Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, has indicated, the amendment would require regulations to be made under Clause 11 to make provision for appeals to a court, tribunal or other person against determinations made by the director under Clauses 8 and 9, and against the withdrawal of such determinations. I can reassure the House that the Government's intention is to continue with the existing effective appeal procedures that are currently used by the LSC. First, an internal review on all determinations on civil legal aid will be available. This is required by Clause 11(5). Secondly, we are retaining the current system of independent lawyers, known as independent funding adjudicators, who volunteer to carry out independent reviews of funding decisions in in-scope civil and family representation cases. Clause 11 already allows us to make regulations to set out those appeal processes in secondary legislation, as they are set out currently. The existing system, which deals with over 11,000 reviews and 3,500 appeals to independent funding adjudicators each year, is both efficient and effective and costs an estimated £60,000 per year to administer. I am not sure that he did, but it may be that the noble Lord envisions instead a tribunal to review these appeals. The review by Sir Ian Magee initiated by the previous Administration into the governance of legal aid looked at the option of directing all legal aid appeals to a tribunal and concluded that this would cost up to £1 million per year to administer. We do not believe it would be sensible to replace a system that works well with an unknown system at possibly 15 times the current cost. This amendment would also require an appeal in cases covered by Clause 9. Again, we intend to retain the existing system under which, although there will be an internal review available in accordance with Clause 11(5), there will be no appeal to an independent funding adjudicator where applicants remain dissatisfied. I do not agree that these cases should attract a right of appeal to an IFA. It would not be appropriate to refer exceptional funding decisions to an IFA. This is because of the particular nature of the assessment at the heart of such cases, which will focus on an interpretation of the relevant obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights to provide legal aid. Exceptional case determinations, along with all other decisions by the director, would be amenable to judicial review. I think my noble friend Lord Thomas of Gresford confirmed that in his response to an earlier debate. I therefore urge the noble Lord to withdraw the amendment.