Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friends Lord Howarth and Lord Clinton-Davis, my noble and learned friend Lord Goldsmith, and the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, for their contributions. I am also grateful to my noble friend Lord Bach for his intervention, although if the Government were proposing only to decimate legal aid—to take 10 per cent off—I would almost be prepared to accept that. I think he was using the phrase in the vernacular sense rather than the literal sense, because we face a much bigger reduction in legal aid and advice on funding than the 10 per cent actually means. To refer back to my noble friend Lord Howarth's contribution in an earlier debate, he was asking about the knock-on costs of some of the changes. It may interest him to know that I have tabled a Question for Written Answer inviting the Government to say what estimates they have made of the cost to other government departments and whether those departments have accepted them or made any representations about them. The noble and learned Lord again advances the mantra about life and liberty, and of course they are most important. I am tempted to say that the Government believe in life and liberty but not in the pursuit of remedies, to paraphrase. More importantly, we are seeing the virtual death of equality before the law. There are areas where inequality will be deepened for a modest saving, at the very best. That is a socially divisive measure. It runs contrary to the big society concept and some of the words that we are hearing. The practical effect will be the denial of justice to far too many people. At this stage, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment, but it is a matter to which we may well return. Amendment 82ZB withdrawn. Amendment 82ZC not moved. Amendment 82ZD (in substitution for Amendment 86) Moved by