Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

My Lords, I was exhilarated, enthralled and deeply flattered by the reference made by the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, to my existence 50 years ago. It is surprising that he should remember that I was there at all, let alone the hackneyed clichés that I was given to in those days. I shall speak to this amendment, and to Amendment 23, if I may. Their effect would be to give the lie to the canard, which may well be suspected by many people, that the Government are a liquidator of legal aid. The first part of Schedule 1 is the remnant, remainder and rump of what was once a splendid system created in 1949. I make no apology for reminding the House that in 1949 the financial condition of Britain, having fought and won a dreadful war, at massive expense, was even more parlous than it is today. Yet the Government did exactly that. They sent John Maynard Keynes to the United States to negotiate, on very hard terms, a massive loan that had harsh conditions, the last instalments of which were repaid only some six or seven years ago. That was the situation and it would have been easy for the Government of the day to have said, ““Justice is a magnificent thing—it is a noble ideal—but in our weakened condition we simply cannot afford it””. They did not say that, to their eternal credit. The first point to be made is that the amendments give the lie to the idea that the present Government are trying to reduce legal aid and that they are a liquidator of everything that legal aid fundamentally represents. That is neither the attitude nor the intention of the Government. The effect of these amendments would be to give a more balanced view of the situation. It would be absurd—and even more absurd to allow it to be done by secondary legislation—to allow the authorities a power in Clause 8(1) and (2) to further restrict legal aid without considering any possibility on the other side of the balance sheet, as it were, of adding where necessary. That addition might be made if there was a massive change in economic circumstances, which is not likely to occur for some years, or if it were discovered that some of these changes, though proposed in good faith, were so costly to the principles of the administration of justice and access to justice that there had to be a rethink. That would be one condition. Another condition would be where it had been anticipated that a substantial net saving could be made under a certain heading but it was shown that the consequential costs to other departments were such that either a loss or no saving at all was created. These are real possibilities. I do not criticise the Government for not being able to point out exactly what will happen in any of these matters either in relation to access to justice or—perhaps less importantly, but nevertheless of immense importance—in relation to the savings for the public purse, as that is not possible. If I may indulge in egotism again, in Committee on Tuesday I put it to the Deputy Leader of the House that the Government’s intention was to save £350 million, that that was a gross figure and that from that gross figure there had to be deducted a figure of X. No one in this House or this world can say exactly what X may be—it is certainly not a miniscule figure; it may be massive; it may be no more than substantial, but it is an equation that everyone must bear in mind. The £350 million is a gross figure from which X has to be deducted. The Deputy Leader of the House maintained that that was not the case. His reply can have validity only if there is no downstream additional cost to be regarded or that cost is miniscule. Neither of those propositions can be correct. It is for those reasons that I ask the Government to bear in mind the necessity of maintaining a balance and an equity in this situation and to agree to these amendments. No one imposes any condition upon the Government—the initiative will lie with them the whole time—but this will give a balance and an equity to the situation which does not exist in the Bill at the moment.