Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

My Lords, in moving Amendment 6 I will speak also to my Amendment 194. In this group there are also two amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Martin of Springburn, namely Amendments 191 and 195. My amendments would require the right honourable and learned gentleman the Lord Chancellor to lay before Parliament a full independent impact assessment of the planned cuts to legal aid before the Bill—or the Act, as it then will be—can commence. Inter alia, we would require him to quantify the impact on groups with what are described as protected characteristics—namely children and young people; people with disabilities, including those with learning, physical, mental and psychological disabilities; women; victims of domestic violence; and black and ethnic minorities. We would also like him to quantify the impact on the public purse, other government departments and courts and tribunals, including any changes in time and resources. We would also like him to quantify the impact on local authorities. Finally, we would like him to quantify the impact on the incidence of the most severe negative outcomes for individuals and society—namely first homelessness; ill health, and perhaps suicide; and criminal or anti-social behaviour—and on the future provision and availability of services, including but not limited to law centres and citizens advice bureaux. These amendments have been tabled simply because the Government have failed to get to grips with the serious consequences of their proposed legislation. They simply have not quantified the impact of the cuts on the individuals involved, on society or on the public purse. I concede at once that the Government have at least tried to describe what some of the impacts might be. The Government’s impact assessment, which they made in their response to the consultation process, states that their cuts threaten, "““reduced social cohesion … increased criminality … reduced business and economic efficiency … increased … costs for other Departments … [and] increased transfer payments from other Departments””," particularly in higher benefit payments for people who have spent their savings on legal action. Those are pretty extraordinary statements. It sounds a bit like the end of the world, does it not? If this legislation results in reduced social cohesion and increased criminality, it will go not only against everything that the Government support—a big society, and, of course, less crime—but against everything that all of us believe in, which is more social cohesion and less criminality. The Government cannot be accused of not being honest. They are honest to a fault if this is what they say will be the consequence of their Bill. However, they can be criticised for putting forward a Bill which in their opinion will have those consequences. Given that the aim of these cuts is to save money, it would seem prudent for the Government to have calculated how much will be saved, not least because in March 2011—about 10 months ago, after the consultation had ended—the Justice Committee in the other place, following an inquiry into these proposals, was critical of the Government for not assessing the likely impact on spending from the public purse. I wish to quote from two paragraphs of the report. At paragraph 69, on page 32, it states: "““According to the Government’s own figures, the changes it is proposing to the scope of legal aid will result in 500,000 fewer instances of legal help””—" we know that the figure is much closer to 650,000— "““and 45,000 fewer instances of legal representation being funded by legal aid annually. The Government has conceded that it does not know the extent to which these reductions would impact upon people with disabilities and black and minority ethnic people because of information gaps. While it is taking some steps to address those gaps, evidence we have received, and the Government’s own thinking, suggest that these people, as well as other vulnerable groups, rely more on legal aid services than do the less vulnerable, and so there is the potential for them to be disproportionately hit by the changes. If this were to happen it would sit uneasily with the Government’s commitment to protect the most vulnerable in society””." At paragraph 136, the report comes to the following conclusion: "““It has been put to us that the removal from scope of many areas of social welfare law will lead to significant costs to the public purse as a result of increased burdens on, for example, health and housing services. We are surprised that the Government is proposing to make such changes without assessing their likely impact on spending from the public purse and we call on them to do so before taking a final decision on implementation””." That was in March 2011. We are now in January 2012, and the Bill has been through the other place and is in Committee in your Lordships' House. Why have the Government not produced such assessments, as the Justice Committee invited them to do? I invite the Minister who will respond to this debate to tell the Committee why they have not done so. The Government have rejected out of hand an analysis by Citizens Advice that can be found in its research paper entitled Towards a Business Case for Legal Aid. Most Members of the Committee will know the basic headline numbers: "““For every £1 of legal aid expenditure on housing advice, the state