Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

My Lords, I rise to support Amendment 36 and to speak to Amendment 82ZA. The proposals arising from Amendment 36 are useful and we support them. In doing so, I declare an interest as a governor of a BESD school. Given my experience there, I echo the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, about the need to support young people and their parents as they make the transition to adult life. Our Amendment 82ZA is concerned primarily with the decision of the Government to remove all areas of education law from the scope of legal aid, with the exception of SEN provision, which we welcome but regret that it does not go far enough. The Ministry of Justice consultation paper says that education cases cannot be accorded the same level of importance as those concerning an, "““immediate threat to life or safety, liberty””," or protection against homelessness. Yet education is a basic human right and is one of the key children’s rights in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. We now know beyond doubt that without access to an appropriate education, children from poor backgrounds or with SEN are more likely than their peers to end up in the youth justice system and be significantly greater social and financial burdens to the state for the rest of their lives. It is therefore a false economy to cut proper assistance and representation across this sector. The present spend from the legal aid budget on education cases is about £4 million per annum, and the estimated savings for their excision from scope are probably less than £1 million per annum. According to Legal Services Commission statistics, at least 92 per cent of education cases are successful, so there is obviously a real need here as well as high value for money. As to the detailed points, we wish legal representation for SEN cases to be available for First-tier Tribunals and to ensure that specialist witnesses can be called at such hearings as well as just provide reports. In addition, our amendment would return into scope exclusions, admissions and bullying. Excluded children are at considerably greater risk than their peers of falling into the youth justice system. We should do what we can to ensure that such exclusions are necessary and appropriate sanctions. The Government appear to argue that school exclusions fall into a category of personal choice and that the child has always behaved in the manner alleged by the school or local authority. Surely every child has the right to be heard on such matters. Removing access to legal aid for school admissions will have a disproportionate impact on particular groups of children, including refugee and asylum-seeking children. Many of these children find it difficult to secure school places, despite there being a clear statutory duty to provide suitable full-time education for all children of compulsory school age. We take the view that it is essential that legal aid is available to ensure that local authorities, and in future individual schools, meet their obligations and guarantee a suitable school place for all children. Bullying is common in many schools across England. Research undertaken by Bullying UK in 2006, for instance, found that out of a sample of more than 2,000 parents, 87 per cent reported that their child had been bullied in the past 12 months, and 77 per cent reported that their child had been bullied more than five times. It is important that children and parents or carers have access to legal services at an early stage on legal avenues of redress for bullying. Bullying can cause many children to miss school for significant periods or to withdraw from attending school completely, and can lead to other negative social and health outcomes throughout a child’s life. In her response to the Ministry of Justice consultation on the reform of legal aid, the Children’s Commissioner argues that many education clients achieve what they do for their children only with the help of legal aid. Whether it be support and therapies for their child's special educational needs, admission to a particular school, transport to and from school, or winning a battle for reinstated education after a period without it, legal aid-funded advice has often made a huge difference to their children’s life chances. The Children's Commissioner goes on to say: "““The net result of these proposals would, in our view, remove the rights of access to justice by vulnerable and marginalised members of our society where no other alternative source of funding or route to resolution can be secured, and in circumstances where litigants’ ability to represent their own case has not properly been considered””." She concludes with a point that I hope the Minister will respond to when the time comes. She states that: "““The proposed redefinition of scope for legal aid””," to remove education other than SEN, "““appears to show a serious disregard for the rights of the child under both the UNCRC, and the recent guidelines adopted by the Council of Europe on child-friendly justice””."