Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

My Lords, I have spoken on this issue several times in the course of the discussion on the Bill. I support the amendment wholeheartedly. I speak, of course, as a former trade union official. It was my job when working for my union to have charge of the legal aid system that we applied to members. When I saw the provisions in the Bill, I hoped that the unions would begin to impress on their members the necessity of belonging to and having the support of the union when they are faced with this kind of problem. It is, of course, an enormous problem for the ordinary worker and his family, who depend upon his employment, when they suddenly no longer have it. If the worker has been unfairly dismissed, they need to have access to a way of compensating them for their loss. Unfortunately, the Government also have employment policies in train generally that are designed to make it easier for employers to get rid of workers when they wish to do so. The arrangements that the Government have in mind, which we have discussed from time to time in this House, are that if the worker wants to get to a tribunal he should have to pay to get there. A fee of £1,000 has been suggested. Furthermore, when a worker gets before a tribunal in future, it will not be a tribunal made up of lay members who have some knowledge of the working practices and industry generally; it will be before a judge sitting alone. In other words, it will be a much more legal system, but there will be no legal assistance to represent the member. All I can suggest to the Government is that perhaps there will be consequences that they had not foreseen. In other words, there will be much more interest in union membership and unions will increase their members—and the Government may not be very pleased about that.