potentially saves £2.34 … For every £1 of legal aid expenditure on debt advice, the state potentially saves £2.98 … For every £1 of legal aid expenditure on benefits advice, the state potentially saves £8.80 … For every £1 of legal aid expenditure on employment advice, the state potentially saves £7.13””." It is calculated that the proposed cut of £60 million from social welfare law will cause the withdrawal of advice services that currently save the state £338,065,000 in spending on other services. The Citizens Advice report had some methodological rigour behind its calculations and used an array of gold-standard data. No criticism of that has yet got home. The Government owe it to themselves, to Parliament and, most of all, to those whom the cuts will disenfranchise to assess the veracity of those numbers. If they do not do so, they must provide, as the amendment argues, quantified assessments of the knock-on costs. As has already been mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan—and the timing is almost perfect—if the Government will not do this job, then someone has to do it. Yesterday, as the Committee has already heard, the report entitled Unintended Consequences: the Costs of the Government’s Legal Aid Reforms was published. It is the work of Dr Cookson, from the Department of Management at King’s College, London, and was commissioned by the Law Society. Not surprisingly, it has attracted a considerable amount of publicity in the past 24 hours or so, including on the ““Today”” programme very early this morning. I am afraid that it was too early for me to have listened. I am not going to go into detail, because noble Lords will know what I am talking about, but the report finds that in order to save some £239 million it will cost at least £139 million. The author’s first point is that, "““numerous costs could not be estimated””," and that, "““this figure is therefore likely to be a substantial underestimate of the true costs””." The report does not attempt to forecast total unbudgeted costs, because a lot of the data have not been published or recorded, but the cautious conclusions it reaches are, I argue, pretty devastating. They do not take account of the £200 million that it is intended to save by delaying the start date. Why do I say devastating? On clinical negligence savings, it states that the cost of saving £10.5 million will be £28.5 million. That is not a saving at all—it is the very opposite. We hope that the Government will take some notice of the report published yesterday. But will they take notice of the courts? The Judges’ Council has stated: "““Neither the consultation paper nor the accompanying impact assessments address that question””—" the question of more litigants in person— "““adequately””." Among the functions of the Civil Justice Council, an advisory body set up under the Civil Procedure Act 1997, are to keep the civil justice system under review, to consider how to make civil justice more accessible, fair and efficient, and to advise the Lord Chancellor and the judiciary on the development of civil justice. I dare say that its introduction was due very largely to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, and his report. It set up a working group on the vexed question of how many more litigants in person there will be and what to do about them. It considered what steps could be taken to improve access to justice for litigants in person. It is an extremely impressive working group in terms of experience and reputation. Its report is even now with the Lord Chancellor and the Lord Chief Justice. It is a remarkable document and I invite noble Lords to read it. It starts with this form of words: "““Access to justice for all is central to the Rule of Law. The proposed reduction of publicly-funded legal aid, and the current cost of privately-paid legal services, are likely to lead to a substantial increase in those whose access to law is unaided by lawyers. The result will be no access to justice for some, and compromised access to justice for others””." It makes the point very strongly that, in its view, the cuts to social welfare legal aid are potentially very serious. To end what I have to say on this aspect, the report states: "““Even if all the recommendations we make are acted upon, they will not prevent the reality that in many situations, as a result of the reductions and changes in legal aid, there will be a denial of justice. There must be no misunderstanding about this. Put colloquially, the recommendations are about making ‘the best of a bad job’””." I am keen not to go over the 15-minute limit in proposing the amendment. There are some other matters I would like to talk about, but I shall not on this occasion. The point I want to make in supporting my amendment is that the Government have, for some reason or other, in this case not provided sufficient information or assessment about the consequences of the Bill they are asking Parliament to pass. This is not an insignificant Bill. It has profound effects on access to justice and people’s actual lives. It is a fair argument, I hope, that the least that we could expect as legislators is that there would be a better assessment of the costs in both social and economic terms of the Bill before us. In my view, there is not that analysis. That is disappointing; in fact, I think it is scandalous. When the Minister sums up the debate, I would like him to answer the question: why?