Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

We come to Clause 7, ““Civil legal services””. These services, "““include, in particular, advice and assistance in the form of … representation, and … mediation and other forms of dispute resolution””." My amendment simply inserts ““collaborative law”” after ““mediation””. Noble Lords may ask what it is. I am very grateful to the organisation Resolution for drawing it to my attention, and I am very keen on it. It is perhaps inevitable in the House of Lords that one goes back over the years. Getting divorced these days is no problem; it is all done on paper. There is no Queen’s Proctor, confession of adultery or anything like that; one just signs a piece of paper. It is the children, the house and the funds that create the difficulty. Collaborative law is different from mediation. In mediation, the parties go in front of a mediator who listens to what they have to say. They may not be represented and may shout at each other. Statistics show that something like 60 per cent of attempts at mediation fail. People who are at each other's throats and ready to kill each other should not be put in proximity to argue in front of a mediator; it is not easy for the mediator or for everybody else. The collaborative family law process is a relatively new way of dealing with family disputes. Each party appoints their own lawyer. However, instead of the lawyers conducting negotiations by letter or phone, they meet to work things out face to face. Therefore, each antagonist has a lawyer at their side throughout the process and receives legal advice as they go. The aim of collaborative law meets the Government's aim of resolving family disputes without going to court. Both parties meet their respective lawyers, discuss the different options and processes available and decide to attempt the collaborative process. Then a four-way meeting is set up—the two parties plus their lawyers—and at the first four-way meeting the lawyers make sure that both parties understand that they are making a commitment to work out an agreement without going to court. They all sign an agreement to that effect. A very important provision is that the lawyers undertake that if the agreement breaks down or no agreement is achieved, they will drop out of the case—so, unlike in many cases, the lawyers have no incentive to advise their clients not to agree because they hope to get greater fees by continuing the litigation. At the first meeting they plan an agenda, decide what financial information is required, decide what the issues are and have discussions about children and so on, and they have subsequent meetings to deal with the particular priorities and concerns of each of the parties. They can call in professionals such as specialists in pensions or financial planning or people who are trained to assist children to deal with their problems. The meetings are designed to enable an agreement to be reached on how the finances will be shared and on what arrangements need to be made for any children. At the final meeting, documents detailing the agreements that the parties have reached are signed and then the lawyers talk through how the agreements are to be implemented. Sometimes they can work out a firm timetable for that purpose. There you have the difficult issues on the break-up of a marriage or a relationship sorted out without the need to go to court and with the lawyers having no incentive to make it go to court because if there is no agreement, they drop out and do not continue to act. This process is spreading across the country. To my mind, it is much more positive than mediation, and I think that it deserves a specific mention in the Bill. It can of course be called another form of dispute resolution, but I do not think that all our focus should simply be on mediation in front of a mediator, which frequently does not work. This is a system that is working and which should be funded and should be part of the civil legal services envisaged in Clause 7. I beg to move.