Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

My Lords, as another former MP I echo the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis. Many is the time when Members of another place in their constituency surgeries have to give advice on legal issues to constituents, and it is often the poorest constituents who come with the largest and most complex, multiple legal problems, usually relating to welfare law. There are of course many cases in which an MP can say to a constituent, ““Go along to the small claims court, appear on your own behalf and use the words ‘contract’, ‘consideration’ and ‘damage’, and you will do very well””. Litigants in person can succeed, particularly before small claims courts. However, multiple, complex legal issues do not lend themselves to litigation in person. The only responsible advice that Members of another place can give in such cases is, ““You’ve really got to go to a decent solicitor who understands this kind of work””—and, if you are a really daring MP, you might discriminate among the solicitors in your constituency and recommend someone really competent in the hope that others do not find out what you have said. My reason for supporting this amendment is founded in the sympathy that I have for my noble friend the Minister. I share the view that there is a great deal of waste in legal aid and that steps can be taken to reduce legal aid in many areas. I suspect that almost every Member of your Lordships’ House believes that. However, the list of people potentially affected in this amendment is very realistic. It sets out those very people and groups who are likely to be the most adversely and unfairly damaged by these reductions. I would have expected the Government, in setting out legislation to cut legal aid, to do the work that is implicit in this amendment. I have looked through the notes on this draft legislation and everything that has come from the Government, and I have seen no evidence of any such assessment being carried out. I have not yet read anything but a summary of the King’s College London report, but if the headlines fairly represent what the report says, they are cause for alarm. It has done the work that the Government should have done and revealed that the savings may not be there at all in certain areas, not least, critically, in clinical negligence cases, which are of particular concern to me. I cannot see that it would be anything other than responsible for the Government to carry out the work set out in this amendment. I would ordinarily have expected them to do so to justify the cuts that they are proposing to make to legal aid. For those reasons, I feel that it is right to support at least the aims and principles of this amendment.