Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

My Lords, I, too, support the amendment. It must make practical sense to put employment cases back into the scope of legal aid. Worryingly, we face the prospect of rising unemployment. We could see significantly rising unemployment if there were to be a disorderly collapse of the euro. Let us hope that that does not take place, but the interaction of global economic circumstances with the Government’s deliberate policies to reduce employee protection in the interests of liberalising the labour market could result in significant numbers of people becoming casualties. While the Government might argue that the overall economic process will be benign in the interests of this country, it is unquestionable that these circumstances may be malign in the interests of individuals. In a process of economic adaptation, it is extremely important that, as a society, we take decent and proper care of those who may be the casualties of it. It must be a basic right that people should have legal aid to ensure that they are well advised and that, where necessary, they are represented and their cases can be well made in employment tribunals. What they are personally suffering is a product partly of events and partly of policy, and all of us have a responsibility to ensure that, in times of great economic difficulty, no more people suffer in these processes of change than is truly necessary. If someone has a genuine right to bring a case against unfair dismissal or some other aspect of their employer’s treatment of them, and they are not supported to make that case, it leads to a sense of injustice. A sense of injustice pervading society in a context of economic stress and social strain cannot be something that the Government want. If we look at the implications for individuals, again, surely Ministers do not want people to suffer unduly or to incur the costs to the public purse that one can foresee occurring. If someone loses their job, as my noble friend Lord Bach has pointed out, they are liable to become reliant on benefits and could be on the start of a slippery slope that leads to debt, homelessness, the destabilisation of family life, and physical and mental ill health, all of which carry costs to society and to the public purse which surely the Government would wish to avert. I do not know whether it is the case—it has been suggested to me that it is—that the Government have received advice from those responsible for the conduct of the employment tribunals that it is a mistake to take employment cases out of the scope of legal aid. It would be helpful if the Minister could advise the House whether the Government’s policies have been endorsed or criticised by employment tribunals and whether they have been advised that it would be wiser not to take this course. For all the reasons that noble Lords have put forward and those that I have suggested, I hope that the Government will accept the amendment. If they are unable to accept it today, I hope they will look carefully again at this area of reduction in legal aid before we come to Report.