Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, for her contribution to this debate and for sharing her experience of working directly in this field, which I echo. I recognise many of the points that she made around that. It was also nice to have the unprompted support of the noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis. I seem to be having a little run of these things because the previous time I tried to speak about this subject, the noble Lord, Lord Best, came in on housing, which, although again relevant, was not exactly helpful to my support. Never mind, we will battle on. At last weekend's Lib Dem conference, a Motion was passed calling for: "““The protection of fair and equal access to justice, through … A properly funded system whereby access to legal advice and representation before the courts is not denied to those otherwise unable to bear the costs””." It was unanimously passed but I notice that the Minister did not mention it when he made his remarks a few minutes ago. A lot of the points that I made, which were picked up by the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, were about the difference that had to be made between legal advice and generic advice. It is certainly true that a lot of work is going on in the generic debt advice field but we have been facing problems in terms of legal advice. I notice that in his comments the Minister made more of a case for support of the voluntary sector in this area, which of course we are grateful to have, than about the individuals who we think will be affected by this. For example, if the bailiffs are at the doorstep seeking to seize someone's goods and chattels, I think that everyone in this House would agree that they are reasonably said to be facing serious direct consequences. Yet, under the present proposals, they would neither be eligible for legal aid to contest the original order nor would they be able to access legal aid to challenge the manner in which the order had been carried out. Indeed, we know a lot about that. There are quite serious difficulties within the legal advice sector of debt which have not really been picked up in this debate so far. It was interesting that the Minister made the point that currently debt relief orders were not being funded to any great extent by legal aid and that, to some extent, legal aid should perhaps not be used at all for this. The key reason why the DRO scheme is successful is its lower cost, which was much trumpeted by the Insolvency Service. That is because the administration fee is £90, of which £80 goes to the Insolvency Service, leaving £10 for those who have to administer it. I have looked carefully at the way in which these forms are created. It would take me a great deal of time to work through these things and I am an accountant. However, specialist support and advice is needed. I think that it is ingenuous of the Minister to say that somehow this will survive. My charity estimates that it costs us about £350 per case to deliver a completed DRO. Where will that money come from? I do not think that we have had any answer to that. Finally, the way in which the noble Lord went on seems to suggest that he has not read the BIS Select Committee report on debt management, which was published last week. The report states: "““Citizens Advice informed us that the legal aid budget for debt advice in England and Wales is due to fall by 75 per cent from 2013””." The noble Lord admitted that there would be some changes after 2013. The report continues that the, "““figures, from the Justice Department, suggest that the number of people currently helped with debt problems will fall by 105,000””," which is a significant number. Later in the report, a BIS Minister is reported as recognising that, "““the cuts to legal aid could be a problem. Clearly for particularly some Citizens Advice Bureaux and other advice agencies, it may well have quite a big impact … I am afraid these are not easy times. There are cuts being made””." The situation facing those in debt in this country—very often not of their own accord and they certainly are not the feckless poor—is really difficult. I do not think that these proposals will help. I should like to seek the opinion of the House. Division on Amendment 74A Contents 151; Not-Contents 194. Amendment 74A disagreed. Amendment 74B not moved. Amendment 74C Moved by