Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

My Lords, let us face it, the next group of amendments covers almost exactly the same area as this one. I shall reserve what I was going to say until we reach my amendment in that group. However, in view of the comments made by my noble friend Lord Wigley about running all these Bills together simultaneously, I wanted to point out that—believe it or not—in the Moses Room this afternoon, going on in parallel with what was going on in this Chamber there was a Motion about jobseeker’s allowance. Aspects of the Welfare Reform Bill and the legal aid Bill are interwoven in an appallingly complex way. We have just heard from the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, a very clear case as to why the whole exercise is going to be costly. I agree with the sympathetic point he was making for the Government: any change made to these forms of welfare help is almost by definition bound to involve extra cost and extra complexity, because it is yet another layer added to the thousands of pages that have to be understood by the professional expert. Then, one appears to be busily taking away, or making it much less easy to access, the professional help we have had in the past. There is also the point made that the CABs, which have been so marvellous in the past, are going to be shorter and shorter of money. The whole thing is becoming really worrying and I hope that the Government will reflect on this.