Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

My Lords, I move the amendment in a probing manner. I am concerned about a statement made by the noble Lord, Lord McNally, in Committee that involves setting up a supplementary legal aid scheme with a proposed deduction of 25 per cent from the damages of people who are supported by legal aid. So much time has been spent in the course of the Bill in fighting to get areas of litigation back into scope that it is ironic that if those efforts were to succeed and damages awarded in any particular case, they would be immediately subject to a 25 per cent deduction for the purposes of setting up a fund from which other people would receive legal aid. It is a tax on their damages. The noble Lord, Lord McNally, said in Committee that that was in order to make it no more attractive to have legal aid than to have damages subject to a success fee payable by a successful claimant limited to 25 per cent of his damages to date of trial. There is a difference. The whole purpose of changing the success fee, the burden of payment in conditional fee agreements, from the defendant to the claimant, and for it to be a charge on his damages, was so that there would be competition between solicitors for the business of the claimant at the outset. A solicitor might say, ““There will be no success fee payable with me””, or, ““My success fee will be limited to 12.5 per cent of the damages, not 25 per cent””. That is a better position than that of a legally aided person, who will have a whole 25 per cent taken out of his damages in any event. When is the supplementary legal aid scheme likely to come into being? I know that there was similar provision in the Access to Justice Act 1999, but under the previous Government it was never brought into effect. The other matter that concerns me is that the provision could be brought in by secondary legislation under the negative procedure. That would mean that it would be subject to no or very little debate in Parliament and imposed on us. My second concern is to ensure that if such a scheme is to be introduced in future, it should properly be brought under the affirmative procedure so that we have a chance to debate and consider it before it comes before the House for approval. Those are the reasons why I have tabled the amendment, and I await enlightenment. I beg to move.