Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

My Lords, it is the turn of this side, but I wait with pleasure to hear what the noble and learned Lord has to say. When I started my career as a barrister in the late 1950s, we had started with legal aid for only a few years. Up until then, aid from lawyers to poor people who were prosecuted for criminal offences mostly came from a group of barristers of poor quality who spent their time sitting in the court in the hope of being chosen by the defendant to defend them. Legal aid replaced all that, for civil cases as well as criminal, and we must never get anywhere near the previous situation. This amendment is one of the most important in the Bill; indeed, it is in many ways the most important. The right of access to justice is a central feature of British justice, as it has been for centuries. We are rightly proud of that. We have over the years achieved the right of access to law. Now that right is under threat. Clause 1(1) is not adequate. This is made clear by the 21st report of the Select Committee of your Lordships' House on the Constitution, published on 17 November. That is a very distinguished committee. The four Members who have put their names to Amendment 1 include two members of that committee, the noble Lords, Lord Pannick and Lord Hart. They also include the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, the former Lord Chief Justice and an outstanding judge of recent times, and, finally, my noble friend Lord Faulks, who is a relatively new Member of your Lordships' House but who has proved his high quality as a lawyer and a politician. I am aware that in recent years the costs of legal aid have risen too far. This was recognised by Lord Bingham in chapter 8 of his book, The Rule of Law, which has already been mentioned. Steps are being taken by the Government to reduce costs in a justifiable way, but we must make it clear that access to justice is essential and that we cannot set up in this country a legal system which does not provide access to justice to those who cannot afford it out of their own pockets.