Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

My Lords, I support these amendments. I will particularly refer to Amendment 46. It seems to me that sub-paragraphs (g) (j) and (k) are particularly important. They relate to the less formal types of evidence as opposed to court convictions and the like. These amendments have been eloquently and accurately moved by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and my noble friend Lord Macdonald, and I do not want to add too much, apart from a couple of examples. Before I give them, I shall make a point of principle. From my experience as a legal practitioner, it is clear to me that the earlier legal aid is given for the earliest possible intervention, the least harm is likely to be done. I urge the Government to accept that as a very sound principle. I will now give my two illustrations that lead me to that principle. On one occasion many years ago, when I still practised family law, I was asked to obtain an injunction for a lady from a small town in rural Wales. I was then practising in Chester, and the town in which she lived was about 50 miles west of Chester. She had been driven by various forms of abuse by her husband, some financial—the deprivation of money for daily expenditure for herself and the children, so she could not even buy the children shoes—some emotional and some physical, eventually to go to that daunting place, the local solicitor’s office on the high street. The great solicitor Mr Jones—and he really was called Mr Jones—decided to apply for an injunction, and I was instructed. When she came to my chambers in Chester, she told me that this was an absolutely terrifying experience for her; she had never been to England before. We went and obtained the injunction in the judge’s domestic dining room. She left the occasion much mollified and placated by the friendliness of the law—not least because she had won. However, much worse consequences could have ensued if she had not finally had the courage to go to Mr Jones’s office. Over the years I have appeared for both the prosecution and the defence in murder cases where there had been clear domestic abuse but the steps which that lady took had not been taken and eventually distraction arose. My second example is much worse and I am afraid it has haunted me for the last 30 years. After a great deal of domestic abuse, a wife was eventually driven to obtain orders from the local county court, again in west Wales, against her husband. On the face of it they were both extremely nice, professional people. They were able to pay for their own proceedings because they were local small-business people. So much heat had been generated during the period before proceedings were taken, that not very long after the orders were obtained from the county court, unfortunately, the husband killed both the children in absolutely tragic circumstances that left scars on a whole community. It seems to me that if legal aid were given for early interventions to take place, we could avoid not only those kinds of tragedies but the costs for other parts of the public service that ensue if legal aid is not made available. The consequences of late intervention can lead to mental health services being involved, and it is worth recording that if somebody ends up in privately run mental health services as an in-patient, albeit paid for by the NHS, it can cost as much as £150,000 per week—I repeat, per week—for that kind of intervention to take place. These figures are readily available. There can also be educational difficulties which hold back children for the whole of their lives. People can end up in prison, which is very cheap compared with mental health services: it costs a mere £40,000 per year for each prisoner, even if sentenced to short terms of imprisonment. I say to my noble friend the Minister that the Government are cutting off their nose to spite their face with these provisions. There is absolutely no evidence of real savings being made, and the real social cost may be dramatic and very serious.