Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

My Lords, in the limited time available, I shall try to avoid Committee points, but I am confident that this House has a formidable task as a revising Chamber. The Lord Chancellor was, reputedly, one of the first to agree to the Treasury’s demand to contribute to the cut in the deficit. With hindsight, that might turn out to be a mistake. All his proposals flow from his efforts to meet the required amount: sentencing, remission, prison numbers and now the legal aid budget. Our job is to assess their fairness. How fair are they? In which fields will the most vulnerable suffer disproportionately? The words of the late Lord Bingham ring in our ears—they have already been quoted by my noble and learned friend Lady Scotland. He said that, "““denial of legal protection to the poor litigant who cannot afford to pay is one enemy of the rule of law””." The Law Society, in today’s Times, recites some of the most vulnerable who will suffer. This House will have to examine in detail proposals for family law, some victims of domestic abuse, and victims of clinical negligence. The view has already been expressed of the grave concern that clinical negligence will be outwith legal aid. In the absence of legal aid, no-win no-fee has been the only means of litigation for many. From what I understand, a great deal of the ground is to be cut from under the feet of many by the Bill’s proposals. Let me pinpoint one issue—the environment. As a constituency MP for more than 40 years, I was constantly reminded of environmental problems created by industry and developers. Litigation is the last resort in these fields, only when other means have failed. It is a battle of David and Goliath. There are occasions when the means should be provided for David to have his day in court. The Bar Council, in response to the Government’s proposals for legal aid reform, has made proposals for £350 million savings in the administration of justice. It is the profession’s belief that its views have fallen on deaf ears. Let me make one point of detail—a detail which, if continued to be ignored, distorts the legal aid budget substantially. I have defended over the years many defendants who have hitherto enjoyed significant wealth. The cases would involve drug dealing, particularly importation, VAT frauds, mortgage frauds and the like. The defendants would frequently, having enjoyed the trappings of wealth, be on legal aid—or, in the course of a trial would be granted legal aid. You may well ask why. It would be because their assets would have been frozen by court orders on the application of the CPS. At that point, they would be persons without resources, eligible for legal aid, and in many cases treated as men of straw. Let me give the basis of all this. In 2005, more than 50 per cent of Crown Court legal aid expenditure is consumed by 1 per cent of cases. These are the kinds of cases I was involved in. The average cost per case would be £2.6 million. To give an idea of the sums under restraint, the value in 2009-10 was £560 million, rising to £744 million in 2010-11. If we used some of that money for legal aid that is not necessary, the legal aid budget would be more realistic, fairer and more easily understood. The Treasury says that it can recover some of the money through confiscation orders. But how successful is it? Does not that basis distort the whole picture of legal aid? In any event, I believe that it is an unfair and distorted way of portraying and allocating public expenditure. I will touch briefly on sentencing. When I sat as a recorder from 1973 to 1997, we were bombarded each year by criminal justice Acts. Sentencing was a labyrinth that you navigated as best you could. The pressure on the judiciary to get a sentence right was unremitting. Let me give two examples of how some things fell into or out of favour. At one stage, suspended sentences were very much in favour—with or without conditions. Then they fell out of favour. And now we are, back again, to look at how they are to be implemented. Secondly, the four-year imprisonment tariff became important; release depended on whether the sentence was just under or just over four years. That had immense consequences for the sentencing judges. Some of the proposals in the Bill may well have a great deal of merit. We will examine them exceedingly carefully and hold on to that which is good. But I hope and pray for some respite in the introduction of the equivalent of the criminal justice Bills which change whatever is the fashion from year to year. The judiciary should be allowed to get on with it. Sentencing would be easier; the professions would understand it better; and the defendant—an equally important person—would understand it better. Constant changing in sentencing does not make life any easier for anyone at the criminal Bar.