Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

My Lords I ask noble Lords to support Amendment 31, which stands in my name and in the names of my noble friends Lord Newton and Lord Cormack and the noble Lord, Lord Crisp. Amendment 31 would allow legal aid for all children who are victims of clinical negligence and not just some children, which, unfortunately, is the current position of my Government. I have both personal and professional experience of these cases as a mother and a former leader of a metropolitan district council. I would like to tell noble Lords something of my experiences. When my eight year-old boy was diagnosed with a psychosomatic illness, my husband and I went through the worst time trying to persuade doctors that something was seriously wrong. Eventually, the diagnosis was found to be faulty and we discovered that our son was in fact suffering from a very virulent form of bone and tissue cancer. Even though we had a very strong clinical negligence case, my husband and I decided not to pursue it because it would be too stressful and we had the resources to support my son. However, not every family is in this privileged position, and I met many through those dark times, and since, who needed to make a claim so that their families could survive. I have seen at first hand how compensation for medical negligence allows parents to continue to care for their children in their own homes. It does not make it easy but it does make it possible. I have also seen what happens to parents who do not receive financial compensation. Caring for a child who has been the victim of a medical accident and is severely disabled, sick or injured normally gets progressively more difficult and can frequently result in separation and divorce and depression and other mental health disorders in parents. It can also result in an inability to care for other children in the household and parents losing their jobs, becoming homeless and having to be rehoused in social housing, and with the victim having to be cared for in residential homes away from their family. In other words, everyone ends up suffering—a child who is the victim, the parents and the wider family and the taxpayer. As a councillor, I know that all too frequently the local authority has to pick up the pieces and the financial cost. The proposals in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill can only make a bad situation worse. The concession proposed by the Government allows legal aid where a baby is the victim of clinical negligence from the period of conception through to eight weeks after his or her due date in the case of neurological injury only. It relates only to babies who have suffered damage to their brain. As I understand it, children with physical disabilities resulting from clinical negligence at birth are not covered, and conditions such as Erb's palsy would not fall into the category of receiving aid. This means that if a full-term baby is the victim of clinical negligence when it is 73 days old, he or she will be ineligible for medical negligence. However, if he or she suffers neurological damage two days earlier at 71 days, they can be granted legal aid. This seems a rather arbitrary and upsetting situation. I ask noble Lords to try to imagine how they would explain to their friends, family and neighbours why a baby who suffered neurological injury at birth could have legal aid but a baby blinded at birth, say by a forceps delivery, could not. Last year, £4.6 million was spent on legal aid for children who were victims of clinical negligence. The majority—estimated to be around £3 million—went on legal aid for babies who suffered neurological damage. As I say, this group has been conceded by the Government, so in reality we are arguing about a further £1.6 million or so to cover all remaining children. I wish to tell noble Lords about Sophie Tyler from Newport. When Sophie was 14 years-old, she went into her local hospital for a routine bladder operation. She underwent an epidural, which, sadly, went very wrong. Sophie is now paralysed from the waist down and will always be in a wheelchair for the rest of her life. Sophie is now 17 years-old. She took action with the help of legal aid, and three years on she has received a medical insurance payout. This compensation will never make amends for what has happened to Sophie, but it will make it possible for her to live independently with support. In the cases of children, compensation pays for extensions to be built downstairs with bathrooms and bedrooms so that children do not have to be carried upstairs, which is more difficult when they become adults. Compensation pays for the widening of doors to allow wheelchair access and for hoists, electric wheelchairs and other specialist equipment not available on the NHS. It pays for occasional night-time and holiday respite care so that parents can get some much needed sleep and it pays, where possible, for extra tutoring to make up for lost schooling along with additional physiotherapy and holidays. Above all, compensation allows parents to carry on in the knowledge that there is someone who will take care of their child after they themselves die. Believe me, this is what worries parents more than anything else. I therefore ask noble Lords to support children like Sophie next year and the year after—children who, through no fault of their own, become the victims of medical negligence and need legal aid to pursue their cases. I hope that my noble friend the Minister will concede legal aid for all children and recognise that although the concession proposed by the Government supports children with neurological injury, it does not address the needs of the remaining children who suffer hugely as a result of medical negligence and accident.