Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

My Lords, I would very briefly reassert the fundamentalism of access to the law. Equality before the law is one of our basic claims. If in fact it does not exist, it damages not only the law and the rule of law but democracy itself. This group of amendments is interesting. Amendment 22, moved by the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, which leads the group, simply removes subsection (2) of Clause 8, which will mean that any change in the scope of legal aid would have to be by primary legislation. Our amendment, spoken to by my noble friend Lord Thomas of Gresford and to which my name is added, seeks to even things up by saying that not only can the Government omit or change by deletion the scope of legal aid, but can add to it. The third position is that of the noble Lords, Lord Bach and Lord Beecham, who in their amendment reverse the tables, saying that you cannot remove from scope but you can add to it. I must confess that I would, if the world were a perfect place, prefer the first amendment, Amendment 22, which would require all changes in scope to be by primary legislation. However, living on a pragmatic globe, I suspect that the best we may do is at least to have equality as between diminution of scope and addition to it. Hence Amendment 25, which incidentally is mirrored by Amendment 23, spoken to by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss. I would just add this point, which has not been sufficiently clarified or emphasised. Whether something is in or out of scope is not, in my book, most significantly a question of finance. If we are the most legislated democracy on earth—do not forget that we pass about 14,000 pages of new statute law a year—it behoves us, in this Parliament above every parliament, to ensure that what we do has fairness of application in the real world. Above all, I put it to my noble friend Lord McNally that there has been a unanimity of view from those who have contributed to this debate that, as things stand, the exclusions from scope are going to cut so deep that the consequences will be social and political unless they are reversed speedily. For that reason alone, if I were sitting in the seat of my noble friend, I would want to be able to add back speedily. I promise him that if this Bill goes through as drafted, scandals will arise, which the Government will want to rectify swiftly. Therefore, I hope that the Government will move on this.