Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

My Lords, I find myself in agreement with practically everything that has been said in this debate. The amendments go to the very heart, core and kernel of the Government’s thinking on this part of the Bill. I would even put the matter higher than most noble Lords have put it. They have put it that there are unintended consequences that now have to be considered. I would put it rather higher than that and say that, in dealing with the sensitive and almost sacrosanct area of the administration of justice and with the question of seeking to save funds at a time when they are desperately needed by the public purse, it is nothing short of reckless to proceed in circumstances where there is no certitude of success in either of those matters. What is recklessness? Assuming that one takes a fairly lay interpretation, it is a situation in which a risk is created and the person creating that risk either closes his or her mind completely to the risk created or, appreciating that the risk is there, still takes it. That is recklessness. I hope that I do not use intemperate language in this or any discussion in this House. It is right that the Government should ask themselves, in a situation in which the onus of proof is so immense in relation to the area of the administration of justice and saving money for the public purse, whether sufficient consideration was given to as many of the risks as can be quantified—and I appreciate that some of them are very difficult to quantify. Was sufficient research indulged in, or was it purely a case of saying blandly, ““Legal aid in this country has shot up over the years and we are spending more than practically any other community in the world, so it must be slashed””, irrespective of exactly how that should be done—again, saying that there will automatically be a saving? They are not entitled to say that. How can they say that there will be a net saving at all? Clearly, if the exercise involved in Part 1 of this Bill is nothing more than the transfer of financial responsibility from one department to other departments, that is at best hypocrisy and at worst lunacy. It achieves nothing whatever. At Second Reading I quoted the figures that have been referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Bach, from the research done by the CAB. Even if those calculations, which have been honestly made by people who are genuinely applying their minds to the situation, are inaccurate to the tune of 50 per cent, it nevertheless shows that the Government’s concept of a saving in this way is utterly irresponsible. That is the point, so in relation to the risks that have been taken, these amendments are but second best. In fact, the assessment should not be made now, after the Bill becomes law; it should have been made before this strategy was contemplated in the very first place. I appreciate that in some of these cases it will be very difficult to quantify the loss brought about by some of these proposals. In the years that I have spent in the law as a solicitor, a barrister and a judge, I certainly was of the view that were it not for the fact that a high percentage of cases were settled in general civil, in family and most certainly in crime, the courts would have been clogged into impossibility long ago. When cases are settled, it is not because the individual, of his or her own volition and without advice, suddenly concluded that it is right and proper—or, indeed, that it is advantageous—for that person to come to that conclusion. That person often comes to a conclusion very reluctantly and because a hard-headed lawyer tells him or her, ““There is no real prospect of success here, and I ask you to consider withdrawing your instructions””. That is how matters are settled, and if there is no such settlement, imagine the situations that are the bane of a judge's life: those in which the defendants are unrepresented. On the £350 million which the Government hope to save, I appreciate that their attempts are genuine but I suspect that they are utterly misconceived. The Minister is a person for whom I have immense personal regard; I have greatly respected his intelligence and indeed his wisdom over the years in this House. Can he with his hand on his heart say that there is any certainty about any saving at all in relation to these expenses? Secondly, even if there is a saving, can he say that it is anywhere in the realm of the £350 million that has been adumbrated by the Government?