Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

My Lords, we have had a very full debate, as the Minister reminded us. However, it was very worth while because this is a very important subject that goes to the heart of whether the Government did the work they should have done before bringing in such controversial and fundamental legislation. I start by saying how grateful I am to noble Lords from all sides of the Committee who spoke in the debate. I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, for backing the amendment, as I am to the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar. I forgot to say earlier, as I was asked to, that she was unable to attend when the amendment was moved because of her appearance at a very well known and important committee. I am very glad to see her in her place now. I thank noble Lords for making some very important points. I do not wish to embarrass the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, but I will thank him for his contribution if only because it gives me the chance on behalf of the Committee to congratulate him on the honour he received in the New Year Honours List. However, other speeches were just as good, on all sides of the Committee. The one thing they had in common—this is something that the Minister must take back to his department—is that they were all, in one way or another, critical of the way in which the Government approached this part of the Bill. I will not speak for long; I do not for a moment believe that more than a few noble Lords are in the Chamber to hear me wind up the debate on this amendment. They are here for another reason that I cannot think of. However, it is necessary to make one or two points. Although of course I will not press the amendment, the issue is important and we may well come back to it on Report because it is fundamental to the Bill. If the Bill comes into force with us knowing so little about what its effects and costs are likely to be—whether to the MoJ, other government departments or society as a whole—that is not a satisfactory way of law making. This is not a political point but a common-sense point, and I hope that the debate has been conducted from a common-sense point of view. The points I want to make are these: everyone around the House, including my party, knows that savings have to be made in the legal aid budget. Of course that is right. We put forward proposals in relation to criminal legal aid in the last few months when we were in government. We said it in our manifesto. Other proposals for savings in legal aid have been put forward in various amendments that we are going to debate in due course in this House. The Law Society has also put forward proposals. The question is not: should there be cuts in legal aid? The question is: where should those cuts be? For the life of me, I cannot understand why the Government have chosen that part of legal aid—the social welfare law part, the law of everyday life, which is a pretty small part of it, in fact—which in its own way works successfully in helping the most underprivileged in our society get basic legal advice on legal problems that affect their daily lives. It follows that that early advice often sorts out the problem and means that courts and tribunals are not bothered with hopeless cases and that people’s lives can be improved. I cannot for the life of me understand why the Government should have chosen that aspect when they refused to do anything about criminal legal aid, where a number of us think that there is room for substantial savings in some parts of it. It is disappointing that when the Government say that they are not going to implement Part 1 of the Bill until April 2013, they go on to say that they are not even going to look at criminal legal aid again until 2015. That is disappointing. That is my first point. My second point is that we believe that it is a false argument that the Government have chosen life and liberty as the only places where legal aid should apply today. The point has already been made in this debate that it is difficult to think of a more obvious place where legal aid is appropriate than to solve legal problems that affect people who are, through no fault of their own, poor or disabled or who lack any privileges. That is surely where a legal aid system should bite. To remove legal aid from there is a completely wrong thing to do. I thank the Minister for his contribution because it is not easy to face the Committee which, on this issue at least, is pretty dead-set against him. He made a point about how weekly reports come out suggesting that the policy is wrong, and he appeared to criticise that. The fact is that there would not be so much criticism if the Government had done the work they should have done before they tried to legislate in this way. All we ask is that in the time between now and Report, he goes back to his department and asks—I do not think he answered this in the debate—why the Government have not done the assessments of costs and social costs so that Parliament has a better idea of what it is being asked to legislate for. The Government have clearly not done the work that should have been done—that is a pretty universal feeling around the Committee. It is not too late for them to start doing it now, and I would encourage them to do so. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment 6 withdrawn. Clause 2 : Arrangements Amendment 7 Moved by