Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

They are not legally offensive. We have been honest right from the first day I answered questions. I go back again to this, which is something that the noble Lord in his many, many interventions never acknowledges. If you are making cuts in such an area that is directed at the poorer sections of society, of course, you will affect the poorer sections of society. But what will also affect the poorer sections of society is if you lose control of the economy and are forced to bring in further draconian cuts over which you have no control. We will return, as we have done, through six or seven parallel debates with the same briefings and research from the same organisations. We have a fundamental difference of opinion on how to tackle these problems. I am not even sure that the noble Lord is quite on message at least with the latest pronouncements from his Front Bench in the other place about what we are facing in these matters. I suspect that we will have further discussions on this. The Bill contains important safeguards for children and adults who lack capacity and who require treatment for mental health issues. Paragraph 5 of Part 1 of Schedule 1 provides that legal aid may be made available for cases arising under the Mental Health Act 1983 and the Mental Capacity Act 2005, including cases concerning medical treatment of patients or those who lack capacity. Furthermore, paragraphs 9 and 15 of Part 3 of Schedule 1 provide for legal aid for advocacy for mental health cases before the mental health tribunal. Paragraph 4 provides for advocacy before the Court of Protection where there is to be an oral hearing and the case will determine the vital interests of the individual: medical treatment, including psychological treatment; life; liberty; physical safety; the capacity to marry or enter into civil partnerships; the capacity to enter into sexual relations; or the right to family life. Paragraphs 1 and 2 of Part 3 of Schedule 1 provide legal aid for advocacy for an onward appeal to the Court of Appeal or Supreme Court on a mental health or capacity issue that is within scope. As I have already mentioned, there will also be an exceptional funding scheme that will ensure the protection of an individual’s right to legal aid under the European Convention on Human Rights as well as those rights to legal aid that are directly enforceable under European Union law. Amendment 34 applies to all civil and family proceedings. It seeks to bring into scope civil legal services for many areas of law that are excluded for any child party or child represented by legal guardian. I will address the amendment on the basis that the term ““legal guardian”” means the child’s guardian of the type appointed by CAFCASS. We are already retaining legal aid for child parties in family proceedings which we have prioritised. This part of the amendment is therefore unnecessary. Otherwise the amendment retains funding across the board for children in all civil disputes without regard to their relative priority or alternative methods of resolving them. As I said, the Government recognise the importance of funding in a range of cases where children’s interests are paramount. That is reflected in the final decisions we have reached. As a result, we have protected funding in areas that specifically involve children. We have also made special provision so that legal aid is available for children who are made parties to private family proceedings. Amendments 39 and 40 concern legal aid for the measures to prevent the unlawful removal of a child within the United Kingdom and Amendment 41 to prevent removal from the child’s normal place of residence within the United Kingdom, and to take steps to remedy such removal. We initially proposed that legal aid would remain to secure the return of a child who had been abducted overseas. We listened to consultation responses and extended this to cover prevention of abduction in such cases. This made sense on the basis of the complexity and cost and the consequential practical disadvantages involved in dealing with a foreign jurisdiction. We do not, however, consider that domestic cases raise the same difficulties as international abduction cases because the resident parent would not be dealing with a complex foreign jurisdiction. The seek and locate orders, which are commonly employed in cases of removal of children within the jurisdiction without the other parent’s consent, are relatively straightforward to obtain and, of course, many domestic agencies, including the police, can be engaged in trying to retrieve the child without the need for proceedings in court. Furthermore, if domestic violence or child abuse is involved and becomes an additional risk factor, legal aid would then be available.