Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

My Lords, last week I was asked to give a lecture on perspectives on social justice from the Old Testament. We found ourselves deep in the prophet Amos. If your Lordships are looking for some edifying and deeply challenging Lenten reading, I commend this ancient Hebrew text to you. At the heart of Amos is the same concern with access to justice. He constantly attacks a system whereby the rich can buy justice and the poor are denied it. We find him thundering against those who would turn aside the needy at the gates of justice. Access to social justice runs, like lettering through a rock, through not only Amos but the whole of the Old Testament. I suggest that it is also at the heart of any civilised society. I would not expect the Government in general or the Minister to dissent from that principle, but without this amendment or something like it that principle is in danger of being fundamentally undermined and flawed. Among the many privileges of my life is to be the president of the local Exeter CAB. I know how much CABs and others working with the poorest of the poor fear the consequences of the removal of access to legal aid and justice for those who are very poor. I heard the Minister earlier this afternoon stand at the Dispatch Box and say, ““Well, the danger here is that we begin to think about worst-case scenarios””. If I have learnt one thing from my time in this Chamber, it is that one of the functions of the law—and of this House—is to look forward precisely to worst-case scenarios. My fear is that the Bill as it stands is cast around a best-case scenario. In its desire to tackle, properly, abuses within the system and deal with the unnecessary, escalating costs associated with, for example, the no-win no-fee industry, there is a danger that huge swathes of activity hitherto amenable to legal aid are being removed from those who need that access. As I say, the aim of the law and of a House like this is to foresee worst-case scenarios and see ahead to the elephant traps. Without such an assurance as is contained in this amendment, I fear that such elephant traps could include not only the denial of justice to the poor but, for example, people acting as plaintiffs on their own account in a court of law, inefficiently taking up more time, leading to more appeals and adding to further legal costs. Is there not a danger that those denied access to justice might even begin to take the law into their own hands? This amendment is a very simple one. It does not undermine the heart of the Bill at all. It ensures that individuals, rich and poor alike, have access to legal services that effectively meet their real needs.