Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

My Lords, the Committee owes a debt of gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, and my noble friend Lady Whitaker for bringing forward these amendments for debate in Committee today. Most of the cuts to social welfare legal aid appear at best naive and at worst socially and economically disastrous. However, the cuts with which these amendments deal—subject, of course, to the answers to the questions that the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, has just asked the Minister—unfortunately, appear maliciously, deliberately and uniquely to target a group which, as the Committee has heard, is one of the most marginalised in our country. It is ironic—more than ironic, it is distressing—that in a society where popular and governmental discrimination against groups of people is, thankfully, becoming rarer and rarer, the tolerance and acceptance which we think is the mark of a civilised society does not seem to apply to this group of people. Gypsy and Traveller communities do not come in for an easy time, whether it is from the press, which seems to delight in portraying them as villains or an irredeemably alien culture, or from politicians, who have not done enough to help these communities preserve their way of life and certainly have not done enough to ensure sufficiency in the provision of housing. Every victory for this community—as, for example, the acceptance in April last year that local authority sites should be subject to the Mobile Homes Act 1983 —has been very hard won. Legal aid has played a significant part in these victories and in establishing these rights and ensuring that they are rightfully and lawfully exerted. Although the Government have claimed that the exemptions they have put in place are to deal with squatters—a subject to which we shall no doubt return in Part 3—everyone knows that at least a quarter of the Gypsy and Traveller population who live in caravans do not live on authorised sites. The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, referred to that in opening his amendment. Many believe that this population, due to an acute crisis in the availability of sites, has little option but to trespass. If the Government’s intention is specifically to disfranchise a protected group which is already, as I have argued, much maligned, I suspect that it will end up causing much more trouble than it is worth, and that Gypsy and Traveller communities will continue to express their culture. The Bill fails to give these communities a basic ability to stand up to oppressive behaviour by public authorities—and we have seen that kind of behaviour, I am afraid—and, frankly, it is unacceptable to mortgage the future of these communities for the purposes of the Bill. Legal aid has played an important part in gaining whatever benefits these communities have, and it would be a tragedy if they were taken away.