Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

My Lords, many years ago, when Lord Scarman was chairman of the Law Commission, I remember him saying that his cleaning lady came to him one day and asked whether he could help her with a social security problem. He described how it took him three days of combing through the social security legislation before he was able to help her. He told us this story because he was explaining how there was an enormous need for poverty lawyers—the ones who deal with the legal problems of the poor—to be empowered to provide those services. If a Law Lord such as Lord Scarman took three days to do what a law centre could do more quickly, it illustrated the point. The great virtue of the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, is its conspicuous moderation and realism. I cannot understand those noble Lords who criticise him for being so moderate and realistic. The real value of his amendment is that it strengthens the hand of the Lord Chancellor and Justice Secretary in his dealings with the Treasury. Many years ago when I was Roy Jenkins’s special adviser, I remember that Barbara Castle, a Minister in the then Government, explained why she supported cuts in civil legal aid. She wrote to her colleagues saying that if she had to choose between hospitals and legal services, she would unhesitatingly preserve hospitals. It is that notion that legal services for the poor are a soft target and matter a great deal less culturally and politically than health services which is at the bottom of the problem in my view. Successive Governments have found it very easy to sabotage civil legal aid since the original Legal Aid and Advice Act was passed. This is not a party political problem; it has pervaded all parties. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, who, unfortunately is not in his place, cut legal aid when he was Lord Chancellor, and followed a long line of Lord Chancellors in doing so. He attacked what he called fat-cat lawyers to justify some of the cuts that he made. When Lord Taylor’s memorial service was held in St Paul’s cathedral, Sir Humphrey Potts, in giving the encomium—I recall that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine, was at the front of the cathedral—made a joke at his expense, saying that he saw that he, in a fit of post-retirement remorse, was attacking fat-cat lawyers. It was a good joke but it illustrated a powerful point. It would be very easy for my noble friend Lord McNally when he replies to make some cynical remarks about his legal friends standing up for the closed shop. However, I am sure that he will not fall into this trap. As the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, has said, those of us who are here today are not in the platoons of legal services for the poor lawyers who will be most hit by these cuts, along with their clients. Many years ago, I gave a Fabian lecture called ““Democracy and Individual Rights””. In that lecture, I made a number of presumptuous suggestions about codifying administrative law, incorporating the European Convention on Human Rights into domestic law, and doing something about justice for all, including establishing community law centres. In that lecture, I gave more importance to civil legal aid than to the incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights. That is still my belief as someone who fought for 30 years to get the Human Rights Act. It is more important for the most vulnerable people in our society that there is effective access to legal services through civil legal aid than it is to have the Human Rights Act. Some may find it astonishing that that should be my belief. That is because the Human Rights Act deals with great ethical principles, one of which relates to what we are talking about. The Joint Committee on Human Rights, in its report, has pointed that out as a common law and convention principle. However, if we are concerned about practical realities, the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, has good sense in setting out the obligation of the Lord Chancellor to secure that, "““individuals have access to legal services that effectively meet their needs””," and recognises that that must be within allocated public expenditure. It means that if Barbara Castle, who I much admired, were still alive and were to write a similar memorandum to the one she wrote during the Wilson Government, the Lord Chancellor would be able to answer her by saying, ““I have a duty to stand up for effective access to legal services to meet the needs of the people and therefore you cannot treat this simply as the Cinderella of public expenditure””. Like my noble friend Lord Carlile of Berriew, I strongly support the Government. Like him, I very much hope that the Minister in his reply will give us some indication—not in detail but generally—of the concessions that we are likely to be given during our debates on this part of the Bill. I say that because, although I do not take political parties seriously, I believe in party discipline and in trying to support the coalition Government in what they are seeking to do. However, if we do not get those assurances, I will take the same course as my noble friend Lord Carlile and others on these Benches.