon, those that my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe has voiced on several occasions, and those raised today by my hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant). I can hear from the way in which the Minister has been replying that he understands that some sort of uniformity would be desirable across government and that some recognition of the problems of encapsulating a definition within the Bill will be made here or in another place. The Opposition went into the last election saying that they would seek cuts to legal aid and that promise has been reiterated both by the Leader of the Opposition, in January, and the shadow Secretary of State, who is sitting on the Front Bench, on several occasions. However, in Committee, the shadow Minister tabled dozens of amendments, some of which were, by his own admission, contradictory and many of which were culled from the handouts given by lobbyists, which extended considerably the Committee's deliberations when we could have been discussing the meat of the proposals as we have tried to do today. He came to the House with a new amendment having denied the Public Bill Committee the ability to consider properly many of the issues that we should have discussed.