Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

My Lords, this amendment, short though it is, is important because it allows the Committee to question the Minister and to have a discussion around public legal education. That subject does not appear much in the Bill and we thought it worth tabling a probing amendment. If the Minister is not able to answer all the questions today, I am sure that he will be kind enough to write to Members of the Committee. Perhaps I may go down memory lane for a moment or two. When I held the position that the Minister’s colleague, Mr Djanogly, now holds, part of my brief covered public legal education. It was based on the thesis that, of course, it is important for people to be able to access justice, but people will do so only when they know that a civil wrong may be or has been done against them. The truth is probably that many millions of our citizens do not know when they have some claim—perhaps not big or major—because some civil injustice has been done against them. They have no idea how the system works. We very much want to keep the good things in this system, which means that people with a legal claim can get advice and, it is hoped, sort out the claim in that way. We think that legal aid plays an important role in making that system work. However, when we live under the rule of law in a modern liberal democracy, what do we do when people do not have a clue about their rights and responsibilities in this legal sense? I was lucky enough to chair a pretty powerful committee of independent outsiders at the department on this issue. From outside the ministry, a committee group was led by the brother-in-law of the noble Lord, Lord Brooke. He is a very distinguished former Lord Justice of Appeal who has done very good work in many fields, as the Minister is confirming. The committee included people such as Professor Hazel Genn; Richard Susskind, the expert on legal IT and associated subjects who has advised Governments of all colours and none; Michael Smith, a very distinguished solicitor; the chairman of the Legal Services Board; and Amanda Finlay, to name just a few. What we talked about and tried to do something about, and what we as a Government were prepared to put money into, was an attempt to make our legal system better understood by ordinary citizens. Public legal education is not a very attractive phrase, but we know what we mean by it. The question was where we would concentrate the limited resources that were devoted to such a concept. It seemed to me that there was one place where more work ought be done. Some work had been done in schools, which was excellent, but more was needed. Also, sixth-form colleges and colleges of further education were places where probably there was not much teaching or education even in its broadest sense about a citizen's legal rights and obligations. We thought that this was an important part of trying to establish a proper democracy that lives under the rule of law. I hope that other noble Lords will join in the debate and ask other, perhaps deeper questions. In the Bill the requirement to provide legal education is discretionary rather than mandatory. Our probing amendment argues that it should be mandatory; there should be an obligation on the Lord Chancellor. What mechanisms does the Minister’s right honourable friend intend to use to secure the provision of information about the law? That is an important point. Online facilities, with the exception of YouGov, are fragmented and of varying quality. How does his right honourable friend intend to work with other departments of state and external actors to ensure that citizens are informed of their rights and duties when interacting with the state and other services? I think that most noble Lords in Committee will agree that this question could be well directed to the Department for Work and Pensions, because I imagine that we will talk quite a lot about mistakes that have been made by that department. However, it applies also to the Department for Education, the National Health Service, private banks and of course local authorities. Our concern is that the Government have rather put on one side this sort of work, either for financial reasons or because they do not believe that it has much place in the Ministry of Justice's responsibilities. What is the Government's attitude towards the future of public legal education under our system, and to the goal of educating more of our citizens in the ways of knowing what their obligations and rights are, so that they do not walk around blind to the kinds of rights and obligations that they have in a society such as ours? That is the point of the amendment. I need hardly tell the Committee that of course I shall not press it; it is a probing amendment to elicit the Government's views on the issue. I beg to move.