Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

In my legal career and otherwise, I have always given way to better phrases used by Welsh lawyers and certainly by the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, and I do on this occasion too. Access to justice is rather important because you cannot win if you do not have access to justice. One of the worries is that the Bill will ensure that there is no access to justice for many who have had it up until now. The reasons for marked disparities is because appealing on welfare benefits inevitably requires, as my noble friend Lady Lister and the noble Lord, Lord Newton of Braintree, have just mentioned, an understanding, whether we like it or not, of complex statutes and rules and guidance that govern how the state evaluates an individual's eligibility for legal aid. Had legal aid not been present in 2009-10, if we apply the success rate for those without advice to those who did receive advice, 51,223 people in total would have lost their appeals. The long-term cost of supporting those people is incalculable. Never mind Second-tier, Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court; to take out of scope advice on a review to the First-tier Tribunal is unfair and wrong. The effect of people not being able to exercise their rights is again frankly explained in the Government's own impact assessment. The Government say that the changes may lead to: "““Reduced social cohesion … Increased criminality … Reduced business and economic efficiency … Increased costs for other Departments … Increased transfer payments from other Departments, in particular higher benefits payments for people who spent their savings on legal action””." In welfare benefit cases, it is not enough to have legal aid at the Second-tier Tribunal upwards. In fact, if you do not have it earlier you are unlikely to ever get to the Second-tier Tribunal or above. Advice is needed when seeking to review, for example, DWP decisions before the First-tier Tribunal. It does not have to be expensive or sophisticated legal advice, but it has to be legal advice. If advice is given at that stage, hopeless cases, as has been said, can be got rid of. First-tier Tribunals would not be so clogged up in the future. The Committee will remember what Judge Martin of the Social Entitlement Chamber said about unrepresented defendants—that at least 10 per cent of time is wasted in explaining what is going on. Proper cases can therefore go ahead quicker. In particular, many legal issues can be sorted out by the advice that is currently given so that the wrong can be put right before the tribunal ever gets involved. That is what the present system does, although not perfectly. Lots of people do not take advantage of it and sometimes it does not work, but more or less it works pretty well. People get their advice, which frankly does not cost very much money and lawyers certainly do not get rich on it. The truth is that many cases no longer have to go anywhere near a tribunal. It does not encourage courts or tribunals: it actually avoids courts and tribunals. That is why it is slightly ironic that the Lord Chancellor said today in his Guardian article that legal aid’s, "““broad scope means that problems are dragged straight to the courtroom that could often be solved earlier and more simply elsewhere””." That comment is not his finest: I would go so far as to say that it is rather absurd. The type of legal aid that he seeks to abolish is exactly the type of legal aid that he should be encouraging and reinforcing because it avoids courts and tribunals rather than encouraging them. In fact it often has some sort of mediating effect, and we know that mediation is an important and proper part of the Government's policy in this field. The Minister has described himself today as a social democrat and someone who has a copy of The Rule of Law by his bed. If he is a person of that sort, he must see the argument that has been put in the Committee tonight.